So I saw this article with interest, listing the more lethal attacks thus far. Some attacks don't include any American dead so I'll restrict this to attacks with at least 5 American military personnel killed. I also limit them to single attacks, otherwise you have to add in the two Fallujah battles and various anti-Sadr operations.
The list starts with a Nov. 2, 2003 attack that left 16 Americans dead. About two weeks later, on November 15, 2003, 17 were killed. Almost two months later, on January 8, 2004, 9 were killed. Six months later, on July 8, 2004, 5 Americans died in an attack. Nearly four months later, on October 30, 2004, 8 Americans are killed. The Mosul attack took 14 American soldiers and 8 others on December 21, 2004, two months after the last attack. Finally, 7 Americans were killed on January 6, 2005, only a couple weeks after the Mosul attack.
The casualty spikes were: 16, 17, 9, 9, 5, 8, 14, 7.
The time between attacks (in months): 6, 0.5, 2, 6, 4, 2, 0.5. (I count the first attack as 6 months after major combat operations are declared over).
First of all, in the 20 months of fighting the Baathist insurgency, there have been 8 particularly effective attacks that killed at least 5 Americans in one blow. Second, there is no apparent increase in the numbers of troops we've lost in each of these attacks. Third, the frequency may be decreasing but with so few numbers it is hard to say for sure overall. But since the middle timespan of 6 months from the previous attack, the particularly effective attacks have come with briefer gaps from the previous attack. It is possible that they are getting more effective. Although if we go four months before another such attack, there goes the low-data trend.
Of course, these are different types of attacks. The first three are helicopter downings and we adjusted and haven't lost others with high loss of life. The last was a really huge bomb that destroyed a Bradley. With our trucks largely armored now, the enemy found they needed to go for really big bombs in reaction to our defensive measures. We will adjust and they will adjust as two thinking enemies seek to win.
This briefing discusses this with some interesting answers.
Q (Through interpreter.) You have mentioned the -- you have talked about the decrease in numbers of the terrorist operations, but you have also mentioned higher qualities of such operations. So does this indicate a higher level of professionalism within these terrorist forces? Thank you.
GEN. METZ: That is a very good question, and let me answer it broadly because I think you hit on some very important points. The decrease -- we have seen the decrease. You say that there's a higher quality. I don't think there's a higher quality. There are some more spectacular attacks, and on occasion, where they have some success, they bring that focus.
But we're finding, even in the past couple of days as an example, suicide bombers that were going to attack a convoy did it poorly and detonated early and were very ineffective against the convoy. In cases that they wanted to attack traffic control points, they did that very poorly. In some cases, we have seen vehicles that were built to be explosive devices explode where we could not determine the target, so we are making the assumption that it exploded accidentally. In fact, in one case not only did the vehicle explode accidentally, it was such a large explosion the vehicle traveling behind it also exploded, which tells me that they were moving two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices to a future location and they had an accident. So in many cases the quality of the people doing the operations I think is down, and maybe the assembly of those are down because they accidentally
exploded.
And so, again, you've got a very ruthless, valueless enemy who wants to kill anybody, and he is going to be successful doing that. We're going to work very hard for him to be unsuccessful, but I'm seeing the numbers of attacks decrease and I'm seeing the quality of those attacks decrease. But that is a different issue than the catastrophic or the attention which a particular attacker gets. So -- and he does get that attention, and we've got to work against that equally.
In the sense that the enemy is causing more casualties, that is certainly an indication of effectiveness. But as far as the skill of the enemy, it does not appear to be better. In the long run, lack of proficiency will make it easier to finally beat them. Of course, if simply causing casualties on US forces is enough to break our will to win, then it doesn't matter if tactically idiotic insurgents are dying in large numbers to inflict the casualties on us.
It may be up to us at home to determine how effective the enemy is.
