Over the last four years, the IED has been used more and more. While only 5,607 IEDs were placed in 2004, there were 10,953 encountered in 2005 and over 40,000 in 2006. But American troops responded to the threat. In 2004, about a quarter of IEDs actually went off and hurt someone. In 2005, that rate declined to ten percent, and is still falling.
I take it a little over 24,000 have been emplaced this year so far.
This method of warfare just hasn't been that successful:
IEDs have been around for several generations. The only reason they are getting so much ink in Iraq is because the terrorists are unable to inflict many casualties on American troops any other way. The Sunni Arab fighters in Iraq are, historically, a pretty inept and pathetic bunch. This can be seen in the amazingly low casualty rate of American troops. By comparison, an American soldier serving in Vietnam was over twice as likely to be killed or wounded.
Even in 1991, when our troops overran Kuwait, we found bunker complexes built by competent Iraqi engineers that could have been difficult to take had they been defended. "Thank God they weren't North Vietnamese," one American officer noted. (I'm paraphrasing, I know I noted this on my old site)
And it isn't just better armor and medical care that accounts for our lower casualties this war since we're talking wounded and killed combined.
Our enemies are evil and not particularly effective. Which also helps our reenlistment rates, by the way.
So keep in mind when you read statistics about enemy "attacks" per day that this includes IEDs whether they detonate or whether we find and disarm them. So perhaps 72,000 "attacks" in this war consisted of alert troops or (to a lesser extent) electronic defenses making an emplaced enemy IED ineffective.
Our Congressional leaders want to run from evil and ineffective enemies. Isn't this a little odd?
