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Little Change in Troop Levels Expected Soon [
Iraqi Rebels Refine Bomb Skills, Pushing Toll of GI's Higher
By David S. Cloud
The New York Times
Wednesday 22 June 2005
Washington - American casualties from bomb attacks in Iraq have reached new heights in the last two months as insurgents have begun to deploy devices that leave armored vehicles increasingly vulnerable, according to military records.
Last month there were about 700 attacks against American forces using so-called improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s, the highest number since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the American military command in Iraq and a senior Pentagon military official. Attacks on Iraqis also reached unprecedented levels, Lt. Gen. John Vines, a senior American ground commander in Iraq, told reporters on Tuesday.
The surge in attacks, the officials say, has coincided with the appearance of significant advancements in bomb design, including the use of "shaped" charges that concentrate the blast and give it a better chance of penetrating armored vehicles, causing higher casualties.
Another change, a senior military officer said, has been the detonation of explosives by infrared lasers, an innovation aimed at bypassing electronic jammers used to block radio-wave detonators.
I.E.D.'s of all types caused 33 American deaths in May, and there have been at least 35 fatalities so far in June, the highest toll over a two-month period, according to statistics assembled by Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks official figures.
In a sign of heightened American concern, the Army convened a conference last week at Fort Irwin, in the California desert, where engineers, contractors and senior officers grappled with the problems posed by the new bombs. One attendee, Col. Bob Davis, an Army explosives expert, called the new elements in some bombs "pretty disturbing." In a brief interview, he declined to discuss the changes, but said the "sophistication is increasing and it will increase further."
Although the number of bombs using the refinements remains low, their appearance underscores the insurgents' adaptability and the difficulty the Pentagon faces, despite a strong effort, in containing the threat. Improvised explosives now account for about 70 percent of American casualties in Iraq.
At a briefing on Tuesday for reporters at the Pentagon, General Vines, who spoke by telephone from Iraq, said that the insurgents' tactics "have become more sophisticated in some cases," and that they were probably drawing on bomb-making experts from outside Iraq and from the old Iraqi Army. He added that the insurgency was "quite small" and "relatively static," a view not shared by all his colleagues.
Car bomb attacks against American forces - both suicide attacks and attacks with remotely detonated devices - reached a monthly high of 70 in April and fell slightly in May, according to figures provided by the United States military in Iraq.
"For a period of time we felt we were pushing them away from us, and now it looks like they are back to targeting coalition forces," said a Pentagon official involved in the anti-I.E.D. effort. "And they've learned that in order to attack us, they need to get more sophisticated."
The next highest two-month period was in January and February, around the time of the Iraqi elections, when 54 Americans were killed by bombs, according to the official statistics assembled by the casualty-count Web site. Iraqis suffer the most casualties by far, though reliable figures are not available.
The insurgents "certainly appear to be surging right now," Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who leads the anti-I.E.D. task force, said in an interview at Fort Irwin. "Time will tell about their ability to sustain this."
American officials also worry that the increase in attacks threatens to disrupt Iraq's fledgling government further and could threaten the Bush administration's strategy for maintaining public support for the American presence in Iraq by holding down American casualties.
"We're in a very, very dangerous period," said a senior military official at the Pentagon. "To be a successful insurgent you need to be able to create spectacular attacks, and they've certainly done that in the past several weeks."
In addition to technical improvements in their bombs, insurgents, especially in rural areas, are resorting to packing more explosives into the devices to disable armored vehicles, Army experts at the Fort Irwin conference said.
Hundreds of armored Humvees have been rushed to Iraq over the past year, and Pentagon officials say unarmored vehicles are now confined to bases. Still, five marines were killed this week near Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad, when their vehicle hit an I.E.D. Earlier this month, five marines were killed after their vehicle struck a bomb in Haqlaniya, about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad.
A senior Marine officer with access to classified reports from the field said that the vehicles involved in the two fatal attacks were armored Humvees but that the bombs "were so big that there was little left of the Humvees that were hit."
Insurgents have long been able to build bombs powerful enough to penetrate some armored vehicles. But the use of "shaped" charges could raise the threat considerably, military officials said. Since last month, at least three such bombs have been found, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing this month.
The shaped charge explosion fires a projectile "at a very rapid rate, sufficient to penetrate certain levels of armor," General Conway said, adding that weapons employing shaped charges had caused American casualties in the last two months. He did not give details.
A Pentagon official involved in combating the devices said shaped charges seen so far appeared crude but required considerable expertise, suggesting insurgents were able to draw on well-trained bomb-makers, possibly even rocket scientists from the former government. Shaped charges and rocket engines are similar, the official said.
Infrared detonators are an advance over the more common method of rigging bombs to explode after an insurgent nearby presses a button on a cell phone, a garage-door opener or other device that gives off an electric signal. That approach is vulnerable to jammers, however, and a shift to infrared detonators, which rely on light waves, underscores the insurgents' resourcefulness.
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Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
Little Change in Troop Levels Expected Soon
By Bradley Graham
The Washington Post
Wednesday 22 June 2005
The senior U.S. operational commander in Iraq said yesterday that he anticipates little change in U.S. troop levels before the next Iraqi elections, scheduled for December, but he reaffirmed that significant reductions could begin early next year.
The remarks by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the 18th Airborne Corps commander who oversees day-to-day military operations in Iraq, reflected the findings of a major internal assessment of the U.S. campaign plan and were in accord with the views of the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, according to U.S. officers in Baghdad.
The internal review, completed last week, concluded that although signs of military and political progress in Iraq are evident, too much uncertainty remains about the course of the insurgency, the development of Iraqi security forces and the evolution of democratic politics in the country to warrant any lessening in U.S. military strength, the officers said.
"At this point, I would not be prepared to recommend a drawdown prior to the election, certainly not any significant numbers," Vines told reporters at the Pentagon in a phone link from Baghdad.
But looking past the end of the year, the general struck a note of optimism, reaffirming Casey's prediction in March that increased numbers of Iraqi security forces should allow for a fairly significant reduction in U.S. troops by early next year. "I think General Casey's assumption probably is still valid," he said. "I suspect we will probably draw down capability after the elections, because Iraqi security forces are more capable."
Asked whether the reductions could involve as many as four or five brigades, from the 17 currently in Iraq, Vines said: "It would probably be somewhere in that range. That would be my guess."
His assessment comes at a time of growing political pressure on the Bush administration to set a timetable for a withdrawal. Some lawmakers, including Republicans who supported the war, have backed resolutions calling for the formulation of plans to begin reducing U.S. troops in Iraq, who currently number about 135,000.
White House and Pentagon officials have rejected the idea, arguing that setting deadlines would play to the advantage of insurgents who would simply wait out the departure. Vines also spoke against fixing an "arbitrary" schedule, saying he prefers to base any change in U.S. troop levels on the unfolding conditions in Iraq.
But he offered a view of the insurgency that contrasted with recent attempts by some administration officials -- most notably, Vice President Cheney -- to portray the Iraqi resistance as in its final throes. Vines described the opposition as "relatively static" in size and still sufficiently financed to pay fighters to plant explosive devices and undertake other attacks. He made it clear that his judgment about the need to maintain the current troop strength is based on the assumption that "the insurgency will remain at about its current level" for the next several months.
"We don't see the insurgency contracting or expanding right now," he said.
U.S. military figures show that the number of insurgent attacks, which picked up two months ago after a brief lull following the January elections, continue to run at about 60 a day. Commanders can point to some recent successes resulting from intensified counterinsurgency efforts, including a decrease in car-bomb attacks in Baghdad and the capture of two men identified as insurgent leaders in Mosul. But such gains have tended to be offset by the worsening violence elsewhere -- an upsurge, for example, in car-bomb attacks in north-central Iraq.
Casey, in an interview earlier this month with two reporters, referred to U.S. military efforts as "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea" -- meaning that as U.S. forces press the insurgency in one area, enemy attacks seem to rise in other places. A senior intelligence officer on Vines's staff calls this the "squirt theory." Such apparent resilience has left senior U.S. officers in Iraq uncertain about the underlying strength of the resistance.
"Clearly, as we take out leadership, we're limiting the capacity of the insurgency," said one officer who closely monitors operations around the country. "But the big question is: What's the ability of the insurgency still to surge?"
U.S. commanders are also still trying to get a firmer handle on how quickly Iraqi military and police forces, whose ranks now number more than 170,000, can be expected to start operating independently of U.S. troops. Vines expressed particular concern about a lack still of "government capacity" to feed, pay and sustain the Iraqi forces. "I suspect they will be working at still developing capacity a couple years from now," he said.
Although not ready to recommend any reduction in U.S. forces, Vines said he foresees no need for an increase to cover the politically difficult period ahead, with a referendum in October on a new constitution and elections in December for a new national government.
"Right now, I would not be in a position to recommend any spike; I don't see that," he said.
But he cautioned that conditions could change. A new surge in violence, for instance, could drive the dispatch of more troops to Iraq or prompt delays in the scheduled departure of some units. Alternately, a political breakthrough could lead to some units returning home earlier than planned.
