US losses in Iraq spike from IED attacks

The improvised roadside bombs have proved a lethal tool for insurgents this spring.

from the May 23, 2007 edition

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"We are making steady progress and playing our role in helping units deal with this problem," he says.

Some of the data that would show the agency's successes is classified, Mr. Meigs says. That leaves him able to provide little publicly that would illustrate just what the organization has achieved in the past few years. Still, his main argument for JIEDDO's effectiveness is that the number of IED incidents causing troop casualties has generally remained steady since January 2004, while the number of IED attacks has increased dramatically.

"The amount of casualties has remained about the same. It's got peaks and valleys, but it's stayed about the same. But the number of IEDs has steadily gone up," he says during an interview in his office not far from the Pentagon. "And the proportion of the IEDs that we find – and that are ineffective or blow up and nobody's hurt – has gotten larger, so this is the important chart."

Additionally, it is taking the enemy six times the number of attacks to kill just one coalition force member, Meigs says.

As for congressional criticism that the JIEDDO hasn't spent enough of its budget – $4.4 billion in fiscal 2007 if Congress honors its full request this year – Meigs says the organization has spent the money.

In fact, he says, the agency has committed almost all its current funding, which means it has paid other agencies for equipment and services – and those agencies have in turn spent about 70 percent of those funds in a short time.

That's not good enough for Rep. Adam Schiff (D) of California, an appropriator who remains concerned that the JIEDDO isn't having enough effect. Insurgents have made more progress than has the IED-fighting organization, he says. "You still have an increase in casualties at the end of the day," he says. "That's the most disturbing fact."

The JIEDDO has redirected much of its budget to focus on defeating terrorist networks that plant IEDs. In part that's because the agency has already bought much of the jamming, radio, and other equipment used to defeat IEDs. It's also a sign that attacking the source of the trouble may a more effective approach to the problem. It also helped to spearhead an effort to build trucks that can withstand such explosions. So-called Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicles have become the focal point of force-protection initiatives in the Pentagon now.

The efforts leave many officials to ponder the possibilities of altering the course of the war. "The country needs to focus on one thing and that is defeating IEDs," says a Defense official. "If we could figure that out, we could change the face of the war."

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