Saturday, August 27, 2005
IEDs down 20 percent?!?
General Rodriguez lays it out.
Wretchard crunches some numbers. His commenters are always worth a read, too.
Splash, out
Jason
Q General, Sandra Erwin with National Defense. Can you tell us what kind of IED -- what is the level of IED attacks that you see in your area? We heard from General LaFontaine last week that the attacks have doubled. Can you give us a sense of what kinds of threats do you see now in your area from the IEDs?
GEN. RODRIGUEZ: I think the question is about IEDs. And we have, of course, had a tremendous effort ongoing to combat the IEDs, which are the most prevalent weapon that has been used against us. Over the last three months, they have decreased in both number and effectiveness by about 20 percent. This has been a combination of several things. One, of course, is the tactics, techniques and procedures that we're using as we conduct our operations. The disruption in the senior leadership that we've been able to have on the leadership of the insurgency, they've been a little bit less complex because of the pressure that we've been able to keep on them. And also, we continue to get a large number of tips from the Iraqi people to help us discover them and get the word when they're putting them in, as well as the impact of several large caches that were seized throughout the last three months. So we continue to use all available technology, tactics, techniques and procedures to decrease the impact and effect of IEDs on our forces.
Q A follow-up on that. Some of the other officials we talk to say the IED sophistication has been increasing; but you're saying the opposite; you're saying that they're going down in numbers and sophistication?
GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yes. Right now in this area they are going down in number as well as in sophistication. For example, there have not been as many buried and camouflaged, covered or concealed as had been in the past. And I think I explained why we thought that was.
Wretchard crunches some numbers. His commenters are always worth a read, too.
Splash, out
Jason
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