IED Attacks

Nat-Wu wrote not long ago about the deadly toll IED attacks have taken on our soldiers in Iraq. The numbers he linked to for May are simply stunning, and so far June has proven to be no better. Here's a breakdown of June KIAs (to June 21st) from the website icasualties.org.

• To date this month there have been 68 Americans killed in Iraq.
• Of those, 47 were killed as the direct result of an IED attack alone. That's 70%.
• A total of 51 were killed as a result of a combination of an IED/small arms/RPG attack. That's 75%.

So in other words, 3/4 of our troops were killed in attack that involved an IED. An unkown (but certainly high) number of those attacks involved an isolated bombing by an IED that had been planted hours or days before, attacks which resulted in no casualties to the insurgents.

Without question our forces inflict severe casualties on any forces that dare to attack them. Certainly they have killed many who were in the process of planting IEDs. But the insurgents have exacted their own toll in return, often with no direct cost to themselves. This is what our soldiers are up against.