The Opinionated Bastard

Overall, August was a bad month for our hopes in Iraq if we look at the raw fatalities. 81 fatalities in August makes that the 4th mostly deadly month in Iraq.

From soldiers' blogs though, and Micheal Yon's great reporting, it seems that they think that things have significantly cooled down in Iraq.

This is of course the problem with raw numbers. I'm perfectly willing to believe that things have cooled down in Iraq. In fact, looking at the raw press releases from Centcom, there have been almost no casualties in Haditha since the beginning of the month, which was previously the main source of casualties. But why are the numbers higher?

Well, I suspect that our armed forces are now getting more aggressive. Page 5 of the Brookings report helps demonstrate this by breaking out the deaths by cause. The top 4 months for US casualties are: April 2004 (Abu Grabib), November 2004 (US elections), January 2005 (troop rotation and helicopter crash), and August 2005 (Iraq Constitution).

Ignoring the deaths in January 2005, since the bump there wasn't hostile (traffic accidents and helicopter crashes), that makes August the 3rd worst month. So if I scan down the causes for those three months, what I see is that the only column that shows any jump for those months is “Other Hostile Fire”. It other words, the cause of death was being shot.

Pretty much, that only happens when our soldiers are actively looking for terrorists. So in those three months, the soldiers were aggressively searching for terrorists, who shot back. (duh, war is dangerous)

Meanwhile, successful attacks by mortars, car bombs, and RPGs etc. have gone down overall.

So August was bad because the soldiers were more aggressive. That makes a certain amount of sense if you think about it in terms of human nature. It may be safer to stay on your base and be ambushed by mortars occasionally, but its much more satisfying to take the war to the enemy. Kicking ass is more satisfying then taking it up the ass. (Is that why we worry about gays in the military? They'll have the wrong priorities?)

Of course, the other thing that was up on August was IED deaths because of the first week in August when 20 soldiers died. Even with those though, the deaths from IEDs were only up slightly, so the rest of the month was quieter then typical which is interesting.

IEDs are really a form of ambush. I have a 40 second video of an IED attack to look at for some context from over at iFilm.

Deaths from IED attacks are relatively constant for the last few months, between 35-40. If you watch the video there are two things to notice. The first is that this attack is unsuccessful. Sure, the windshield gets cracked. Big deal! No one was injured, despite the fact that the IED detonated quite close to the car shooting the video (you can see the detonation). This is the outcome of 80% of the IED attacks.

Why? Pretty simple really. The top speed of a humvee is 45 mph which means it's traveling at 66 feet/second. Say an IED has to detonate within 10 feet to do any damage. If that seems too close to you, remember that damage falls off with volume, which means that the difference between 5 feet and 10 feet is one eighth the power. Since the humvee is already driving by, the humvee is going to be at least a few feet away even if the IED is in the other lane. Anyways, at 66 feet/second, the trigger man has a .15 second window.

Now of course, if the trigger man is too close, he'll get caught and shot. So he has to be able to close enough to see the target, but not too close. He could be farther away and use binoculars, but that's kind of obvious, and a good way to get shot.

With all that, I'm surprised the success rate is as high as 20%, really. Of course, the success rate would be much higher on slower moving vehicles, (ironically, armored humvees move slower and are less maneuverable) and there are things that could be done to make the trigger timing simpler. I'm not going to discuss them, because I have no desire to help the terrorists. Presumably they use some of them, I'm just pointing out that its kind of hard to hit a fast moving car with a 10 foot window.

With a 20% success rate, that means that there must be something like 200 IED attacks/month. Unfortunately, the total number of IED attacks doesn't seem to be reported anywhere so we can't see if it is doing up or down. I bet the Pentagon knows it though!

Anyways, that's fatalities. Woundings for August are higher then the previous two months, but August was only the 8th worst month in Iraq. So even though the troops were very aggressive in August, woundings were lower. In fact, they were much lower then they should have been given previous experience.

Again, this may dovetail with reports from the troops that Iraq has gotten calmer. So the soldiers are hitting the remaining terrorists more aggressively, but the terrorists are more fragile.

Iraqi Police casualties declined for August after having peaked in July, coming in under June as well. So that's another good sign.

Similarly, Iraqi civilians killed was much lower in August. Deaths and woundings from car bombs in Iraq has also been plummeting. I suspect that the backlash from killing those children with a car bomb is being felt. Though the number of car bombs has fallen a bit, I suspect the more competent terrorists have decided that killing civilians is counter productive.

Or perhaps the soldiers have just been keeping them busy.

Attacks on oil or gas infrastructure has settled down to about 2 a week, which is really the nuisance level. Some of those tend to be local “bandits” so who knows what is going on there.

The number of Iraqi Security forces on duty seems to be accelerating. A 9,000 man increase in August vs. July's 5,000 man increase. That's somewhat to be expected, you train the trainers, they train others.

Electricity was a little lower in August, though the average number of hours available was still good. This is a big issue for most Iraqis, 32.3% of Iraqis put Electricity in their top 3 concerns. That's partially because there was some sort of drop out of some plan for a week mid August. Demand falls as it gets cooler though, which helps, but as the economy in Iraq improves demand increases. So while we are currently producing enough electricity to match the demand in December of 2004, December of 2005 will have more demand then we can produce. Hydroelectric power varies with the season as well, but I have no idea if winter or summer is wetter in Iraq.

Interestingly enough, 85% of the Iraqi's polled intent to vote on the constitutional referendum. After that, 8% don't know, only 6% don't plan on it. So on that scope, democracy is a big success in Iraq because probably 90% may end up participating. In fact, 70% feel that the Iraqi National Government is most responsible for meeting the needs of the Iraqi people, only 3% think its the US reponsibility.

There is a program called Our Constitution of 32 episodes that covers all the ins and outs of the constitution, and the Iraqis have actually been watching it. Since thats the US equivalent of watching CSPAN, I find that kind of amazing.

The Iraqi government offered the US $1M in aid for Hurricane Katrina victims. Of course, Iraq needs the money more then we do, but the symbolism was nice.

So there you go. Iraq may be getting better, despite the fact that there were more casualties in August.

Remember this though, as with every other war in human history, it will take 150 years for us to get enough perspective to understand it. So we'll be able to really understand the Iraq War in 2150...we means we can just now start understanding the US Civil War. I recommend Mc Pherson's “Battle Cry of Freedom”:

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States). It's the only book that ever adequately explained to me that the South wasn't fighting to preserve slavery, but rather a whole way of life. Ironically, a way of life that hippies would argue is better. Agrarian, etc. So both the South and the North felt they were fighting for freedom. The North, freedom for everyone, including slaves, the South, freedom from the Federal Government...

I can sympathize with them every tax day. Fucking Feds!