The New Road

Recent IED attacks

There was a recent improvised explosive device (IED) attack that killed six soldiers when the explosive, hidden under the concrete of the road, went off. It was large enough to get through the concrete and flip the Stryker vehicle. I hesitate to call anything that massive or well planned improvised.

I prefer to look at this type of news practically. What did it take to attack us this way? How can we defend against it? The news, viewed through this prism, is disturbing indeed.

• Putting a device under the concrete took industrial style effort. That would take big equipment, supplies and effort. That means large numbers of people working as a team.
• The device itself must have been massive, upping the level of sophistication significantly.
• There had to be community support because tearing up a road, planting a bomb, covering up the road and masking the evidence would be a major project that would take at last two or three days to implement.
• In that entire community, nobody decided to contact our troops. Nor did we have anyone inside the insurgency who could provide intelligence about the impending attack.

And that's really just the beginning. This is a bad, bad sign. 80% of Iraqis want us out. 70% of Iraqis believe it's ok to attack Americans. Those are relatively old numbers. And the political situation there has only been getting worse.

This is Vietnam all over again. We are stuck in the middle of a war between people that we don't understand. We don't know why we are there. There is no local support for our presence there. In fact, there is a locally based effort to attack us with the support of the community.