Petraeus spin on roadside bombs belied

[unhappycamper]

Petraeus spin on roadside bombs belied
By Gareth Porter
Sep 11, 2010

WASHINGTON - General David Petraeus claimed limited success this week in the war within a war over the Taliban's planting of roadside bombs, but official Pentagon data show the Taliban clearly winning that war by planting more bombs and killing many more United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Tuesday, the United States commander in Afghanistan asserted that the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by the Taliban had "flattened" over the past year and attributed that alleged success to pressures by the US military, and especially the increased tempo of Special Operations Forces raids against Taliban units.

Data provided by the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), however, show that IEDs planted by Afghan insurgents killed nearly 40% more US and NATO troops in the first eight months of 2010 than in the comparable period of 2009.

!snip~

The 12-month moving average of IED incidents, provided in a report in July by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the basis of JIEDDO data, shows a continuing and sharp increase from 250 in June 2009 to more than 900 in May 2010, for an average increase per month of 54 incidents.

The total number of IED incidents in Afghanistan began to rise steeply in March 2010 to a new high of 1,087 and then continued to climb to 1,128 in May and again to 1,258 in August.



unhappycamper comment: And don't forget the 9.9.2010 thread I posted "Pentagon may trim IED detector budget".

It sure looks like the wheels are starting to fall off this wagon.