Benchmarks: Escalating war

WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- More than four months into the "surge" strategy the statistics of U.S., insurgent and civilian casualties reveal an escalating war that may be entering a decisive "tipping point" phase.

The Pentagon claims that since January, U.S. forces have killed or captured more than 20,000 insurgents. Although this figure is impressive, it suggests that the total number of active insurgents has risen dramatically from the top level of only 20,000 in U.S. military estimates during much of 2005 and 2006.

From June 2005 through September 2006, the total number of insurgents was repeatedly put at 20,000 by U.S. officials, according to figures compiled by the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. However, the IIP put the most recent estimate available to it for March 2007 at 70,000 Sunni insurgents in Iraq, including non-operational supporters. It cited as its source "an analyst employed by the U.S. military."

So far neither the old cautious strategy of the former U.S. ground forces in Iraq commander, Gen. George Casey, nor the current surge strategy of his successor, Gen. David Petraeus, has succeeded in significantly reducing the insurgents' capabilities to inflict losses on U.S. casualties.

U.S. casualties, especially fatalities, soared in April and May this year. After a long period when we monitored in these columns the bulk of insurgent activity being directed against the new Iraqi army and security forces, the insurgents are now putting their primary focus on U.S. forces, especially in Baghdad.

This marks a dramatic change from the first two months of the "surge" especially in Baghdad, when the insurgents were lying low and avoiding direct clashes against U.S. forces.

The percentage of U.S. fatalities caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, placed as roadside bombs fell from 62.6 percent in December to 40.5 percent in January and 31.6 percent in February. But then it jumped back to 62.2 percent in March, 57.7 percent in April and 64.6 percent in May, according to IIP figures.

In all, 1,357 deaths, or 38.8 percent of all U.S. military deaths in Iraq from the beginning of U.S. military operations to topple Saddam Hussein on March 19, 2003, to June 3 this year, have been caused by IEDs, the IIP said. More U.S. troops were killed by IEDs in May than in any previous single month in the entire Iraq conflict, the IIP said. The figure was 82. The previous worst month for fatalities from IED attacks was December 2006 when 72 were killed. The third worst was April this year, in which 60 were killed, according to the IIP figures.

If the IED fatality figures for U.S. troops in June prove to be comparable to those for April and May, it will suggest that the insurgents have been able to boost their capability to inflict increased casualties on U.S. forces.

These figures confirm that in terms of tactics and technological responses, the U.S. armed forces and Department of Defense have still failed to master the IED threat, almost three years after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz set up the Joint Improvised Explosive Devices Defeat Organization.

JIEDDO has grown into a fiscal and bureaucratic juggernaut whose budget has soared from $3.8 billion to $4.4 billion. No one in Congress wanted to stint on funding the development of technologies that could save the lives of U.S. soldiers from IEDs. But JIEDDO's technological advances have come slowly and at enormous financial cost, and the insurgents in Iraq have so far been able to adapt relatively quickly to these changes.

The insurgents' continuing and apparently growing IED capability does not automatically mean they are winning, or will win, the war. U.S. forces have been chalking up impressive successes, too. The Washington Post reported Sunday that 1,700 key or significant insurgent fighters had been killed or captured so far this year. That figure suggests a significant attrition of experienced insurgent leadership cadres.

Also, the IIP reported May 30 that extrajudicial killings -- mainly the murders of random Sunni civilians by Shiite militia forces -- in Baghdad remain only half of what they were before the surge strategy was initiated, and car bombing attacks -- usually by Sunni insurgents against Shiite civilians -- were one-third lower in May than what the IIP described as their "2007 norm to date."

Overall, these figures suggest real progress achieved by U.S. forces, but at the cost of increased casualties, and in the face of a Sunni insurgent force that manifestly has not yet lost its lethality.