The Daily Background

The Washington Post today reports about a shift in the sophistication of tactics and “lethality” of insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, in their efforts to kill US troops:

May, with 127 American fatalities, was the third-deadliest month for U.S. troops since the 2003 invasion. As in the conflict’s two deadliest months for U.S. troops — 137 died in November 2004 and 135 in April of that year — the overarching cause of May’s toll is the ongoing, large-scale U.S. military operations. Simmons called the high U.S. losses in May “a very painful and heart-wrenching experience.”

The intensity of combat and the greater lethality of attacks on U.S. troops is underscored by the lower ratio of wounded to killed for May, which fell to about 4.8 to 1 — compared with an average of 8 to 1 in the Iraq conflict, according Pentagon data. “The closer you get to a stand-up fight, the closer you’re going to get to that 3-to-1 ratio” that typified 2oth-century U.S. warfare, said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense information Web site.

The bigger the ratio disparty the better, because it means that more troops are getting wounded, instead of dying. 3:1 was pretty bad becaue it means that one out of every three soldiers who gets wounded ends up dying. The Post says that insurgents are using more advanced ambush techniques, and of course more sophisticated IEDs. May was the third deadliest month since the initial invasion in 2003.

Meanwhile, as if to reinforce this story, 14 US soldiers have died in Iraq this weekend. That makes a total of nearly 3,500 killed according to a tally kept by the website iCasualties.org, which tracks wounded and fatalities in the ongoing war.

Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe President Bush’s “surge” policy is failing to placate violence in Baghdad.

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