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The Pentagon insists that the Marines are taking more casualties because their aggressive offensive is forcing the insurgents to fight back. "They're just attacking in response to what we're doing and getting lucky," says a Marine officer on the ground. The Pentagon still believes the insurgents' primary strategy is to direct more of their strikes against Iraqi security forces and civilians than against U.S. troops. But the insurgents, as they proved last week, have never given up their objective of killing Americans when and where they can.
In Baghdad, U.S. commanders emphasized selected statistics to put the best face on the war, telling reporters that the number of suicide car-bomb attacks during the last week of July was the lowest since April. That showed "the tempo is decreasing," said Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston, the command's spokesman. "This is not an expanding insurgency."
That depends on how you count. The Marines were killed not by suicide bombers but by the ubiquitous improvised explosive devices that remain the deadly bane of military patrols. The frequency and virulence of different kinds of attacks have ebbed and flowed, but since the beginning of the year, the average number of insurgent attacks has remained at a steady 60 to 65 a day. And what's happening in Iraq is no longer about just raw numbers. The sophistication, explosive power and lethality of the bombs that detonate have increased dramatically. Defense Department officials believe the explosive device that destroyed the 26-ton Marine amphibious assault vehicle consisted of three antitank mines stacked one on top of another and buried in the road. Also, U.S. intelligence officials say, insurgents have begun using shaped bombs, which concentrate the blast to pierce armor, and setting secondary devices to detonate when explosive-ordnance-disposal personnel arrive at the scene--tactics used to great effect by Hizballah in Lebanon against Israeli forces. Insurgent bombers constantly monitor and test the range of U.S. electronic jammers to try to detonate explosives outside the jammers' reach. The rebels are increasing payloads in car bombs to as much as 1,000 lbs. and armoring their vehicles so that soldiers at checkpoints can't stop them with small-arms fire. The enemy is, in the words of a recently returned Iraq veteran, disciplined, professional and constantly evolving.
A special Pentagon task force with 150 ordnance experts has been operating since October 2003 to try to outwit the bombers. They have sent $460 million worth of electronic jamming equipment to Iraq to disrupt the remote devices that insurgents use to detonate bombs. Predator drones, robot bomb detectors and dogs have been deployed to sniff out explosives. "Hunter-killer" teams from the task force roam Baghdad in armored vehicles equipped with optical and laser devices to fry any bombs that are found. "This is a pro team of terrorists we're facing in Iraq, and we're working every day to beat them," says Lieut. Colonel Ernest Benner, a former operations chief of the task force, whose budget this year totals $1.4 billion. "But there are no silver bullets."