Alan, That is a good solid honest question, one that we should each be asking our respective representatives to answer!

I hear you, Alan. I don't have any answers. I hope our military is working on some, though.

But then what's the alternative? The soldiers can't exactly just quit driving around.

Well, they can. I'm not arguing they necessarily should, and it might cause other problems for them to stop driving around, but they can do it.

Certainly I question the continued extensive use of humvees in light of this problem.

I don't want to pretend to be an expert, but it seems in military tactics there is always a weak spot and a countermeasure. They have found our weak spot. The roadside bombs are murderous and destructive, and on top of that, they are like Chinese water torture to the American psyche.

Again, I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that in the mind of the American public, we might be in a better position if we were making less progress on the ground over there, but not subjecting our troops to this patent danger and the weekly reports that seem to read from the same script-- three 20something guys die in their humvee from a roadside bomb.

I'm not sure what's being done. A quick search on the subject didn't turn up much current stuff. The articles I cite go back to 2005 and discuss some possibilities, but I don't know if they were really tried or adopted.

At this point, I'm unclear as to whether serious steps are being taken to shore up this weak spot (through technology, changed tactics, extensive or exclusive use of armed vehicles in dangerous areas) or if the higher ups have concluded that it is cheaper and more feasible to just keep doing it the same old way.

Here are two articles that discuss some of the current strategies.

But even these articles suggest that we're not exactly winning in this cross-section of the war.

there are different types of IEDs and how they are set off, they don't get set off the same way they use to b/c the military figured out the frequency and jammed them, then they went to cell phones I think....we adjust then they adjust, its a cycle.

modern technology and availability has made this sort of stuff more of a problem.

Since we won the war back in 2003, there is no "enemy" to defeat. We deposed Sadam, got rid of his army and have now watched incompetent post-war planning precipitate Iraq's descent into chaos. We are now referring a civil war, except in this case, the referees are fair game. They have a Virginia Tech over there every day; it's just mind-numbing to watch.

A majority of the country wants our men and women home. "A large majority of the public — 76 percent, including a majority of Republicans — say that the additional American troops sent to Iraq this year by Mr. Bush have either had no impact or are making things worse there. Twenty percent think the troop increase is improving the situation in Iraq.

A majority of Americans continue to support a timetable for withdrawal. Sixty-three percent say the United States should set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq sometime in 2008."

Still the spineless Democrats will not do what they promised to do when they got elected. That means we continue to pursue some amorphous, undefined "victory" when we need to get the hell out of Iraq.

It's painful for me to read these news stories too. It's pretty clear what Jesus thought about killing people, even when they're occupying your country with an army.

I guess I'm not sure what you're suggesting they should do, rather than "leave themselves vulnerable" to roadside bombs and drive around in humvees. You've said you aren't suggesting that they "necessarily should" stop driving around (say, by remaining confined to their bases, or returning to the US). So what are you saying? How can they keep driving around without leaving themselves vulnerable?

I'm not saying I have all the answers. But this what I see:

IED's destroying Humvees is the only-- the only, the ONLY-- area in which they have a tactical advantage.

99% of our power-- air, naval, , etc. is useless, because this is no longer a real war. It is our guys being the police against militias and gangs in a country that, if not their home, is far more hospitable to them than us.

2) This is the area where they are literally killing us (from the link in my comment above):

Statistics compiled by Defense News show that 224 U.S. soldiers died in IED attacks in Iraq from August 2003 to August 2004, while more than 425 have been killed in the past 12 months. Comparable figures for other service branches were not available.

Devries said her IED casualty figures, which include wounded as well as killed, show little total increase between 2003 and 2006.

She did say that about one in nine troops injured by an IED dies. That would suggest, for one thing, that more than 3,800 soldiers were hurt by roadside bombs in the past year.

3) If you are using a tactic, method, piece of technology, etc., and the enemy learns how to exploit it, you stop doing it until you figure out how to stop them from exploiting it. Is this is not Military Strategy 101?

Now to where the misdirection occurs. The military can say (and they do say) that they're winning this battle, that they're getting more effective against the IED's etc., but this misses the whole point of the IED strategy. It is not about the war-- it is about television.

Because this isn't a war. It's theater.

A weekly dose of guys dying (usually at least 3 from the same Humvee) distributed randomly around the country, each with their own newspaper article, television report, etc. This is where we are losing the war. It's the Chinese water torture of these casualty reports-- they seem to come spaced far enough apart to almost jolt you every time they come in, but close enough to where you haven't quite forgotten the last one. At least down here, where it's big military country.

If you stopped this, you would stop the hemorrhage regarding the American opinion of the war.

Although I'm no fan of the war (didn't change my mind when it went south, or we found no WMD's, or whatever-- just never did think it was the right way to go), I wouldn't mind at all being over there working on ways to deal with this problem. But I'm not. So it's kind of silly for me to comment on what they should do, since my knowledge of it is basically gleaned from a few new articles. There apparently is a news special out on the Discovery Channel about this issue, but I haven't caught it.

That said, you asked. So here's my silly answer.

1) Cut it out with the Humvees until you have them armored out the wazoo or unless it's a known safe area (if there is such a category).
2) Patrol only with what armored vehicles you have-- tanks, etc. There are options, but they are limited.
3) Send in unmanned humvees to take the blows.
4) Just don't patrol where people tolerate terrorists. The terrorists will still blow stuff up and kill people. But it won't be us.

The technology they're employing is good stuff. But isn't it an American conceit to think that any problem can be solved technologically? They don't have to win the technology race, because it's not a race. It's more like keep-away.

I think your answer equates essentially to "retreat from Iraq", in particular #4. We aren't talking about just terrorists here --- in addition to terrorists, there are ordinary Iraqis who are attacking a foreign army occupying their homeland, an occupation that has already killed about one out of every 40 Iraqis, directly or indirectly. I'm not saying no terrorists are involved. I'm saying that attacking an occupying army doesn't make you a terrorist.

So in what parts of Iraq will people not "tolerate" attacks on the US Army? I think Kurdistan is just about it. The Project on International Public Opinion did a poll back in September, writing a report entitled "The Iraqi Public on the US Presence and the Future of Iraq",that found that 61% of Iraqis supported these attacks, including 92% of non-Kurd Sunnis. (But only 15% of Kurds.) A much smaller fraction of Iraqis support al Qaeda (6%) or attacks on civilians (<1%), which I think is what you mean by "terrorists will...kill people."

So withdrawing from areas where people don't "tolerate" attacks on US troops --- that means Baghdad and actually most of Iraq. The poll I linked to says that Iraqis generally think this would be a great idea, would improve security for ordinary Iraqis, and would reduce armed conflict. Even among the Kurds, 69% want a commitment from the US to withdraw within two years.

With regard to tanks, etc., a substantial number of the attacks are on supply trucks and transport vehicles, not patrol vehicles. Tanks are not helpful for these tasks. (I don't have a citation handy for that, but I can probably find them if you want.) Unmanned vehicles are not really an option, both because the technology isn't really there right now, and because most of the attacks are set off by guys watching the scene, who can save their attacks for the manned vehicles if that's what they want to do. They generally don't use land mines because (a) they require a lot more manufacturing sophistication and (b) they don't want to blow up civilians.

It might be a good idea not to assume that the commanders in the field slept through Military Strategy 101, at least without substantial further investigation. If you phrase your criticism in a way that doesn't sound like you think the guy you're criticizing is an idiot, you can spare yourself some embarrassment if he turns out to be right.

They are trying to cut it out with the humvees and use armored Bradley fighting vehicles instead, but that's running into some difficulties as well.

Now, I was never a supporter of the war either, but I can understand why the commanders in the field don't want to withdraw from Baghdad at a time when retreat from Iraq lacks political support back in the US.