Strategy That's Making Iraq Safer Was Snubbed For Years

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

From USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/militar...terstitialskip

The link on Early Bird: http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071219568498.html

Also see: TROOPS: Patrols help revive neighborhoods

[Stan]

Pathetic - A little hindsight seems to be the way congress typically accounts for politically driven errors when cash and clout run short pending an election year

It now appears that they are content with the brief reprieve in IED casualties and decided to short sheet the responsible agency just as things are showing signs of progress. We got a slight leg up on the insurgents, and time to 'can' the funding for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.

Shame on those folks ! We have now reduced our success rate to low body counts.

...but that reprogramming won’t do much” other than alleviating the problem for about two weeks

The Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) could soon be forced to turn away proposals to defeat makeshift bombs, said the outgoing chief of the lead agency combating the roadside bomb threat U.S. troops face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Commanders pushed to make bomb disposal choices

A classified order, issued May 30 and reviewed by USA TODAY, gives commanders the authority to forgo calling in explosives technicians like Wilson to glean intelligence from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Instead, commanders may use engineers traveling with their regular units to simply detonate the bombs — without gathering evidence from them. Engineers receive about 10% of the explosives training of technicians, and they're not allowed to dismantle bombs.