Iraqi Bombers Thwart Efforts to Shield G.I.’s

Source: THOM SHANKER

American commanders are expressing frustration at the increasing death toll in Iraq caused by makeshift explosives, which have killed 80 percent of the Americans who died in combat over the last three months, despite the billions of dollars being spent to fight the threat.

The proportion of American deaths caused by explosives has sharply increased, even as the Pentagon has made a major effort to defend the troops with armored vehicles, to detect or disarm the weapons, and to attack the bomb-making cells and those who finance them.

The bombs are known as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, and the Pentagon has formed a “Joint I.E.D. Defeat Organization” to combat the users. But in an interview on Friday, the director of that group said he recognized that the threat could not truly be defeated.

“It can be mitigated, minimized, made into a nuisance,” said the director, Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, a retired Army officer who took over the project in December 2005. “This is a very tough problem.”



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/washington/02military.html?hp

that they've been doing a good job of it to begin with...

are in a 'nuisance' ?

Show due respect for the sovereignty of other nations