There’s an article in this morning’s New York Times about the limitations of our new MRAP (mine-resistant armored personnel carrier). It seems a recent roadside bomb managed to kill the gunner, although the other passengers survived with only broken feet and lacerations. The article is interesting, but not earth shattering. No one ever said that the MRAP could sustain any explosion, and it did largely do its job in an blast “large enough “to take out” a heavily armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle.”
What I found alarming is buried deep in the article. The MRAP was on a mission:
Saturday’s deadly attack came on the first day of an operation to clear insurgents from southern Arab Jabour, a rural, overwhelmingly Sunni area less than 10 miles southeast of Baghdad on the Tigris River. The primary target is Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence says is foreign led.
The bomb went off at 4:45 p.m., as engineers were driving beside an irrigation ditch to support soldiers of the First Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, who had been clearing farmhouses and villages since a dawn air assault.
That might seem like an ordinary mission, but let’s look at that air assault.
The threat from buried bombs was well known before of the operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.’s.
My first reaction is to ask how much 100,000 pounds of bombs cost to manufacture and ship to Iraq. Are we using 100,000 pounds of bombs to rototill villages before our troops enter them, all in an (apparently failed) attempt to defuse Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s)?
[Ed. note: Arab Jabour is, by one report, “15km long, 5km wide”].
That strikes me as insane. If that is the cost of a U.S. convoy entering a hostile village (this one, a mere 10 miles from Baghdad) then we cannot afford to do convoys. This is a scam. Who’s making these bombs? What are their profit margins?
And what is the collateral damage from operations like this?
Very sick. As I understand it, air strikes & bombing runs are higher than in the past four years.
Like yourself, I`d like to know if they buy these bombs by the gross, by the ton, or by the hearts & minds, fingernails & sphincters, of collateral murder victims.
knock knock
“Who`s there?”
“100,000 lbs. of bombs”
“100,000 lbs. of bombs who?”
Centuries old irrigation canals, mud huts, farm animals, subsistence farmers, their wives, their children, their groves, their food & water.”
Wanna bet someone`s gonna go to hell over this too.
(disregard sig-line temporarily, please)
An outsourced war where taxpayers’ dollars have been hand fed to the baby beast in the dark room until he is matures into a bully, ready to turn on his master.
Sorry, but I think it was Tom Friedman who wrote that countries around the world have devined that it is more reasonable to make their deals with the CEO’s of large corp than the US govt where elections every 4 years discredit any long term leadership.
This war has been designed to fill the coffers of private military industries, and where my industry is happy to have a net net profit at year end of 3%, the military that my company’s taxes are paying for most certainly would call that chicken feed. So how many of my companies paying their taxes does it take to feed the military complex?
Bush’s pact with the devil. But all’s ok, I’m sure he has looked into the devil’s eyes and seen he has a good and honest soul.
And what is the collateral damage from operations like this?
Incalculable. We can’t build enough hospitals and libraries to make up for even one of these.
.
ARAB JABOUR, Iraq (CBS News) Jan. 18, 2007 – “We’re up against a Sunni-based insurgency that is dissatisfied with the Iraqi government,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mark W. Odom, the commander of the 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry, which deployed to this area two and a half months ago as part of the 4th Brigade.
“Ninety to 100 percent of the area’s residents either actively or passively support the insurgency,” estimates Odom, who calls them well-armed and well-trained. On a scale of one to 10, he gives them the highest mark as worthy opponents.
“Clearly, many of them have been in the military, based on the engagements we have had. Their tactics, their employment of indirect fire systems, indicates something beyond just paramilitary training.”
And it’s not just the military training that makes them so deadly, it’s an engrained ideology. Odom says a 14-year-old boy was caught recently laying an improvised explosive device. One alleged sniper was just 16.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."A Sunni-based insurgency that is dissatisfied with the (Shi’a dominated) Iraqi government… in which they feel they have no voice. A government under the domination of and supported by a foreign occupation force. An insurgency supported by the vast majority of the population, so much so that young teen boys are willing to risk their lives planting IEDs.
An opposition force so determined, well-armed and well-trained that to engage them on the ground alone would probably lead to massive American casulties, which would be politically unacceptable…. therefore it is necessary to drop hundreds of pounds’ worth of bombs (from the safety of the air) in order to allow troops on the ground to enter the area safely…. and even so, the resistance is sufficient so that safety is not guaranteed….
There is NO MILITARY SOLUTION to this. None. The only people getting ANY good out of this are the war profiteers. The diplomatic solution gets harder to achieve with every bomb dropped, every village destroyed, every human being (regardless of nationality or religion) killed — it’s already past the point where WE can do anything to achieve it at all, we can only inspire more hatred with these tactics, more determined resistence… not less.
And what will happen in February when al-Sadr’s truce runs out, and the Mahdi Army and other Shi’a factions come back into the fight?
This is utter insanity.
yeah, that pretty much sums up my feelings when I read that paragraph in the article. It set off my WTF-meter.
[Note: links not in original. Information from GlobalSecurity, which reproduces the Air Power Summary]
Okay so a GBU-31 is 2000 pounds and costs $18,000 apiece. A GBU-38 is 500 pounds and costs $22,000 apiece. If they used 100,000 pounds of a combination of these, it would have cost anywhere from $900,000 to $4,400,000. That all depends on what combination they used of the two bombs. And note that the prices I’m talking about are just the guidance tail-kits added to the dumb bombs.
“And what is the collateral damage from operations like this?”
With 100,000 pounds of bombs on a village, it is safe to say that, in all likelihood, any collateral damage is a war crime.
Remember Nam? its the same thing Boo. Destroy the villages to save the villages. We bomb the hell out of an area or we simply ethnically cleans it or-both. Yup- winning the hearts and minds!
“…bomb the villages to save the villages…”
God that sent a very old very well remembered chill down my spine.
My first reaction is to ask how much 100,000 pounds of bombs cost to manufacture and ship to Iraq.
Screw how much it costs. Think of the fragile human beings underneath all those expensive bombs.
Laney
Can we bring the troops home soon? Target practice on civilians is against the Geneva Convention.