Liberal Repercussion

NEW YORK, April 25 /PRNewswire/ -- An unofficial study analyzing the casualty figures in Iraq suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds simply did not need to occur, Newsweek reports in the current issue. According to the study by a defense consultant, that is now circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Almost all of those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs.

The military is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated requirement for Iraq. Despite desperate attempts to supply bolt-on armor, many soldiers still ride around in light-skinned Humvees. This is a latter-day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division, concedes in an interview, "was never designed to do this...It was never anticipated that we would have things like roadside bombs in the vast number that we've had here."

According to internal Pentagon e-mails obtained by Newsweek, the Humvee situation is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker combat vehicles be put into the field. Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet concurred with that. The problem: the rubber-tire Strykers are thin-skinned and don't maneuver through dangerous streets as well as the fast-pivoting, treaded Bradley, report Beijing Bureau Chief Melinda Liu, on assignment in Baghdad, National Security Correspondent John Barry and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh in the May 3 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 26). According to a well-placed Defense Department source, the Army is so worried about the Stryker's vulnerability that most of the 300-vehicle brigade currently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish region around Mosul. "Any further south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them up," he says.

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posted by Rei Toei @ 1:26 p.m.