Soldier's Weblog

[JayB]

Pretty interesting read - I'm impressed. Check it out:

 

Iraq Now

 

Sample#1

 

[There’s a very useful site on coalition forces casualty figures here

 

Unfortunately, I don't see very many journalists using it very well.

 

The media focuses overwhelmingly on the number of lives lost. It’s easy to see why—it tugs more heartstrings in Peoria. But if you’re going to accept coalition casualties as a metric for measuring the progress of the struggle for Iraq, then I believe it’s much more instructive to focus on the numbers of wounded.

 

Why? Because the sheer numbers of wounded dwarf the number of dead, any statistical analysis of wounded is going to provide a much smoother graph with a smaller margin for error. Further, when you focus exclusively on the number of soldiers killed, then your analysis excludes the vast majority of attacks on coalition forces.

 

Let’s look at the numbers.

 

The United States took 270 wounded in September, 433 wounded in October, 344 in November, and 119 through 11 days of December. I’ll count three more wounded I have personal knowledge of from the 12th of December (plus one KIA, and another dead in a separate possible suicide, from the site’s press releases), for a total of 122 wounded through 13 days of December.

 

You can see the table on the Website. I would adjust the December daily average figures to 8.7, based on the information available to me here.

 

To reduce increase the number of data points and reduce the standard deviation of daily figures, I would add the number of those killed and wounded from enemy action together, while excluding non-battle casualties, which don’t tell me much about the enemy.

 

That yields:

 

September Total casualties: 277 9.23/day

October: 466 15.03/day

November: 441 14.70/day

December: 128* 9.8/ day

 

So what can we learn from the numbers? The first thing you see is that from the point of view of total U.S. casualties, November was not the worst month since the President declared an end to major combat operations; that honor actually belongs to October.

 

Moreover, the November figures for those killed in action were skewed upwards by two statistical outliers: two downed helicopters—one in Fallujah killed 17, I believe, and another near Mosul killed, for a total of 23. Eliminate the outliers, and the average number of wounded/day drops below 14. The difference between 15.03 and 13.93 is not particularly significant, except that the trend continues into December, which thus far has only produced 9.8 casualties per day—the best day since September.

 

Again, though, December’s figures are skewed by two significant outlying data points: last week’s car bombing in Mosul (wounding 26), and Friday’s car bombing at the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters in Ar Ramadi, which wounded 14 and killed one. Subtract those two events, and the remaining guerrilla activity throughout the country caused 6.69 U.S. casualties per day so far in December—well under the September’s pace.

 

This is not to suggest that the casualties in these events ought to be dismissed as insignificant. They themselves reflect disturbing trends about the enemy’s ability to 1.) obtain and use surface-to-air missiles against U.S. aircraft, and 2.) Recruit people actually willing to blow themselves up.

 

Equally significantly, though, the figures suggest that a smaller and smaller number of insurgent cells may become responsible for a greater number of casualty-producing operations.

 

I’m also struck by the casualty figures’ seeming lack of correlation with Ramadan. If Ramadan were going to bring a grass-roots rash of religiously motivated attacks, then you would expect that November’s total casualties would be significantly greater than October’s. I’m not entirely surprised by it, though. Littlegreenfootballs.com links to a good statistical analysis of intifada casualties, and I could find no evidence of a Ramadan boost in terrorist activity there, either. Ramadan isn’t about killing, anyway.

 

Lastly, the overall drop off in casualties may well be weather-related. Night time temperatures are dropping into the 30s, which probably makes it tough for Joe Sheik’s-pack to motivate himself to get off the couch at night and pick up his remote control and go out and kill some infidels. Why not wait until spring, when it’s warmer?

 

Someone with more time than I have might be willing to go back through casualty figures and weather data and do a regression analysis of temperatures vs. guerrilla activity in Afghanistan and other areas. Anyone with an econometrics background ought to be able to do this.

 

I’m surprised I haven’t seen any respectable statistical analysis of casualty figures yet from the NY Times. Maybe they should get someone on their financial desk on the story.

 

I have no solid answers for why total U.S. casualties seem to have markedly increased in October. My own unstudied sense is that the number of total incidents seems to have remained constant, or even declined since July. One possibility: somewhere along the line, the insurgent changed his tactics. Direct fire engagements on U.S. troops are less common now. His emphasis has shifted to improvised explosive devices, and more recently, to more spectacular car bombings.

 

I haven’t seen anything like this 10th grade level of statistical analysis from the New York Times or other major media outlets yet, though. Maybe they should get their political and financial desks in on the story. Time, Inc., on the other hand, should probably contract it out to Morningstar.com.

 

*Note: The KIA count is updated through the 13th, so I’m assuming the Ar Ramadi fatality is included in this figure. Monthly wounded figures prior to September are apparently not available, and any aggregate would be highly skewed from the March and April casualty figures. I’m therefore excluding them for the purposes of this post.

 

Splash, out

 

Jason"

/i]

 

Sample#2

 

The Baghdad press corps seems to have missed a larger story. This article, from United Press International

describes an antiterrorism demonstration in Baghdad attended by an estimated 4,000 people. An Iraqi blogger-on-the-scene has this report:

 

 

The rallies today proved to be a major success. I didn't expect anything even close to this. It was probably the largest demonstration in Baghdad for months. It wasn't just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba'ath and Saddam.

 

What you don’t see in the UPI story is that the demonstrations were not limited to Baghdad: there was actually a series of coordinated rallies across in cities across the country, including one scheduled from 0930 to 1200 hours at the government center here in Ar Ramadi.

 

Here’s what things looked like from my little corner of the Army:

 

I have recently been temporarily assigned to the post of battalion “battle captain.” For nonmilitary readers, that means from 0100 to 1300 hours every day I am the battalion commander’s representative in the TOC, and basically run all routine operations in the absence of the battalion commander or executive officer. If this were Star Trek, I’d “have the conn.”

 

At about 1100 hours on the 10th of December, we received word from a civil affairs detachment at the government center that the demonstrations had wound down, which allowed us to stand down a mounted quick reaction force we had standing by “just in case.”

 

After terrorists had murdered 15 people in the bombing of a police academy graduation ceremony just 20 yards away last July, we were very concerned that the rally would become a target for terrorist attack. We were also concerned that the march itself could turn ugly, and had decided to hedge our bets by maintaining a reserve to react to anything that could happen. But hearing that the rally was winding down without serious incident was certainly good news.

 

A few minutes later, though, my RTO took a call from the civil affairs team stating that a counterdemonstration had formed, and a slogan-chanting mob of about 200 people had come from the east, and was throwing rocks at Americans and Iraqi police inside the compound. “By our lives, by our souls, we will preserve Islam!” The team was not part of our unit. I actually didn’t even know they were there until they called in. They were in our area of operations, though, and the RTO told me they wanted permission to fire a warning shot.

 

I hate to be the guy sitting in a safe place on a radio and a room full of maps denying a request to someone in a tight spot in the field.

 

But on the other hand, I had to weigh the immediate needs of the guy on the ground against the broader mission: the stability of Ar Ramadi in the long term.

 

The problem with using warning shots in this kind of situation -- when you’re not confronted with an immediately lethal threat -- is that once you fire, you’ve played out your hand. If the rock throwing continues, you either have to kill people or appear impotent. It’s a lose-lose proposition.

 

Furthermore, put yourself in the position of some average Joe Iraqi in the crowd. You can hear the shots ring out, and you can hear the difference between an M16 and an AK-47. So you know it was the Americans who fired first, but you have no idea that the first shots didn’t hit anybody. If there’s a gun available, and you’re a male, and there are women around, you’re going to grab one. (Arab machismo makes people do nutty things.)

 

Now, we know that there’s an AK-47 inside almost every shop, and almost every apartment immediately above and behind the shops. Iraqi families keep them around for home protection. There are more AK’s in Ar Ramadi than there are Elvis plates in Vegas. There is also a known extralegal weapons market just a couple of hundred meters away. If a warning shot is misinterpreted, the crowd could quickly arm itself with implements far deadlier than swords, and it could do it in minutes.

 

I didn’t consciously thought about it at the time, but one of my NCOs on duty reminded me that we’d seen this happen before, in July, at the very same location. We had most of a company stationed at the government center at that time. A bunch of kids started throwing rocks at the compound. A crowd gathered. The compound started taking small arms and RPG fire from across the street. To the west, a man was skipping around behind a bunch of kids handing hand grenades to children and encouraging them to throw them at our troops behind the compound.

 

Our soldiers couldn’t get a shot at him without endangering the children. So they returned aimed fire at the RPG shooters and small-arms fire to the north, but they held their fire to the west, and just took the grenades.

 

When it was over, at least three Iraqis were dead.

 

If we fired warning shots, and they were misinterpreted or ignored, then chances were good that things could escalate to a pitched battle within minutes.

 

“Have them hold their fire and hunker down,” I ordered the RTO. “Meanwhile, let’s stand that QRF (quick reaction force) back up before they break down completely.”

 

But the guys had anticipated that order and were already transmitting it before I even thought of it. Sharp team.

 

I explained my reasoning to the RTOs real quick, though, so they’d have some guidance from me. “I’m not going to meet non-deadly force with deadly force,” I said. “We can always go deadly later.”

 

At that time, though, I still had no idea how many U.S. soldiers were at the government center. The civil affairs unit had not coordinated with us that morning to tell us they were showing up. So I decided to tell the QRF to roll towards the government center and deploy in a show of force.

 

Once the order to hold fire and the order to roll the QRF was clear, I picked up the radio myself and called the CA team.

 

Generally, I don’t pick up the radio, personally. We’ve got tremendous, sharp RTOs, with tons of common sense, who’ve been directing battalion operations for months. My role is to track happenings on a map, monitor the overall situation, and make sound and timely decisions. Which means my job isn’t to yap on the radio. (That’s a common mistake young lieutenants make).My job is to think!

 

But this time I picked up the radio, because a guy on the ground in a tight spot is going to want to talk to the decision maker, and I wanted to hear the voice of the guy on the ground and get a couple of points of information in person.

 

“Hey, how many soldiers do you have?”

 

He told me…which I won’t be specific about, but it was enough to defend themselves for the time being, if need be.

 

“Ok. Do you have enough transportation assets to mount everyone up and leave if you have to?”

 

“Oh, roger, that’s not an issue!”

 

“Ok. Are you getting any assistance from the Iraqi Police?”

 

“Roger. They’re doing a good job. They’ve showed up in enough force to move the crowd away. Things are going ok for now.

 

“Ok, roger. Now, I don’t know what your mission is. But will it fuck your mission up to withdraw and come back tomorrow? Are you done for the day?”

 

“Roger, that’s not a problem. We’re done for the day!”

 

“Roger, wait one. Out.”

 

So my NCOIC I went over to the map and worked out a plan—talking it over out loud, because I’ve been on the job long enough to know two RTOs have good, sound tactical ideas of their own, and they’re not afraid to voice them. (if anything, they voice them TOO much, but I can always tone that down or cut through that if I really need to. I’d rather have to reign someone in than drag them along, any day).

 

We agreed to roll the QRF and have them set up a blocking position between the government center and the mob, and cover the withdrawal of the civil affairs team. If air was available, we’d ask it to monitor the crowd, but we wanted to get our people out of there, for the same reason that you want to remove the oxygen supply from a fire. If it were a pro-Islam demonstration, the hope was that it would fizzle out in the absence of Americans.

 

Once everyone knew what the plan was, all we had to do was set the RTOs loose to communicate the plan, and monitor events.

 

Because I don’t normally pick up the radio, but work through my TOC NCO and let the RTOs do their job, when the battalion commander walked in, I was able to take a minute to brief him up on the situation without the flow of information skipping a beat.

 

The QRF arrived within minutes. The civil affairs team trucked up and left, with the infantry withdrawing immediately after. Everyone called in with updates. The civil affairs team was also had enough on the ball to take some digital photographs of the rock throwers and leaders of the violent counterdemonstration, and emailed them to us within a day.

 

A couple of Iraqi policemen received minor injuries from the rocks, but no one was killed, no shots were fired, no property was destroyed, as far as I know, and everyone on both sides made it home alive.

 

It wasn’t a difficult day, nor a particularly difficult decision. It’s just one of a very few points during this deployment where I managed to earn my meager officer's pay.