From: Monte Davis 

"Geo"  wrote:

>I don't see sand mentioned anywhere..

I believe our over-all losses in Viet Nam to mines, booby traps, and more
or less Improvised EDs were about 9%. The high figure for the 1st Marine
Division in his time (3/68 to 10/69) and area was because

- after Tet losses the surviving VC and NVA pulled in their horns for
quite a while,

- much of that area of operations *was* clear enough to discourage
them from sizeable concentrations, and

- nobody in his right mind would want to stand up and fight 1Mar (you
saw that coming, right? :-)

Seriously, what pisses me off about this "new kind of war" jive
is thinking about how many of the IEDs are Saddam's munitions, looted in
the days and weeks after his army melted away. We didn't secure them for
far too long, because

(1) static details like that would have required more troops for all the
Iraqi army depots -- you know, "old thinking" like that dinosaur
Shinseki, not Rummy's swift cool transformational shock 'n awe

(2) we'd be so welcome that who could possibly have a motive to fill a
pickup with 155mm rounds for tinkering on a rainy day..?

I know, I know... it's not like there aren't other sources of explosives in
the Middle East. But what made it so freakin *easy* was the arrogance of
these clowns in charge.

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