'There was a two-year learning curve . . . and a lot of people died in those two years'

If attacks showed complex ingenuity, devices tended to be simple, usually suggesting technical skills equivalent to those of a ham radio operator or a vocational school graduate, according to a DOD scientist. Simplicity made it easier to employ unlettered emplacers, who by late 2004 were generally recognized as being mercenaries rather than ideologues.

Perhaps reflecting the triumph of supply over demand, emplacer fees continued to decline, typically ranging from the equivalent of $300 to as little as $25. Killing a coalition soldier might earn a $700 bonus. In Afghanistan, a recent coalition price list showed that the families of suicide bombers usually were paid $500 to $2,000, with bounties as high as $10,000 for assassinating a NATO soldier.

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Joe Votel, the Joint IED Task Force director, had come to regret Abizaid's Manhattan Project allusion. The metaphor implied a facile, scientific solution to IEDs, a technological silver bullet. "That was easy," Votel quipped about the atomic bomb built in the New Mexico desert. "You were in a sanctuary, you developed a bomb, you dropped a couple of them and it was done."

Fighting IEDs had proved far more frustrating than Votel had anticipated when he took the job in October 2003. His staff consisted largely of contractors or military officers lent to the task force for a few months. Expertise was hard to come by; "leveraging academia," as he called it, required a greater knowledge of the scientific community than the task force possessed. Simply exploiting the British know-how accrued in decades of battling roadside bombs in Northern Ireland was annoyingly difficult because of Pentagon "SECRET/NOFORN" rules that barred even close foreign allies from access to secret information.

Battling an IED network was akin to dismembering a cocaine cartel before drugs flooded the market. It required exceptional intelligence, agility and great patience. But with hundreds of bombs detonating every month, the pressure was intense to send as many jammers and other "deliverables" as possible to the field. "You felt an obligation to the warfighter," a young officer said.

Congress encouraged the task force to become "extremely risk tolerant," as one scientist put it, and to finance duplicative efforts such as multiple jammers. According to a senior Senate staff aide, Votel was told repeatedly: "We're going to have lots of failures. That's okay. We want you to push the envelope. Take risks."

Risks were taken. To safeguard vulnerable gunners in Humvee turrets, the task force spent $9.4 million to buy 728 armored suits called the Cupola Protective Ensemble. Shipped to Kuwait for field testing, the outfit proved to be hot and constricting. Engineers scavenged cooling units used in Kiowa helicopters, installed them in the suits and plugged the contraption into the Humvees, which "fried the vehicle alternators," according to an Army colonel, who added, "We hadn't thought this through."

About 300 government programs were scrutinized for "low-hanging fruit" -- mature technologies that could be easily plucked and sent to the war zone: sniper rifles, little Raven drones, aerostats and laser "dazzlers" that temporarily blinded the driver of an oncoming vehicle, including a potential suicide car bomber, and caused him to veer off course. "There was a mad rush to get equipment over as we searched for the magic gizmo," a retired admiral recalled.

The task force identified 17 "capability gaps" -- such as counter-IED training methods and surveillance techniques -- and solicited suggestions from industry, which responded with 851 proposals. Congress also tried to help. When Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, touted a Kevlar infantry poncho of dubious practicality, a mischievous staff officer fabricated a photograph of the congressman wearing the outfit, which he labeled "SpongeBob HunterPants" after the Nickelodeon cartoon character. Votel was horrified. "Destroy that," he ordered. "If this gets out, we're dead meat."

Centcom's requirement for "uparmored" Humvee kits jumped to 14,000, according to a committee document, and, in January 2005, Abizaid agreed that no unarmored vehicles should operate outside secure bases in Iraq. But an uparmored Humvee weighed a ton more than its soft-skinned predecessor, with a consequent strain on engines, suspensions, transmissions and tires.

As always in war, frictions accumulated. The simple grew difficult. In late summer 2004, the task force had undertaken what seemed a relatively easy task: buy more explosive-sniffing dogs for the theater. Help was solicited from the British and Israelis, both of whom had extensive experience with "off-leash" dogs that gave a handler about 200 yards of standoff distance from possible bombs.