'You can't armor your way out of this problem'

No EFPs had appeared in Afghanistan; instead, double-stacked anti-tank mines provided the explosive punch in the most powerful IEDs. A unique "pressure-cooker bomb" -- a lidded metal rice pot filled with explosives -- also proved increasingly lethal, especially in the Pech River Valley to the northeast.

In Iraq, things were much worse. A sharp spike in attacks in late 2005 had pushed the number above 1,500 a month, twice the annual figure in Afghanistan. Troops and commanders alike had grown wary of help from Washington. "Stuff was coming in without control," one colonel recalled. "It would just show up, and we'd say, 'How the hell did that get here?' "

A review of 70 IED countermeasures found that only half had been tested in the United States before being shipped overseas, and that fewer than one-third were evaluated after arriving in the theater. Assessing what worked was exceptionally hard.

Under what circumstances did Rhino succeed? If it failed, was it because the Humvee was going too fast? Too slow? Was the glow plug functioning properly? Where did Warlock Green work best? Which was better, ICE or SSVJ? If a radio-controlled IED failed to detonate, who could be sure it was because the jammer jammed? "That makes it very difficult to determine where to put your money," one senior analyst said.

Meigs proselytized. IEDs were the insurgents' fires, their artillery, used for political effect to erode American will, he said. The enemy attacked idiosyncratically, leveraging their capabilities "against our structural weaknesses."

Three years into the Iraq war, the U.S. military remained too much on its heels. "We spend a tremendous amount of money trying to defeat the device, because that's the immediate way of preventing casualties," Meigs would later observe. "But we really need to spend more on attacking the enemy's system, attacking the networks. . . . You can kill emplacers all day and you're not going to slow this thing down."

In a heated four-hour meeting on Jan. 26, in a headquarters conference room at the Al Faw Palace, west of Baghdad, Meigs complained that data from the field failed to reach JIEDDO quickly, making it difficult to swiftly assess trends and take action. A new counter-IED organization, Task Force Troy, which would grow to 1,000 people in Iraq, joined EOD teams, the Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell and half a dozen newly arrived weapons intelligence teams, designed to investigate bomb scenes. Meigs believed CEXC and WIT should report directly to JIEDDO, which paid most of the costs.

This sat badly in Baghdad. "Sir, General Meigs wants everything you've got," Col. Kevin D. Lutz, the Task Force Troy commander, told his corps commander, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli. "He says that if he bought it, he owns it."

This also sat badly at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, where Meigs flew to see Abizaid after returning from Iraq in early February. "You need to tell Meigs he's not a general anymore," a senior officer in Baghdad had advised Abizaid. "He's general retired."

"Look, Monty, you're not helping the way you're going about doing this," Abizaid said. Meigs demurred, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Better integration was needed between the theater and Washington, he said, along with better integration between intelligence and operations. Several IED networks led to Iran. "These are a problem. These are hurting us."

Abizaid bristled. "I've been doing this for three years. What are you going to tell me about it?" When Meigs persisted, Abizaid snapped, "Hey, look, this is not your [expletive] war to fight."

The brief squall soon passed. Both men vowed to continue, in Abizaid's words, "as brothers in battle." Later he would muse, "Meigs coming on the scene has been nothing but good. . . . He's a brilliant guy."

***

Retired Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, left, head of the Pentagon's anti-IED effort, told President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at a meeting in March 2006 that the goal was to "defeat IEDs as strategic weapons of influence."(Gerald Herbert)

Early on the morning of Saturday, March 11, 2006, Meigs walked into the White House Roosevelt Room, across the hall from the Oval Office. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 stood on the fireplace mantle, beneath a portrait of Roosevelt on horseback as a Rough Rider. Military service flags lined one wall, bracketing an oil painting of Indians crossing the Platte River.

On a long, dark conference table, several IEDs with the explosives removed had been arrayed. The "petting zoo," as it was known at JIEDDO, included a radio-controlled device and an EFP with a passive infrared trigger. Around the table sat President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several other luminaries.

Meigs spoke for 10 minutes, using five briefing slides. He displayed a chart showing how IED attacks continued to climb in Iraq while the number of bombs causing coalition casualties remained flat. Another chart depicted the evolution of IED triggers, including the sharp reduction in low-power, radio-controlled detonators, the recent appearance of cellphones, and the persistence of passive infrared triggers. The latter were tied to EFPs, which in turn had Iranian links.

Bush showed little interest in the petting zoo but listened attentively to Meigs. He noted that JIEDDO's annual budget approached $4 billion. Why, he asked, does it have to be so large? Meigs explained that the counter-IED strategy now followed three distinct paths: defeat the device, attack the network, train the force. Simple, cheap gadgets, like those on the table, were expensive to vanquish. JIEDDO's mission was not to thwart all roadside bombs, but to "defeat IEDs as weapons of strategic influence." Since the invasion three years earlier, 32,000 IED attacks had occurred in Iraq.

At 8:46 a.m., a door swung open to admit reporters. "The general has spent a lot of time thinking about the enemy's tactics and techniques, and how our military can adjust to them," Bush said. Before the session broke up, a reporter posed a final question about IEDs "from foreign, neighboring countries."

Bush was ready. "If the Iranians are trying to influence the outcome of the political process, or the outcome of the security situation there, we're letting them know of our displeasure."

Two days later, on Monday, March 13, the president gave a speech at George Washington University, where he described Meigs's recent visit to the White House. IEDs allow "the terrorists . . . to attack us from a safe distance, without having to face our forces in battle," the president said, and "some of the most powerful IEDs we're seeing in Iraq today include components that came from Iran."

But the country had a plan. "We're on the hunt for the enemy -- and we're not going to rest until they've been defeated," Bush added. "We are putting the best minds in America to work on this effort."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Yesterday: The IED Blitz

Wednesday: Putting Them Back on the Wire

Correction: Some print and online versions of this story referred to the explosively formed penetrator device as an explosively formed perpetrator.