Analysts urge U.S. forces to attack invaders at border

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Some government analysts have concluded that U.S. forces in Iraq will never defeat the ubiquitous improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with new technologies and should augment the fight with a full-fledged border war to stop bombers at the source.

The opinions of government officials in interviews with The Washington Times do not necessarily mean there will be a change in war-fighting strategy. Commanders continue to try to defeat IEDs, which are the No. 1 killer of coalition troops and civilians in Iraq, by attacking insurgent havens and bomb-making factories throughout the country.

But the analysts said midlevel personnel increasingly think that the IED threat will never be defeated unless the flow of foreign suicide bombers, primarily via Syria, is stopped.

The analysts also believe the U.S. must start identifying the foreign fighters as invaders, which would better justify the redeployment of American and Iraqi forces along the border with Syria, aided by more use of spy drones and satellites to watch for incursions 24 hours a day.

"Until the invaders are stopped or the traffic reduced, there will always be violent people willing to sacrifice themselves to advance the schemes of others," said a defense official who has brainstormed the problem with analysts in the U.S. intelligence community. "I think the trick is to dry up the source of those willing to commit acts of unspeakable violence."

The idea would not be to "seal" the Syrian border, a mission that would be practically impossible. The goal would be to set up forces and spy sensors to such a degree that most crossings could be spotted and attacked.

The military had some success this week, with the top U.S. general saying last night that American forces had captured the top aide to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who heads al Qaeda in Iraq.

"Just yesterday on the battlefield, we picked up Zarqawi's main leader in Baghdad, they call him the Emir of Baghdad, Abu Abdal Aziz, and that's going to hurt that operation of Zarqawi's pretty significantly," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on PBS' "NewsHour."

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said it is "too simplistic" to just look at the border.

"I don't think you can point to any one thing and say 'if we were able to do this it would fix the problem,'" he said. "The problem is broader than that."

One reason IEDs are hard to stop is Iraq's limited number of roads, meaning coalition convoys must travel well-recognized routes if they are to reposition and resupply troops, analysts say. Thus terrorists simply need to booby-trap every road with disguised IEDs, knowing a coalition convoy is certain to drive by at some point. The bombs are then exploded remotely using a variety of electronic signals, such as cellular phones.

Part of what drives this new thinking inside the administration is the war's cost. In some analysts' opinion, the U.S. simply cannot afford indefinitely to spend $5 billion a month on Iraq, as is now projected.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, an author on counterterrorism, agrees that the U.S. should step up counterterrorism operations on the Syrian border. He would take it one giant leap forward by conducting air strikes inside Syria at terrorist staging areas and by sending special operations forces across the border to attack would-be invaders.

"I would clearly up the ante for Bashar Assad," he said, referring to the Syrian leader and head of the ruling Ba'athist socialist party, while cautioning that "there is never going to be one 'golden BB.'"

Charles Krohn, a former Army official who spent time inside the green zone in Baghdad working on strategies, said military commanders had wanted to conduct more border operations but did not have sufficient troops.

Historically, he said, some countries have had success in sealing off long, underdeveloped borders. Morocco, for example, in the 1970s stopped Polisario guerrillas from crossing from Mauritania by setting up checkpoints, fences, mine fields and sensors.

"Nothing would be 100 percent perfect, but it would slow the fighters' ability to reach into Iraq to become suicide bombers and conduct other acts of terrorism," Mr. Krohn said.