It turns out it’s not really so mysterious after all. The Danger Room interviewed General Montgomery Meigs, who heads up the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). General Meigs admirably–and honestly–refuses credit for the decline:
“I would love to be able to say to the American taxpayer, ’40 percent of the reduction in IED incidents and 80 of the reduction in IED effect is due to the things we’ve put in the field.’ I can’t get the data that would let me make any kind of an assessment of that.”
So what is the explanation? Meigs reels off the numbers for Noah Shachtman:
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