Without hearing what the military says about this, rather than just one soldier, it's difficult to say. However, one reason may be that we don't have enough troops to hunt down the insurgents who fired or enough troops to prevent the roadside bombs from being planted.

>I only caught some of the interview this afternoon, but they had on, a soldier who served in Iraq and is now part of a movie project that shows scenes from Iraq.
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>This was progressive radio, and the announcer's were against the war. But the soldier was there to discuss his dislike of the US military policies over there. One of the announcers was Wes Clark, jr., who has an extremely good military background, so he was able to ask great questions.
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>For example the soldier was lamenting the policy for patrols. How standard military practice is, if you are patrolling and you get shot at, you hunt down the enemy, possibly killing, if not capturing them. His experience was to be told during morning briefing that if you confront the enemy, you return fire, but don't hunt them down. So he would see examples of getting shot at, having his platoon return fire and dispersing the enemy. Only to have them return the next day.
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>He also commented that there are areas where you can guarantee that highway bombs get planted there everyday. There appears to be no desire on the part of the military leaders to capture those placing the bombs. The soldiers are just alerted when they are in an area known to have roadside devices planted.
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>It sounds eirily similar to decisions made in Vietnam that placed our soldiers in no-win situations.