The San Francisco Chronicle March 30, 2003
U.S. command startled by strength, intensity of opposition
Fedayeen fighters and Basra resistance force 2nd thoughts
By Edward Epstein
After 12 days of conflict in Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his regime have thrown American military commanders off balance.
The Iraqis' surprise tactics make it clear that disarming Iraq and removing Hussein will not be done through "shock and awe" or achieved as quickly or as cleanly as the Bush administration had hoped and the public had been led to believe.
"They're not doing a bad job of making Central Command look foolish," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst for GlobalSecurity.org.
In the war's overall context, the surprises -- while worrying -- could end up not meaning much.
Already, U.S. and British forces have moved swiftly and are apparently inflicting heavy casualties on the Iraqi military. The coalition says it has established air supremacy over 95 percent of Iraq, seized Iraq's southern oil fields largely intact, raced almost 300 miles to the outskirts of Baghdad, taken airstrips in western Iraq, prevented any Scud missile attacks on Israel, opened a scaled-down campaign in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, and taken more than 10,000 Iraqi prisoners.
But the unanticipated use of Fedayeen Saddam irregular fighters, resistance in the southern city of Basra, the harassment of allied supply lines, and Saturday's suicide attack on U.S. Army troops all have forced reconsideration of the coalition's war plans and raise longer-term concerns that may plague Iraq's transition even if Hussein's regime is finally eliminated, as President Bush has promised will happen.
A LONGER WAR
In fact, fears are mounting that the war will be measured not in days or weeks, but perhaps in months. And the longer the war lasts, and as civilian casualties rise, anti-American feelings could increase throughout the Arab world. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's warning last week telling Iran and Syria not to meddle shows the U.S. commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity -- and how complicated keeping that pledge will be.
All along, Hussein has counted on world opinion and what he perceives as America's unwillingness to take casualties as factors he could use to save his regime, and his life. That's why he may relish an American frontal attack on Baghdad, where he can bog down the world's most technologically advanced military in a brutal urban war reminiscent of Stalingrad.
Most experts still agree that Hussein's moves are not militarily significant and that the overwhelming U.S.-British force will eventually prevail.
But many questions remain: How long will the war last? What will be the human toll on both sides? And will the United States launch its Baghdad offensive in the next few days or wait for reinforcements that could be weeks away?
As the allies prepare for a climactic tank battle with three Iraqi Republican Guard divisions guarding the capital, here's a look inside the debate over how the war's gone so far:
IRAQ'S STRATEGY
Despite assertions from Washington that the Iraqi army is in disarray, Hussein and his generals have learned from the 1991 Gulf War and from such U.S. military encounters as the 1993 disaster in Somalia and the long conflict with Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian forces.
The main lesson: Even if you're losing, make the Americans suffer casualties, because public support back home will waver and the American president might be forced to pull back.
NAZI COMPARISON
Donald Abenhein of the Hoover Institution compares the Iraqi tactics to the Nazis' last stand in World War II. He said the Iraqis' reliance on the Fedayeen, up to 60,000 young toughs recruited by Hussein's older son Odai, and on the special security service to attack enemy forces and enforce discipline, looks like Hitler's use of the SS and Hitler Youth.
"If a committed minority wants to fight, they can, for a while, and hold up what you want to do," he said. "The fact the Fedayeen Saddam is fighting like this doesn't surprise me. They have nothing to lose."
The Fedayeen have required Gen. William Wallace, U.S. commander of ground forces in Iraq, to detach Marine and Army units to guard his 300-mile supply line against sporadic ambushes that have been particularly fierce around the town of Nasiriya. The irregulars have also required some U.S. airpower to be diverted from their task of "softening up" Republican Guard units around Baghdad.
"The fact that we have been forced to stop, been forced to reorient forces, to go back, the fact that Saddam and his loyalists are seeing the irregulars giving us fits, I think hurts us," said Kenneth Pollack, a Hussein biographer at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington.
"It means the momentum is no longer with us," he said, adding that U.S. forces must resume the attack quickly to regain the initiative.
But retired Army Lt. Gen Thomas Rhame, who commanded an infantry division in the 1991 Gulf War, said the guerrilla-style attacks aren't really important in the long run.
"These are nuisance attacks. It's common in warfare. The commander in the field has forces available to deal with it," Rhame said.
UNDERESTIMATED RESISTANCE
The Pentagon admits it has underestimated the ferocity of Iraqi resistance. And Gen. Wallace fueled the debate over the U.S. war plan when he told newspaper reporters on Thursday: "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against."
IS THE PLAN RIGHT?
The initial war plan called for a force roughly double the 250,000 troops now committed. But Rumsfeld -- an advocate of air power and new technology -- slashed the original plan, saying it was old-fashioned and too reliant on heavy armor and ground forces.
Instead, the Pentagon decided to send in a ground force of four Army divisions -- the Third, the Fourth Mechanized Infantry, and the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions -- and the Marines First Division.
The plan also envisioned that a sizable portion of Hussein's military would surrender or stay in its barracks. It called for a psychological war campaign to convince Iraqis not to fight, and to get Hussein's generals to defect or even try to unseat him. Civilian uprisings, especially among Shiite Muslims chafing under the rule of a Sunni Muslim minority, were also considered a possibility.
The Fourth Division, earmarked as the powerful hammer of a northern front, was to enter Iraq through Turkey.
But when the Turkish Parliament decided in February to deny the United States the right to use its territory to invade Iraq, the division's force was left in Fort Hood, Texas. And the fleet of cargo ships carrying its tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, humvees and other gear had to be diverted from the eastern Mediterranean through the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf.
This meant the invasion was "light," with only one big mechanized Army division, and no major northern front in which planners had envisioned a force of 60,000 spearheaded by the Fourth Division that could strike south toward Baghdad after securing the oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul.
The Fourth Division's troopers are being flown into the area from Texas, and its ships are en route. About 1,000 paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade were airdropped into Kurdish-held territory in the north to start building up U.S. forces for a possible advance.
The Pentagon staunchly defends its plan against the criticisms.
'BRILLIANT PLAN'
"I think it's a brilliant plan," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said Friday. "It's being executed and it's on track. In 36 hours, we were on the outskirts of Baghdad."
Myers and other administration leaders say variations on the basic plan are inevitable in a war and shouldn't be deemed setbacks.
But skeptics abound.
"Not having the Fourth Division in the fight right now due to the problem with Turkey is a major setback. I personally would have waited another month to start the war on both military and diplomatic grounds," said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst at the Brookings Institution.
Abenhein said a bigger land force could make up for the limits placed on the air campaign -- limits based on the desire to prevent Iraqi civilian casualties -- by using ground forces to actually seize more land and destroy Iraqi army forces.
O'Hanlon pointed out that in 1991, the U.S.-led coalition took on Iraq with a force of 550,000 Americans in the gulf region. Iraq at the time had a million-man military.
He said the United States is in "pretty good shape" this time around, too, considering that Iraq is down to about 350,000 to 400,000 troops, while the United States has about 250,000 -- with more probably on the way.
Some ex-military officials say the critics forget that Iraq is a California-size nation and that the plan has been able to deal with Hussein's surprises without losing its focus.
"I think we're on track," said former Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney. "We're set to deal with the Revolutionary Guards. Those three divisions are about to be destroyed if they don't surrender."
Garrett, the GlobalSecurity.org analyst, said that despite the U.S. setbacks, an American-British victory is in sight: "We're getting ready to knock on Baghdad's front door."
Copyright © 2003, The Chronicle Publishing Co.
