I can't figure out if the 4th ID is getting all the action because they are in the Sunni/Baghdad area, or if the Marines and the Airborne/Cav are doing a better job of warding it off. Probably a combination of both.
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Struggling to Identify Enemy
Rumsfeld Says 'Disparate Elements' Combine to Pose Threat to Occupation Troops
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page A21
BAGHDAD, Sept. 6 -- After four months of military occupation, and in the midst of what most military officials still describe as a war, U.S. commanders and defense officials say they do not have a clear understanding of who they are now fighting.
Some elements of the Iraqi army were rapidly defeated while others faded away on their own during the heavy-combat phase of the war this spring. Their absence gave way to more classic, but short-lived, guerrilla resistance from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's irregular, paramilitary forces, Saddam's Fedayeen.
Now, as remotely detonated car bombs, booby traps and armed militias challenge the occupation, defense officials say they are facing a low-intensity conflict like none they have fought before.
The enemy includes "disparate elements," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today. He and commanders in three separate military headquarters identified the enemies as foreign terrorists, former Hussein loyalists and criminals. Each group by itself probably could not launch anything amounting to a war, officials said. But together, the threat has U.S. military commanders and CIA officers on overdrive, trying to figure out how much coordination exists between the hostile groups.
"We're in an intelligence fight to figure out who they are and what they are doing," said Col. Jackson Flake, chief of staff for the 1st Armored Division, based in Baghdad.
Defense officials and military commanders say they believe that remnants of Hussein's government are joining forces or paying foreign fighters to wage war against U.S. troops. One senior official, however, said that some former figures in the government are leading cells formed to attack U.S. troops and that they have hired bomb makers and deployed "mules" to mount attacks.
Flake said the U.S. troops serve as a magnet for foreign extremists bent on killing Americans. "We believe they see this as the Super Bowl," he said. "It's easier to get to than the United States."
As the Bush administration's many counterterrorism operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States have proved, combating terrorism requires a high degree of flexibility and intelligence. Operations are most effectively carried out with indigenous forces much more knowledgeable about local groups. But in Iraq, the U.S. military still doesn't know whom to trust and has received inadequate voluntary cooperation.
Rumsfeld made that point today. When asked about the slow pace of security improvements by coalition military forces, he responded aggressively: "Instead of pointing the finger at the security forces of the coalition, it's important for the Iraqi people to step up and provide information to General Sanchez and his people in a greater way than they have been doing." He was referring to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.
Sanchez said that coalition forces report about 15 attempted or successful attacks a day and that one platoon -- about 80 U.S. soldiers -- "can defeat the threat readily."
"The enemy has made the decision to stay away and not attack us" at close range, Sanchez said.
But at the same time, armed Shiite militias have moved into Najaf, and helicopter pilots who flew reporters around on Rumsfeld's three-day tour say they have been recently targeted by surface-to-air missiles and two such missiles were fired at a C-141 transport plane as it was taking off from Baghdad International Airport at 7 this morning, two hours before Rumsfeld departed in a Black Hawk helicopter from the same place.
Rumsfeld, on the last day of his trip here, also toured a massive grave site of Mahawil in Hilla, where the remains of 3,000 people have been recovered. Rumsfeld also visited the Baghdad Central Penitentiary, formerly known as Abu Ghraib, and walked through a chamber where 6,000 people were executed.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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