Get ready for more body bags Mr Bush....
U.S. General Says Iraqi Rebels Getting
Stronger
By Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — In a week that has already seen five
more U.S. combat deaths and the wounding of 41
soldiers, the commander of military forces in Iraq
indicated Thursday that resistance to the occupying
troops was strengthening and warned Americans to
brace for more casualties.
With 313 American soldiers dead in the conflict so far,
more than half since President Bush declared major
combat over May 1, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez
told reporters at a weekly news briefing here, "This is
still wartime."
"There is still some intense fighting to be done,
especially out in the west," he said. "We should not be
surprised if one of these mornings we wake up and ...
there has been a major firefight with some casualties or
a significant terrorist attack that kills significant numbers
of people."
Sanchez said the U.S.-led forces are engaging
resistance groups 15 to 20 times a day, on average,
with as many as 25 incidents on some days. Military
spokesmen have cited lower figures in the past.
The general added that the resistance was showing
signs of improved organization. Though most attacks
against U.S. forces are being carried out by small,
locally based groups apparently acting on their own,
there are indications that the resistance is beginning to
operate under a broader, more regional control,
Sanchez said.
A string of incidents Thursday, including gunfire and a
land mine explosion in and near the troubled city of
Fallouja, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, served as a
reminder that resistance remained strong.
A spokesman at the U.S. military command
headquarters in Baghdad said a vehicle in a convoy
traveling west of Fallouja hit the mine. There were no
American casualties, the spokesman said.
Hours earlier, U.S. forces in Fallouja exchanged
small-arms fire with an Iraqi gunman outside the
mayor's office, but the same spokesman said he had no
reports of casualties, although Reuters and Associated
Press reported that one Iraqi was killed and four others
wounded.
Three uniformed Americans were killed in attacks
Wednesday.
Sanchez stressed that U.S. forces were improving their ability to confront the
resistance, a statement echoed Thursday in Washington by Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, who defended American progress in Iraq.
"While there is no question we have faced some challenges and we've got some
ahead of us, we have really achieved numerous successes and expect the situation
to continue to improve," Myers told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.
"We're in this for the long haul and ... we'll get the job done."
U.N. Wants a Lead Role
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a closed-door
gathering of Security Council members that the world body must be given a
leading role in shaping Iraq's political transition or it would not be involved in the
nation at all, according to several diplomats and U.N. officials who attended the
meeting.
Annan has been seeking a major role for the U.N. in helping Iraq draft a
constitution and hold elections.
His ultimatum could be another setback to U.S. efforts at the world body to
obtain international help in stabilizing the country.
Except for a soldier killed on patrol in Baghdad, the encounters between U.S.
forces and resistance fighters Wednesday and Thursday occurred in a part of
Iraq along the Euphrates River north and west of the capital known as the Sunni
Triangle, for the high concentration of Sunni Muslims living there. Sunnis have
dominated the country politically for generations, even though Shiite Muslims
make up nearly two-thirds of the population.
Deposed leader Saddam Hussein and many of his most loyal followers are
believed to form the core of the resistance to the occupation.
On Thursday, Sanchez noted that more foreign fighters and terrorists had become
involved in the attacks against Americans since organized resistance first became
a major concern during the second half of May.
In remarks he made recently at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Iraq's
interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said Islamic extremist groups Ansar al
Islam, Al Qaeda and Takfir wal Hijra were actively opposing the occupation from
inside Iraq.
Sanchez described what he termed "a base of foreign fighters that continues to
flow in on ratlines from Syria and northern Iran."
Although the war in Iraq was justified by the Bush administration in part as an
important step in its declared war against international terrorism, critics say that
the continued presence of foreign fighters in the country is evidence that the
conflict has been a setback to the White House effort.
Administration officials have argued that the foreign militants were drawn to fight
U.S. forces in Iraq for fear of losing a base from which to conduct terrorism.
Citing the improved organization of the resistance, Sanchez said: "The enemy has
evolved.... He's a little bit more lethal, a little more complex, a little bit more
sophisticated and, in some cases, a little bit more tenacious."
He noted that in a growing number of attacks, resistance fighters have used
homemade bombs cobbled together from some of the more than 600,000 tons of
Iraqi arms and munitions stored throughout the country. Sanchez said it was
impossible to guard such a large amount of weaponry.
"We find new dumps every day," he said.
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