Is This Hussein's Counterattack?
washingtonpost.com
.....One senior commander in Baghdad said he believes there are three levels within the insurgence, all with Baathist loyalists at the core. The smallest attacks, such as sniping on Army patrols, he said, are being carried out by perhaps eight to 10 neighborhood-based cells in Baghdad, each with about 25 members.
At the next level -- conducting attacks using improvised roadside bombs against U.S. troops -- he said he suspects there is a citywide organization of Baathists with links to criminal gangs. Finally, for the major, mass casualty suicide bomb attacks, such as the one on the Italian military police headquarters, he said he thinks that Baathists are working with foreign fighters "intent on jihad," or holy struggle.
The Iraqi fighters also show increasing sophistication. For example, this summer roadside bombs generally were controlled by wires, one Army officer said; more recently, some have been detonated by signals from cellular telephones. Likewise, some of the mortars fired on U.S. installations in Baghdad have been buried in gardens or kept under garbage cans. Attackers drop two or three shells into the buried mortar tube and then speed away on motorcycles while the shells are airborne..... |
