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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Just_Observing who wrote (2517)	3/24/2003 4:47:57 PM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

U.S. Losses Expose Risks, Raise Doubts About Strategy By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 24, 2003; Page A01 Iraqi troops and militias used ruses, ambushes and other guerrilla tactics yesterday that exploited the risks inherent in the fast-moving Pentagon war strategy, inflicting more than a score of American casualties and raising questions about how effective the U.S. approach has been in convincing Iraqi troops and civilians that President Saddam Hussein's removal is inevitable. After three days of routing Iraqi forces and even labeling their advance toward the Iraqi capital "the Baghdad 500," U.S. soldiers had a series of sobering engagements. One unit of Iraqi regular troops ambushed a U.S. convoy. Others trapped U.S. troops in what was described as a phony surrender, and some reportedly disguised themselves in civilian clothes. In the south, remnants of an army division moved heavy weapons into a residential area of Basra that U.S. and British forces were reluctant to fire upon. Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy U.S. commander in the war, characterized the spots of Iraqi resistance as hazardous for individual U.S. troops but militarily insignificant. "We are on track, [and] will arrive in the vicinity of Baghdad soon," he said at a briefing at U.S. Central Command headquarters in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Nevertheless, the images beamed around the world of U.S. soldiers in stunned captivity, or dead in a makeshift morgue in southern Iraq, cast some doubt on the assumptions underpinning the U.S. approach. Pentagon officials had expected U.S. troops to be greeted almost universally as liberators, at least in the Shiite south. That view influenced a war strategy based in part on the goal of achieving victory by persuading the Iraqi population and military that Hussein's government is doomed. Instead, the appearance yesterday was of members of the Iraqi government standing their ground. "We have drawn them into a swamp, and they will never get out of it," Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf declared in Baghdad. more at washingtonpost.com