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Sunday, April 06, 2003

By Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The new ability of U.S. military forces to move at will in Baghdad -- demonstrated especially by yesterday's startling "thunder run" of 70-ton Army tanks through the heart of the city -- suggests that a major "tipping point" has been reached: U.S. troops no longer are fighting a conventional enemy and are waging a less intense but still dangerous "checkpoint war."

This isn't to say that that the war is over, or that the remaining fighting will be quick or easy. Diehard fighters in the capital almost certainly will be able to mount some ambushes on U.S. troops. The Americans also face daunting challenges tracking down President Saddam Hussein and his close circle of advisers.

But the battle is entering a distinct new phase. It now appears unlikely that there will be many more tank battles or area bombings, the classic signs of all-out war. Sign indicate that large-scale organized resistance is waning, with Saddam Hussein's military no longer capable of coordinating a large-scale counteroffensive, and the bulk of its forces killed, deserted, or in hiding.

"There's not much sign of the regime," said one U.S. intelligence official, commenting on the remains of the Baath Party and Hussein's inner circle.

The commander of the U.S. air campaign in Iraq indicated yesterday that the conventional military threat outside Baghdad is pretty much finished. "Our sensors show the preponderance of the Republican Guard divisions that were outside of Baghdad are now dead," Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael "Buzz" Moseley said in a telephone news conference from his headquarters in Saudi Arabia. He added: " I find it interesting when people say we're softening them up. We're not softening them up. We're killing them."

The war that remains, whether it lasts a week or a year, is in some ways more complex, ambiguous and difficult. Drawn-out operations with murky results, as in recent months in Afghanistan, tend to lose the attention of the U.S. public and the representatives they send to Congress. Also, when such ambigious operations produce a steady trickle of casualties, it tends to erode public support. Those tendencies especially worry the Army, which fears that it will be left responsible for peacekeeping when the other services declare their wars over and head home.

In the short term, a major worry is the whereabouts of Republican Guard units that seem almost to have melted away into Baghdad. "There certainly are some remnants of the Republican Guard" in the capital, Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., operations director for the U.S. military headquarters in the war, said at a briefing in Qatar.

An additional concern is the foreign fighters -- apparently Egyptians and Jordanians -- reported by Marines moving toward the capital from the southeast to be involved in the fighting. If there are more of those would-be martyrs waiting in the capital, the fighting there could involve many more suicide attacks.

Also, the lean size of the U.S. invasion force is likely to restrain the scale of operations, said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, an expert in military planning. "We're approaching the time when the 3rd Division should be given a break, and fresh units be allocated to cordon Baghdad and undertake further operations," he said, referring to the main Army Invasion force. "We are operating on a thin margin."

The Army's 4th Division has been deployed to the region to help, but Killebrew added: "More troops will be required eventually even then."

Finding those troops for the rest of the war and then for the post-war peacekeeping is likely to strain the Army, which calculates that Iraq duty will keep at least two divisions busy for several months. Beyond that, another division will be training to replace them. All told, that is a considerable demand on a service that has just 10 active-duty divisions and already has troops busy in Afghanistan.

Nor is post-war duty alluring for the rank and file. The military adage is that peacekeeping isn't a soldier's job but only a soldier can do it. For troops trained for combat assaults, it can be demoralizing to stand endless duty at checkpoints, bored for months and then momentarily terrified when it appears that a car bombing is imminent.

Soldiers on semi-occupation duty in a violent environment are frequently torn between firing in self-defense and the knowledge that they are firing on civilians. A split-second decision made by a corporal at a checkpoint can have international repercussions -- especially if the soldier guesses wrong, and there is no bomb in the car.

In some ways, that isn't a sharp departure. The vast majority of U.S. military deaths in the war so far haven't been in traditional force-on-force high-intensity combat, but in smaller actions, such as car bombings, ambushes and in sniping on convoys. Those sort of attacks mainly have been in rear areas, along supply lines. But now, with no "front" remaining, the entire country of Iraq is essentially a rear area.

"The low-intensity war has been going on all along," concluded Robert Andrews, a former Pentagon official who oversaw Special Operations activities and low-intensity warfare. What is happening now, he said, is "just the phasing out of the conventional war."

Andrews predicted that that next phase will "go on for some time," and likely will focus on rooting out diehards who remain loyal to the Baath party.

In that environment, the transition from war to peace may be almost invisible, with the end of the war arbitrarily declared at some point. "It's not over by any means," said retired Army Col. Joe Adamczyk. "I believe that we will continue to have 'boots on the ground' engaged in significant operations from direct combat to occupation for at least one year or more."

The key to ending attacks on the U.S. military presence will be to win the support of the Iraqi people -- which is more a function of diplomatic, reconstruction and relief efforts than a purely military one. If Iraqis aren't opposed to the U.S. military presence, then the small-scale attacks are likely to be nettlesome but insignificant, military experts said.

"Without significant popular support, it will be difficult for suicide bombers to pose more than a nuisance to coalition forces," said retired Army Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich, an expert on strategy.

But if the Iraqi population turns against the U.S. presence, then troops at checkpoints and other exposed positions become convenient targets for their displeasure. For that reason, said Krepinevich, it becomes key to start training and vetting Iraqi troops to take over policing and other security work. "It would be wise not to overstay our welcome," he said.