Guerrilla tactics vs. US war plan

From the beginning, US war commanders have said the fight for regime change in Iraq was going to be tough, risky, and potentially costly. "Ground truth," as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likes to put it, is proving them right in the form of coalition casualties and captured soldiers.

Some of the toughest Iraqi forces - Republican Guard units and the paramilitary "Fedayeen Saddam" - have come out to meet US and British forces, mingling among civilians, attacking supply-and-maintenance units, and forcing the kind of close-in urban fight the US and its allies had hoped to avoid.

"We are moving from shock and awe to attrition warfare," says Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (ret.), referring to the kind of hard-slogging combat that tries to wear down an opponent. "If the pattern continues, this could be a tough fight."

Coalition commander Gen. Tommy Franks acknowledges "sporadic resistance in a number of places [from] isolated units and enclaves." But he insisted in a briefing at command headquarters in Qatar Monday that "our forces are moving in ways and places that we believe are just exactly right in accordance with a plan that is designed to be flexible."

And some analysts see the potential for longer-term gain in the fact that Saddam Hussein's more well-equipped, well-trained, and motivated units have challenged the US-led coalition far from Baghdad.

"If the Republican Guard is south of Baghdad and stays there, that's good news; we can fight them there with less risk to civilians," says defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "It's more important than the bad news of a bit more southern resistance than we might have hoped for."

Other observers are more circumspect, some calling into question the basic US tactic of dashing 300 miles toward Baghdad with limited numbers of ground troops, trying to bypass cities along the way, and leaving noncombat support and supply units to follow along.

"There is obviously a problem at the moment, and if they don't stop to regroup shortly they will outrun their supply chain that is a prime target for Iraqi harassing parties" warns Charles Heyman, a former British Army officer who now works as an analyst for Janes Land Armies. You need a lot more force protection on the supply routes."

That approach is likely to shift as more combat troops join the invasion, and especially as tactical jets and helicopter gunships (one of which was shot down Monday) hit Iraqi military sites along the way. Meanwhile, the heavy bombing of command-and-control sites and other military targets in and around Baghdad is continuing.

But as military analyst Charles Pena of the Cato Institute in Washington points out, "At some point, we will run out of targets - probably very soon - and then we have to go into Baghdad."

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