As US shifts to a multifront war, risks rise for troops

"It's inevitable we'll see more US casualties" as the Americans move against Sadr and his supporters, says William Rosenau, an insurgency expert at the RAND Corp.

"If you fire missiles into an overcrowded slum, you will kill a lot of innocent people," says another military analyst. "[So] you've got to do this on foot, in your Bradleys, and you might take more casualties but that way you can carry out a more surgical mission ... that makes more military sense."

Over the weekend, seven US soldiers died as the 1st Armored Division moved to retake police stations in Sadr City captured by Sadr's militia. "That is a difficult thing to do, to go in and retake something when there are guys with guns behind walls or shooting out from windows and rooftops," says the Centcom official.

But as clashes continued Tuesday in Nasiriyah and other Shiite cities between coalition forces and Sadr's 3,000-strong "Mahdi Army," US officials say they have no choice but to apprehend the cleric and disband his "outlaw" forces. "Individuals who create violence, who incite violence, who execute violence against persons inside of Iraq will be hunted down and captured or killed. It is that simple," says Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director for Coalition Operations.

Ideally, US commanders would like Iraqi police and civil defense forces to take the lead against Sadr's group. But those forces, which coalition officials admit lack adequate training and equipment, have crumbled and abandoned their positions in face of the militia attacks in recent days.

As a result, US troops must now police more aggressively rather than assume the role of an emergency, "quick reaction force" stationed on the edges of urban areas as planned. Military officials cast the young firebrand Sadr and his estimated 10,000 supporters as a fringe group engaged in a violent power grab. He lacks the backing of more moderate, respected Shiite figures. "A lot of Shiites don't want that kind of controversial person to be leading their community," says Andrew Terrill, an expert on US-Shiite relations at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.

Still, US commanders are sensitive to actions - such as storming a mosque to arrest Sadr - that could incite an uprising by Iraq's wider Shiite community, which represents 60 percent of the population. "If there is a Shiite rebellion on top of a Sunni rebellion, at a certain point the US has to think about leaving Iraq," says Mr. Terrill. Even without a rebellion, he views the moderate Shiites' alliance with the US as sheerly opportunistic, and so advocates a withdrawal of US forces as soon as a stable Iraqi government is in place.

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