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No knockout blow in week-old war, but US happy with progress
( 2003-03-26 10:34 ) (7 )

Failure to land a killer blow on Saddam Hussein and dread of heavy casualties in the looming Battle of Baghdad have dented America's hopes for a short, easy war with Iraq.

One week into the conflict, and despite a "shock and awe" bombing blitz of staggering force, the Iraqi regime still stands and US forces massing en route to Baghdad may face a heavy blood price to crush it.

But military chiefs in Washington are buoyant, as they plot a fateful clash with Saddam's Republican Guard, laying in wait for a vicious curtain of US armour.

They have only 20 US and 18 British deaths to show for a lightening invasion thrust deep into Iraq, almost to the gates of Baghdad, many of them in accidents of war.

War got off to a clumsy start, with fatal helicopter crashes, deaths in friendly fire and other attacks marring the initial assault.

Nonetheless, field reports put the Third Infantry Division less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, the US 101st Airborne moving up from the southwest and US Marines to the east.

"We've been at it now for less than a week, we're just about to Baghdad," said General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

US forces act with total freedom in the skies, and a second front is opening, albeit slowly in northern Iraq.

But bypassing cities like Basra and Um-Qasr have proved a sting in the tail, and British and US marines and infantry have battled Iraqi holdouts waging guerrilla warfare and a protracted struggle for the Euphrates river town of Nasiriyah provided an ominous warning of the perils of urban warfare.

Early combat deaths and the sight of captured US personnel paraded on Iraqi television have provided a first test of US public opinion, and the resolve of an administration which has wagered its credibility on war.

Tears of the bereaved and the sight of yellow ribbons around trees in support of prisoners of war in an echo of the Vietnam era are easy fodder for ravenous 24 hour news coverage.

The war is unfolding in real time in every living room, in snapshot reports from breathless correspondents embedded on the front line.

From now on, the war looks set to be fought on Saddam's terms, as his best troops put up a ring of steel around Baghdad, and his spiritual home Tikrit.

"We're still, needless to say, much closer to the beginning than the end," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned Tuesday, with questions that will define the conflict still to be answered:

- Might Iraq use chemical weapons?

- Will its troops lure US forces into bloody street fights in civilian areas?

- How will Saddam Hussein's most prized forces react to fierce US pressure?

- When will US forces discover the weapons of mass destruction which triggered war?

- Can the United States "liberate" Iraqis without causing mass civilian casualties?

Even so, some eve of invasion fears proved groundless.

Iraq's major oil fields, so crucial to its economic future, have been secured intact, with only a few wells set on fire and no "scorched earth" policy under way.

Worst-case scenarios forecasting millions of refugees clogging the US advance or moving in destabilising flows into neighboring countries have also been forestalled.

Conflict is contained to Iraq, with only a few Iraqi missiles impotently coughing into Kuwait and none into Israel as in the 1990-91 Gulf War.

Worldwide opposition to the conflict, though widespread has been confined to protests and diplomatic rumblings, while the "Arab Street" is yet to be enflamed.

The war's opening shots could easily have been its last.

Had a spur of the moment US air raid succeded last Thursday on a Baghdad compound where, according to a hot intelligence tip, the Iraqi leader was due to sleep, US troops may already be on the streets of Baghdad.

Despite reports he was killed or injured, Saddam's regime survived, as top officials spitting defiance, lined up on television.

US commanders, concious that if they conquer Baghdad, they must administer the Iraqi population, say they are determined to avoid civilian casualies, and styled their precision weapon barrage of Baghdad as a "humane" blitz.

President George W. Bush at the outset of war promised a campaign of "decisive force" and "no half measures," but events on the ground have to some extent spiked the guns of a US invasion force.

But battle plans are about to face their ultimate test, as protecting innocent life may have to be traded for heavy US combat losses, with the best Iraqi forces keen to fight in civilian areas.

"It is one of the terrible ironies of this war, that we care more about the civilian population than the Iraqis do," said Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton administration national security aide and expert on Iraq.

Acrimony stained a failed diplomatic drive to unite the United Nations behind the war, and the gulf between Washington and its partners only deepened once the guns roared into life.

Bush traded barbs with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has spent two years cultivating, after the United States accused Russian firms of selling hi-tech military equipment to Iraq, prompting fears of lasting damage to Moscow-Washington relations.

Another long-term project, drawing Turkey into the US orbit, also appears on shaky ground, after Ankara agonised and finally rejected a request to act as a launch pad an assault on northern Iraq.

Public opinion remains behind Bush, but voters are less confident that the war is going well.

Seventy-two percent of those questioned in a Pew Research Centre poll released Tuesday believed the decision to use force was correct.

But the number of people who believed the war was going "very well" was down from 71 percent last Friday to 38 percent Monday.