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Pentagon officials continue to face criticism that they underestimated
the number of forces they would need for the Iraq operation,
and the strength of the opposition they were going to face.
In public, they are sticking to the refrain that the plan
is good, it is on track, and there have been no delays.
But there is little escaping the fact that they have had
to make adjustments because of the potential threat to their
supply lines, the strength of opposition around the population
centres in the south in particular, and the weather.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been particularly under
the spotlight. Critics of the war strategy blame him for pressing
the military to move more quickly with fewer forces than they
would have liked.
To add to an already complex picture, Mr Rumsfeld has fired
verbal warning shots at two of Iraq's neighbours, Syria and
Iran.
According to Mr Rumsfeld, the Americans have information
that equipment, including night-vision goggles, has been crossing
into Iraq from Syria.
In a stark public warning to Damascus, the defence secretary
said that such shipments would be a hostile act and that the
US Government would hold the Syrian Government accountable.
He would not be drawn on whether he was threatening military
action.
Ranks closing
Mr Rumsfeld also had another warning for Iran, or at least
to several hundred Iranian-backed Iraqi dissidents he said
were present in Iraq.
This was complicating US war plans, he said, and they would
be considered combatatants if they interfered with US-led
forces.
But he sidestepped the question of whether he was threatening
military action. And, just right now, the Pentagon appears
to have enough on its plate.
Both in public and behind the scenes at the Pentagon, the
civilian and military leadership have closed ranks over the
war plan, insisting that it was agreed by all the top commanders.
Still, the senior US Army officer on the ground in Iraq,
Lt Gen William Wallace, says the US military is facing a different
enemy from the one it expected.
The Pentagon, it seems, underestimated the Iraqis' ability
to adapt and learn from the lessons of the past decade or
so of US military operations, including their previous confrontation
in 1991.
Push still on
Despite the problems, America's top commanders say they are
sticking to the priority of pressing towards Baghdad, despite
the resistance in the south. But it is unclear when the push
towards the Iraqi capital will be renewed.
Any hopes that the Iraqi authorities might have crumbled
in the face of the Americans' rapid early advance and heavy
initial air strikes seem to have evaporated.
The criticism among analysts and retired senior military
officers has been that the initial US-led invasion force was
too small, and lacks sufficient firepower.
The Pentagon says that there are at least 100,000 extra troops
still in the pipeline to be deployed. But the soonest the
closest of those forces, the 4th Infantry Division, will be
ready to fight will be a number of weeks.
The initial hope must have been that these "follow-on"
forces would not be needed at all, or at worst would have
to help simply with mopping up and stabilisation operations
after a conflict.
It is looking increasingly as if at least some of these reinforcements
may now actually have to join the fight
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