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Sunday, March 30, 2003

By Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said Thursday.

The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American combat power has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them even see the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military commanders are talking about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said.

"Tell me how this ends," one senior officer said .

While some top planners favor continuing to press north, most Army commanders believe that the pause in Army ground operations that began Thursday is critical. A relatively small force is stretched thin over 300 miles, and much of the Army's killing power, in more than 100 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, has been grounded by persistently foul weather or by battle damage from an unsuccessful pre-dawn raid Monday. To the east, the Marine Corps advance on the city of Kut was also hampered by skirmishing along its supply line and fuel shortages at the front.

More forces are coming, including the Army's 4th Infantry Division, which has begun pushing equipment from 35 ships into Kuwait after Turkey refused to allow a second front into northern Iraq. But it will probably take the better part of a month for that tank-heavy division to get into position and provide combat power.

Other forces heading to this region, including the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, at Fort Carson, Colo., and the 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas, will require months to move their tanks and other armor from their bases into combat, the defense officials said.

Pentagon spokesmen rejected that pessimistic assessment and insisted that the war is still going according to plan.

In the short term, the Army plans to secure its strained supply lines with a portion of the 82nd Airborne Division, now positioned near Kuwait City, and troops from the 101st Airborne Division, which is gathering at a forward operating base deep inside Iraq, Army sources said.

The degree to which the supply lines have been stretched can be seen in the fact that the Third Division last week was alarmingly low on water and was also in danger of running short of food, the sources said. Heroic efforts have been made by truck companies and other logisticians, but a certain amount of chaos has developed, exacerbated by sniping and immense traffic backlogs from the Kuwaiti border.

That traffic jam also has undermined Bush administration plans to quickly follow the U.S. military advance with tons of food and other humanitarian relief to win support among Iraqis. "There's tremendous fog out there," an officer said, referring to the confusion of wartime operations, with logistical commanders struggling to figure out where various supply items are in a system that at times resembles "just a bunch of guys out there driving around."

Commanders would like to have a 10-day supply of food, water, ammunition, fuel and other basic supplies before launching a concerted offensive, but equally critical are items such as batteries and vehicle parts.

Also, Army commanders have differing views about how vigorously the war must be prosecuted in Iraqi cities and towns.

"How bad do you want to do it? We have the capability to surround a city, cut off the water, cut off the electricity. We don't want to do that," said one general. "It's all about having military success, not about attacking the civilian population. But you have to break his will, to make him understand that he will not win."

But another officer noted that rooting out militiamen and other irregulars fighting in southern Iraqi cities would enormously complicate the U.S. military effort, requiring more troops and far more supplies.