Word: abizaid
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...security challenge, the U.S. has gone back to a war footing. Coalition forces launched an offensive, code-named Operation Iron Hammer, that included attacks from helicopter gunships on supposed safe houses and arms dumps used by the opposition. In a further sign that the U.S. means business, General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, and some 200 of his war planners will soon move from Tampa, Fla., to the forward command position in Qatar that they occupied during last spring's battle to topple Saddam...
...Pentagon believes that the overwhelming majority are former Baath Party officials and other Saddam loyalists. Major General Charles Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, told the Washington Post last week he believed Saddam planned the insurgency in advance of the war. U.S. Central Command chief General John Abizaid dismissed the idea. According to the former Saddam aide, the deposed President is not leading the resistance nationally, but some cell leaders receive orders and money from him through intermediaries...
...officials say leaders of the insurgents sometimes subcontract work to young, often unemployed, Iraqi males. According to some who have been captured, an attack on U.S. troops can bring as much as $1,000, five times that if G.I.s die. Abizaid said last week coalition forces are facing fewer than 5,000 insurgents in all. That figure, while based on interrogations of Iraqi fighters, is "little more than a smart guess," says a senior Pentagon official. Among the estimated 5,000, military officials say, are perhaps a couple of hundred foreigners who have infiltrated Iraq to confront the Americans...
...desperate to find him. At home, Americans are concerned about the constant flow of U.S. casualties resulting from what new Central Command General John Abizaid described last week as a "classical guerrilla-type campaign." While there is no evidence that Saddam is directing the attacks, U.S. war planners believe that as long as he is at large, he will continue to galvanize his followers. "Until the myth dies," says Lieut. Colonel Russell, who oversees the town of Tikrit, "people are going to show unnatural fear of his return." Capturing Saddam would also give a lift to the Bush Administration, roiled...
...said repeatedly they don't believe the attacks on coalition forces - averaging somewhere between 12 and 20 a day - are being directly orchestrated by Saddam and his family, but are instead carried out by cell structures organized on regional and local lines. Just last week, Centcom commander General John Abizaid warned that the resistance fighters were clearly digging in for a long fight, in which case they would have steeled themselves for the likelihood of sustaining significant losses - even Saddam himself. For that reason, some key events that played out in Washington and New York Tuesday will ultimately...