Word: baghdad
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...officer estimates that as many as 1 in 3 senior officers questions the wisdom of a pre-emptive war with Iraq. The reasons aren't surprising: the U.S. military is already stretched across the globe, the war against Osama bin Laden is unfinished, and even if the march to Baghdad goes quickly, a long postwar occupation looks inevitable. The military's assessment of the chances of success are less optimistic than those of the Administration's theologians. So the sessions produced an inevitable compromise between soldier and politician. And if it's hard to tell who won, that's partly...
...would be dangerous in Iraq, where Saddam has a 400,000-man army. As the plan bounced between Washington and Franks' Tampa, Fla., headquarters, Franks' troop count fell and then rose again as war planners became convinced that they might have to engage in door-to-door fighting in Baghdad. The final number split the difference: war with Iraq could begin with as few as 150,000 U.S. troops in the region--ready to strike by mid-February--with 100,000 or more standing by in Europe and elsewhere. "Rumsfeld is all about challenging your assumptions," says a senior Navy...
...keep the U.S. invasion force relatively small last winter in order to shorten the war--though that has left the U.S. with what many believe is an occupying army too small to pacify, disarm and rebuild the fractured Iraqi nation. Five Americans died in combat last week, and the Baghdad hotel where Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, was staying came under attack by rocket fire (he was uninjured). And it is ever more clear that one ramification of Rumsfeld's win-it-fast design is that the President will be spending more time than he had planned...
What is Tehran?s main man in Iraq up to? The U.S. military, which claims Iranian special forces and intelligence operatives have infiltrated Iraq, insinuates that Hassan Kazemi Ghomi, the charge d?affaires of the Iranian embassy, is intent on undermining Washington's mission in Baghdad. Indeed, U.S. military intelligence and the American-backed Iraqi National Intelligence Service told TIME that Ghomi is a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? elite Quds Force, a special forces outfit much like the Green Berets, with specialized skills in working with local forces and militias. A senior U.S. military intelligence officer claims...
...Iranian policy, he says, is to stabilize the nascent government in Baghdad, not to disrupt it. ?Security [in Iraq] is good for us because then there?s no pretext for foreign troops to remain,? he said. If Washington had proof that Iranian forces were operational in Iraq, then it should be produced, he insisted. Instead, he says, it is time for Tehran and Baghdad to establish a strong strategic relationship, replete with intelligence sharing and Iranian assistance in building up the Iraqi security forces, roles the U.S. currently holds a monopoly over. ?What we actually want inside Iraq today...