Word: combatted
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...north of the city that harbors considerable resentment toward the occupying forces. They're also hoping to take advantage of the fact that most of the U.S. troops in Iraq are trained to kill the enemy and win battles rather than for the delicate balance of combat, policing and civic affairs work involved in an occupation mission - witness last week's photographs of U.S. troops trying to control an angry crowd at bayonet-point. (After two Iraqis were killed in that confrontation, U.S. troops began training with non-lethal antiriot gear. Unfortunately, however, the U.S. is facing an uphill battle...
...postwar assault on Saddam's die-hards is just the latest mission for the secret commandos who are increasingly seen as the soldiers best suited for the U.S.'s continuing contest with a highly unconventional enemy in Iraq and around the globe. Special forces "have been a huge combat multiplier in this joint campaign to topple this regime," declares Army Lieut. General David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "Their effects were felt before D-day and are still felt today...
Special forces were usually ahead of the tip of the spear: as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, secret combat teams zipped into Iraq aboard specially outfitted MC-130 Combat Talon planes that used highways as landing strips, surprising the enemy at its rear. On the road to Tikrit, they fingered Iraqi vehicles fleeing the capital for destruction by M1 tanks. And inside the capital, the elite Delta Force slipped into Baghdad's back alleys and into its sewers to eavesdrop on communications, cut fiber-optic cables, target regime leaders and build networks of informants...
...attacks. Although U.S. officials have reported killing more than 100 fighters and arresting hundreds of suspects in raids this week on a suspected training camp and during searches of villages in Iraq's Baath party heartland, America has suffered an average of a soldier killed in combat every other day since President Bush on May 1 declared an end to hostilities in Iraq. The situation is getting so bad that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Wednesday told legislators on Capitol Hill that the U.S. now faces what he termed a "guerrilla war" in Iraq...
...Iraq, however, is right now neither a war nor a peacekeeping mission; it's a counterinsurgency operation - a low-intensity conflict requiring a delicate combination of combat, policing and civil affairs operations designed to isolate guerrilla forces from the civilian population in which they shelter, and then eliminate them. The remnants of Saddam's regime know they can never muster the firepower to beat an overwhelmingly superior occupying force. Instead they rely on stealth, speed and mobility to carry out hit and run attacks designed to stretch and demoralize their enemy and his supporters, and avoid concentrating their forces which...