Planning New Moves on Weakened Baghdad

Seated inside his command-post tent Sunday near the intersection of two Baghdad highways, Col. David Perkins spread the laminated map before him.

With grease pencils, he and his top aides plotted the positions of American troops and enemy defenses.

Baghdad was surrounded. Iraq’s political and military power structures are growing weaker by the day. The regime of Saddam Hussein can no longer protect the capital.

If U.S. forces can incapacitate the Special Republican Guard, “from a large-unit tactical point of view, the war is over,” said Perkins, commander of the armored column whose raid into Baghdad on Saturday secured two main highways and unleashed a fresh tide of Iraqis abandoning the city.

Ruddy-cheeked and supremely confident, Perkins led his men -- the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade -- in planning for the next round of the battle for Baghdad. His armor spent Sunday disabling pockets of Iraqi fighters south of the city, while U.S. reconnaissance units probed the city’s defenses.

The capital, Perkins and his intelligence officers concluded, was protected by about 10,000 Special Republican Guard members, the city’s defense down from a normal force of up to 60,000 men. Three of Iraq’s six Republican Guard divisions have been effectively destroyed, and the other three are at half their combat strength.

Although dangerous urban combat still lies ahead, Perkins said, U.S. forces will not have to fight block by block. “The government can no longer effectively defend the city,” he said.

In the command tent, a battle map set in stark relief the U.S. onslaught confronting Hussein’s regime. Small colored squares representing U.S. forces encircled the capital -- one 3rd Infantry brigade from the west and another at the international airport to the southwest, U.S. Marines from the east and the 7th Cavalry from the northwest.

“You can see a convergence developing,” said Maj. Kevin Dunlop, intelligence officer for the 2nd Brigade.

The tightening of the noose sent a cascade of civilian vehicles speeding out of the city, most bound for Jordan. Commanders said U.S. troops were not stopping cars and trucks whose occupants were clearly identifiable as civilians.

They conceded that deserting Special Republican Guard, Republican Guard, and regular army commanders and soldiers were escaping by taking off their uniforms and abandoning their weapons. But the U.S. officers said they preferred to empty the capital of potential Iraqi defenders.

A strategy began to emerge Sunday that included using psychological operations units to persuade troops to lay down their arms while encouraging civilians to welcome an end to Hussein’s rule. Those attempts, coupled with continuing airstrikes and growing U.S. combat power, are designed to bring the war to a close quickly. The same tactics have been used in other parts of Iraq, with mixed results.

Among those fleeing Sunday were members of Baghdad’s wealthy elite and ruling Baath Party functionaries who bought passage to Jordan, according to intelligence officers.

Psychological-operations teams were out in force Sunday blaring messages from loudspeakers and radios, and dropping thousands of leaflets from “Commando Solo,” the nickname for psychological-operations aircraft. Teams also were broadcasting taped messages from captured Iraqi soldiers saying they are well treated and urging their comrades to surrender.

“We are delivering leaflets showing the damage inflicted on Republican Guard units,” said Capt. Richard Correz, psychological-operations officer.

American commanders expressed confidence that their strategy will erode the military’s will to fight and strip the regime of popular support.

“There is no doubt about the outcome of this war,” said Lt. Col. Eric Wesley, executive officer of the 2nd Brigade. “It’s just a matter of finding the best way for us to do it -- and when. It’s at our choosing.”

Other officers said Iraqi forces were endangering fellow Iraqis by wearing civilian clothes while attacking U.S. soldiers. In Saturday’s incursion into Baghdad, Perkins said, soldiers in civilian dress and vehicles tried to ram several American armored vehicles.

U.S. forces have found military uniforms and equipment in the trunks of cars driven by fighting-age men still wearing combat boots beneath civilian clothes.

Perkins said that in Saturday’s raid, gunmen wearing civilian clothes and military helmets popped up from trenches along Highway 8 as the armored column moved through southern Baghdad. They dropped their weapons, threw up their hands -- and lay down under American orders.

“Then we just let them go,” Perkins said, saying the combat column was not equipped to take on prisoners.

“The de facto uniform of combatants here is civilian clothes,” he added. “So we have to judge people on the battlefields by their actions, not their clothing. Saddam has essentially made his civilian populace combatants.”

Civilians were killed during Saturday raids, Perkins conceded, but he said their numbers were not nearly as high as the Iraqi government claimed. He said many of the estimated 1,000 Iraqi soldiers who died were wearing civilian clothes.

“If I put my family in a Humvee and drove them into Baghdad, I would be to blame if they got blown away,” Perkins said.

At his command post Sunday, tank commanders pushed inside the noisy tent, their faces smeared with sweat, to report on new combat operations south of Baghdad. Mosquitoes swarmed in the thick, muggy air, and military radios squawked over the hum of tank engines and a generator.

Maj. Roger Shuck, a battalion commander, struggled to pick up ordinary conversation. His hearing was affected when a rifle-propelled grenade round slammed into his armored vehicle last week. He said some of his ribs were either bruised or broken -- he wasn’t sure.

Shuck was back in combat Sunday, leading an armored convoy against Iraqi forces just south of Baghdad. He returned with a damage assessment that once again put the Americans in the winning column.

As night fell, the 2nd Brigade’s camp came under attack. Iraqis fired heavy machine guns and assault rifles at the perimeter. Perkins dispatched a squad of armored personnel carriers in hot pursuit.