Battle for Fallouja Seen as Inevitable

The plans have been laid, the troops are positioned, and all is ready for a massive Marine assault on Fallouja -- and with it the long-dreaded prospect of major urban warfare in Iraq.

“We got the last unit in place today. We’re tightening the noose,” Col. John Toolan declared with grim satisfaction, standing on the roof of the Marine command post at the edge of the volatile Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday as occasional hostile rounds zinged overhead and American tanks rumbled toward their positions on the dusty plain.

Now, from Fallouja to the White House to the Pentagon and across the Capitol, officials are taking a deep breath.

From one end of the chain of command to the other, there is a palpable sense of how high the stakes may be in the looming battle between U.S. forces and insurgents holed up in the city of 300,000 in the Sunni Triangle:

* The virtual certainty of civilian casualties and their potential for spurring wider resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

* The problem of ordinary Iraqis’ increasingly negative attitude toward the U.S. presence.

* The American public’s perception of how the war is going.

* The reaction of the international community as the June 30 deadline approaches for the transfer of power to a transitional Iraqi government.

* Whether U.S. casualty rates continue to climb or begin to decline.

Yet high as the risks may be, U.S. officials -- and many outside analysts -- say a full-scale assault is all but inevitable.

“This is a real turning point,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle Eastern affairs at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“If we don’t firmly take back Fallouja and establish in the minds of all these people in Iraq that we’re in control, we’ll have to fight battles like this all over Iraq, and on the roads. This is a crucial battle.”

Since April 5, days after four American civilian contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated in Fallouja, Marines have encircled the city. And despite an 18-day cease-fire, skirmishes have erupted daily, with Marines calling in airstrikes Wednesday for the second consecutive day.

It is the sense of Fallouja’s importance to larger U.S. interests in Iraq and beyond, Pentagon and Bush administration officials said, that has caused delays in a planned full-scale assault -- which at one point was set to begin Sunday.

By delaying the attack, U.S. planners have hoped to show the Iraqi population, the Muslim world and the American public that Washington has done everything possible to avoid a bloody assault on the city.

At this point, however, almost no U.S. officials expect the talks between insurgents and local leaders in Fallouja to succeed.

Nevertheless, L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator overseeing Iraq, and the top commander on the ground, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, have at least once ordered the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to postpone the scheduled attack, with the approval of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, defense officials said.

One senior official described the delay as part of “a whole developing public diplomacy, information operations campaign” designed to reduce negative reactions to a final assault.

Accordingly, U.S. officials have sought to focus attention on the insurgents’ violations of the cease-fire. And they have described the response by American forces as purely defensive and retaliatory.

But the tanks, AC-130 gunships and attack helicopters used in these “counterattacks” have delivered such heavy firepower that some analysts believe they have a larger purpose: to soften up and hollow out the insurgent forces before a final assault.

Moreover, military sources said, Special Forces units and other special operations teams have carried out lower-profile offensive operations within the Fallouja perimeter, including raids on suspected guerrilla leaders’ hide-outs.

Many military strategists believe that such attacks should be followed by a full-scale assault, the blueprints for which have been approved by the Pentagon.

Defeating the Fallouja insurgents “would deal a blow to all the insurgents across the country,” said Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Sattler, chief of operations for the U.S. Central Command, which is directing the Iraq war.

“I just believe that that would send a message to the rest of those who are possibly hanging on, thinking that they can hold out long enough or they can hold out until they can negotiate on their terms. I think that the message will be sent that ... that’s only a pipe dream on their part.”

At the White House, officials sought to portray an atmosphere of business as usual, emphasizing that President Bush was working on an array of issues, including preparing for his appearance before the Sept. 11 commission today. The president met Wednesday morning with the prime minister of Sweden and then dropped in on a White House staff briefing.

But Iraq clearly took up a large portion of Bush’s day.

After his usual early morning briefings by the CIA and the FBI, the president convened a National Security Council meeting that included a video link with Bremer and Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command. Abizaid was in Afghanistan, Bremer in Iraq.

Afterward, the president met with Rumsfeld.

Bush also spoke to reporters, saying, “Our military commanders will take whatever action is necessary to secure Fallouja on behalf of the Iraqi people.”

The president had been kept abreast of developments around Fallouja even during his brief helicopter trip to Baltimore on Tuesday afternoon, one senior White House official said.

“The president is in close contact with military leaders in Washington and in the region,” said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary. As events warrant, Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, regularly keeps him updated throughout the day, he said.

The White House activity is part of what Pentagon officials said is an intensive series of communications and consultations between field commanders, senior military leaders, principal administration officials such as Rumsfeld, and the White House.

Key to these discussions, one official said, is a perception that the situation in Fallouja is the converse of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. That hard-fought battle ended with U.S. forces prevailing, but the size and ferocity of the guerrillas’ attack caused Tet to be perceived as a strategic and public relations failure.

By contrast, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, U.S. officials believe that the Fallouja insurgents have raised their profile militarily, but have set themselves up for a larger defeat.

For one thing, the insurgents have not been able to expand their base beyond Al Anbar province. For another, the fighters already have suffered 1,500 to 2,000 deaths, by U.S. military estimates.

Critics of the Bush administration’s policy argue that such a view is unrealistically rosy and that even a military victory could further alienate Iraqis and the Muslim world.

The Pentagon’s approach to Fallouja is markedly different from the approach in Najaf, where U.S. forces have ringed the town occupied by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia. No full-scale assault on Najaf is in the offing because occupation political and military leaders say they are satisfied that they have marginalized Sadr, whose gains in public support have come through direct confrontations with coalition troops.

U.S. officials believe that there is a good chance that rival Shiite leaders and Iraqi officials will help defuse the Najaf standoff.

No such hopes exist for Fallouja, most military strategists say, pointing out skirmishes continue amid truce talks.

“If the negotiators were able to get some tangible results, they would take the deal. The fact of the matter is they’re not,” said Gen. John Keane, who was involved in war planning and operations in Iraq before retiring as the Army’s vice chief of staff in November.

“I think there’s probably some frustration waiting, given the fact that the Marines are being attacked. But I also believe that it’s the right strategy,” Keane said.

With 7,000 Marines in position around Fallouja, the final assault, officials said, will be an extension and expansion of what’s being done now, including greater use of armor and attack aircraft.

“It’s not a guns-blazing, culminating kind of thing. It’s going to be much more subtle than that,” a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But another senior military official, who described attacks Tuesday and Wednesday as relatively small retaliatory strikes, said there would be no mistake that one of the most significant battles since the U.S. invaded Iraq last year had begun.

“When we go in, you’ll see, we’re going to go in with heavy armor, and we’re going to kill people,” he said.

Hendren reported from Washington and Perry from Fallouja. Times staff writers Richard T. Cooper, Edwin Chen and Esther Schrader in Washington and Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad contributed to this report.