The Black Vault - U.S. Pounds Baghdad, No Rush for Ground Assault

By Samia Nakhoul - BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. planes rained down bombs and missiles on central Baghdad on Monday, as American military leaders fended off growing criticism of their war plans but said they were in no hurry to storm the Iraqi capital.

As dawn broke over the Iraqi capital on the 12th day of the U.S.-led invasion to oust President Saddam Hussein, the ground shook from two blasts at the presidential palace used by Saddam's son Qusay, who commands the elite Republican Guard.

Earlier, a cruise missile hit the roof of the Information Ministry in a night-time raid, smashing glass panels and damaging satellite dishes. It was the second attack in three days to target the ministry.

Faced with stronger than expected opposition from regular and irregular forces loyal to Saddam, U.S. troops dug in south of Baghdad, apparently in no rush to assault the Iraqi capital until air strikes and artillery had ground down its defenders.

Round-the-clock air strikes have hammered positions in and around Baghdad to break Qusay's Republican Guard units entrenched in the sprawling city's outskirts.

In Washington on Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected criticism that he had launched the war with insufficient ground strength, but predicted Iraqi resistance would stiffen even more as U.S. troops approached Baghdad.

Some U.S. leaders had suggested many Iraqis, particularly in the Shi'ite south, would surrender without a fight after decades of repressive rule by Saddam's Sunni-dominated administration.

But tough Iraqi resistance, guerrilla tactics like a suicide bombing on Saturday and over-extended U.S. supply lines have wiped out expectations of a quick victory for the invaders.

U.S. Marines launched a dawn raid on the southern town of Shatra, north of Nassiriya, on Monday, aiming to kill senior Iraqi officials they believe are directing guerrilla attacks on U.S. supply convoys.

Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said the Marine unit he was traveling with was targeting Ali Hassan al-Majeed, or "Chemical Ali," the cousin Saddam has put in charge of the southern front. Majeed earned his nickname by overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers in 1988.

RUMSFELD DENIES PENTAGON RIFT

Facing scrutiny over a war plan that involves far fewer troops than the number used in the 1991 Gulf War to end Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, Rumsfeld denied reports he rejected advice from Pentagon planners for substantially more men and armor.

"I think you'll find that if you ask anyone who's been involved in the process from the Central Command that every single thing they've requested has in fact happened," he said.

Rumsfeld would not say when the war would be won, but one of his closest civilian advisers, Richard Perle, said the campaign could be shorter than the 1991 Gulf War, which saw 38 days of air strikes followed by a 100-hour ground war.

However, U.S. public expectations of a quick and easy war in Iraq, fueled by comments by Perle and others, have faded. A poll on Sunday said 55 percent of Americans felt the government had been too optimistic.

A British survey published on Monday showed support for the war had fallen for the first time since it began and revealed a growing feeling both that the conflict would take longer than initially expected and that the campaign was not going well.

The prospect of a drawn-out war that could hurt a fragile recovery in the global economy helped drive down the dollar and Asian shares on Monday, while oil prices rose slightly and safe-haven investments like gold and bonds gained.

General Richard Myers, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted the campaign was on track, with U.S. and British forces already in control of 40 percent of Iraq, but he signaled there would be no swift ground assault on Baghdad.

"We're not going to do anything before we're ready," Myers said. "We're certainly not going to do anything to put our young men and women in danger precipitously. We're also not going to put Iraqi civilians in danger as well."

CASUALTIES MOUNT

Since the war began on March 20, the United States has lost 39 dead and 104 injured with 17 listed as missing. Britain has lost 24 dead. In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said 420 Iraqi civilians had died and at least 4,000 were wounded since the start of the war.

Three U.S. troops were killed and a fourth injured when a Marine helicopter crashed on Sunday in southern Iraq.

British Royal Marine commandos clashed with Iraqi paramilitary units south of Iraq's second city Basra on Sunday in sometimes fierce fighting that left one soldier dead and an undetermined number wounded, a British military spokesman said.

In northern Iraq, U.S. aircraft continued to bomb targets in Iraqi government-held territory and U.S. and British special forces in the Kurdish-run zone scouted Iraqi positions.

The U.S. military said 15 troops were injured on Sunday when a truck driven by a man wearing civilian clothes drove into a group of soldiers just outside a U.S. military base in Kuwait.

The motives of the attacker, who was shot and wounded, were unclear. U.S.-led forces are on high alert for this kind of attack after an Iraqi officer killed four U.S. soldiers in a suicide bomb at a military checkpoint inside Iraq on Saturday.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said the war was going well for Iraq and defended the use of suicide bombers.

"When you fight an invader by whatever means available to you, you are not a terrorist; you are a hero," he told ABC television. "These people are heroes. They are freedom fighters against invaders, against colonialists, against imperialists."

Radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it had already sent would-be suicide bombers to Baghdad.

An Iraqi military spokesman said 4,000 willing "martyrs" from across the Arab world were already in Baghdad.

Chanting "suicide attacks lead to freedom," about 150,000 Moroccans marched against the war on Sunday as protests flared around the Muslim world, with tens of thousands also taking to the streets in Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Despite the focus on Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell rounded on other states in the region in a speech to a powerful Jewish lobby group on Sunday, warning Syria to stop supporting Saddam and "terrorist groups" and Iran to cease backing "terrorism" and seeking weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush, backed by Britain, launched the war to overthrow Saddam after saying he had refused to give up chemical and biological weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Iraq said it has no such weapons and none has so far been found, although invading forces have discovered several thousand chemical warfare suits left behind by Iraqi forces.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TDNTE1CMOY2WGCRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=2475669