Sound of Guns Heralds Ground War in Baghdad (NYT / John F. Burns)

New York Times ^ | April 6, 2003 | JOHN F. BURNS

[HAL9000]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 - After being subjected to two weeks of relentless bombing that has destroyed many of the power centers of President Saddam Hussein's government, the Iraqi capital found itself today deep into the ground battle that promises to be the decisive phase of America's war to topple the Iraqi leader.

From the heart of the capital, a new cacophony of battle signaled the shift from a war fought primarily from the air to one where the outcome will depend increasingly on American ground troops.

The earth-shaking devastation of bombs and missiles was mostly stilled today, overtaken by the more distant sounds of artillery and rocket fire, by the staccato of machine-gun and rifle bursts, and by the scream of American jets flying what appeared to be low-level ground support missions.

Most of the fighting appeared to be concentrated away to the southwest of the city, in the area of what, until its capture by American troops on Friday, was Saddam International Airport.

Now symbolically stripped of the Iraqi leader's name by the Americans, the airport has become a magnetic point on the personal compass of almost everybody in this city of 4.5 million people, whether the hard core of loyalists to Mr. Hussein or the increasingly venturous Iraqis, numerous if not yet demonstrably a majority, who have begun to shake off decades of fear and to whisper hauntingly that they wait anxiously for the end.

The government has up to now held to its official line, even since the capture of the airport three days ago: the Americans, the information minister has repeated with a cherubic air at daily news conferences, have fallen into the Iraqi trap by advancing to the gates of the city.

But for those listening for shifts, for the minor notes that rise even as the major ones pound out the familiar theme, there have been hints of a wavering certainty.

Today, the minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, was no longer contending, as he did on Saturday, that the Americans had been routed from the airport by an Iraqi counterattack, and divided into isolated pockets where they were surrendering en masse. Instead, he told a news conference, the Republican Guards were "tightening the noose around the U.S. enemy in the area surrounding the airport," having killed 50 American soldiers and destroyed six American tanks.

That appeared to be a subtle but important shift, an acknowledgment that American forces really are close by and ready to fight. As for the citizens of Baghdad, the question being posed by many is this: when will American tanks and infantry try to storm the city, not as they did for a few hours early Saturday, but in earnest, with intent to seize the city's heart, to haul down the Iraqi flag that still flutters atop the Republican Palace.

To Mr. Hussein's die-hard supporters, the very notion that the Iraqi ruler's days might be numbered remains unthinkable, or at least inadmissible. But today the information minister's talk of the "scoundrels" and "villains" and "criminals" who have invaded Iraq was in a lesser key, subordinated to more pressing, more practical concerns. Iraqis, he said, should be on the lookout everywhere for the enemy, and "should not ignore" sightings of American units, or fail to report them to the Iraqi military.

From the official Iraqi standpoint, Mr. Sahhaf has made himself the media star of the war, if anybody other than Mr. Hussein would dare claim that distinction for himself.

A sort of Iraqi Donald H. Rumsfeld with the rhetorical flourishes of Soviet-era Moscow, he likes to muse on stage, developing his thrusts, amusing himself with his caustic wit at the Americans' expense.

But he was in a distinctly more sober mood today. In a statement read on state television, he said Iraqis should not be prey to "rumors," especially of a kind that suggested that American forces were gaining the upper hand.

The allies, he said, "might attempt to release rumors, believing that they can cause confusion, and tell lies, asserting that there is a landing here and there."

At about the time that statement was being broadcast, Iraqis who had filled up at a Baghdad gas station were reporting that drivers arriving from points west and northwest of the city were telling of seeing American paratroopers descending from the sky alongside the access roads that American commanders, in Qatar, were saying they were seizing so as to tighten the encirclement of Baghdad. There was no way of knowing if those sightings were merely the work of the imaginations of the drivers.

Mr. Sahhaf had other words of advice, and warning. Iraqi fighters, he said, should refrain from firing their guns in Baghdad "for no reason," as many appear to have done through the prolonged heavy bombing, conducted from an altitude that made the endless rattle of antiaircraft guns and automatic rifle seem more like a reaffirmation of vulnerability than an act of meaningful defense.

But if that sounded like an appeal for conserving ammunition, there was an intriguing, slightly menacing, counterpoint. With the enemy in Baghdad, he said, it was the duty now for "anybody who wants to do so to use his weapon," and anybody who failed to do so would be considered "cursed." Violators, he said, would not be treated leniently.

Later in the day, Mr. Hussein himself weighed in, in the form of a message to Iraqi fighters read on television. The smiling Iraqi leader was shown in his field marshal's uniform presiding at a meeting with senior officials that was said to have taken place today.

In a film broadcast on Friday that showed Mr. Hussein, or a double, strolling about some of Baghdad's western neighborhoods, the message was of a leader on top of his game, full of beaming, hand-slapping, climb-on-the-car-hood geniality.

But the statement read on his behalf today suggested an awareness that the Iraqi Army was not getting its job done. First, the statement said that anybody who destroyed an allied tank, armored personnel carrier or artillery gun would be awarded 15 million Iraqi dinars, about $5,000. Second, any Iraqi fighter losing touch with his unit during battle "let him join a unit of the same kind that he is able to join."

To some Iraqis, that sounded like a warning against giving up when units are decimated by American firepower, as American commanders have reported Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries doing in droves. Reporters traveling with American units pushing north to Baghdad have described roadsides littered with abandoned combat boots and uniforms, and large numbers of young men in civilian clothes waving white strips of cloth.

In the effort to show Iraqi defenses as holding, and even prevailing, the Information Ministry organized a press tour of a sole, burned-out American M1A1 Abrams tank that had been abandoned on an expressway during the probing reconnaissance that a unit of the Third Infantry Division conducted on Saturday.

The tank, presumably, was one of the six that Mr. Sahhaf claimed as trophies of Iraq's counterattack on the American forces near the airport. An Iraqi officer, Brig. Muhammad Jassim, told reporters that the tank was one of five American tanks destroyed in the battle, the other four having been towed away by the Iraqis to make way for traffic.

The American account acknowledged the loss of one tank.

The Iraqis at the site of the abandoned tank gave another version, one that made the American probe not so much a tour de force as a debacle. Senior army officers joined with officials of the ruling Baath Party in clambering atop the tank and chanting devotions to Mr. Hussein.

"God is great, and to him we owe thanks," someone had scribbled in Arabic on the blackened hulk. Soldiers were produced to describe the withering fire that had been trained on the Americans, and to affirm that all Iraqis were ready to die for their leader.

The lone tank hardly made the triumphal point Iraqi officials intended, especially when Western newsmen were conducted to the scene along a highway littered with the tangled, burned-out wreckage of at least 30 Iraqi tanks, armored carriers, army trucks, artillery guns and pick-up trucks of the kind favored by the Fedayeen Saddam.

What the tour also showed was that large areas of Baghdad are being turned into a military camp. Tanks, armored cars and artillery guns could be seen posted near bridges, in civilian neighborhoods and alongside the expressways, at places where no major defenses were visible only days ago. Soldiers and paramilitaries were visible digging bunkers. Some flashed victory signs at the Westerners as they drove by.

[Timesink]

Three days behind everyone else, right on schedule.