CENTCOM has put a number to the size of the Iraqi resistance.
High-ranking U.S. Central Command officials told the Pentagon's top general Sunday that about 4,000-5,000 Iraqi fighters are opposing the U.S.-led occupation. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a significant number are unemployed men paid by people loyal to Saddam's deposed Baath Party. The estimate marks the first time officials have tried to quantify the size of the force attacking American soldiers.via USA Today
And the Washington Post has a Page One story about the Army's offensive operations going on now in Iraq. At last some attention from the mass media to the fact that we're not just sitting ducks.
Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.Posted by Alan at July 28, 2003 12:45 AMAs Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.
Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operations, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties -- such as the four soldiers killed Saturday -- are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.
...the Army has sought to keep up an unrelenting pace. "The reality is that in this company, we've been doing raids and cordon searches nearly every day" since early June, said Capt. Brian Healey, commander of an infantry company based near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Over the past six weeks, he said, sitting on a cot in an old Iraqi military base, his unit alone has detained nearly 100 people.
"I figure you can either sit barricaded in your base camp or take the fight to the enemy," said Lt. Col. Larry "Pepper" Jackson, commander of an Army outpost on the outskirts of Bayji, which is still described as hostile by U.S. military intelligence analysts. "Our key to success is staying on the offense. But you don't do it recklessly, because then you'd lose the people."
via the Washington Post