Enemy force uses 'guerrilla tactics' in Iraq, Abizaid says

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The new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said yesterday that Saddam Hussein loyalists are orchestrating a "classic guerrilla-type campaign," a statement that contradicts Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's war assessment last month.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, who became chief of the U.S. Central Command earlier this month, said the opposition force is "getting more organized, and it is learning." At a Pentagon press conference, he said cells of six to eight guerrillas, backed by regional financiers, are mounting daily attacks on U.S. troops.

At a June 30 press conference, Mr. Rumsfeld rejected the notion that resistance in Iraq has approached the level of a guerrilla campaign.

"I guess the reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one, and it would be a misunderstanding and a miscommunication to you and to the people of the country and the world," he said then.

After listing the resisters as looters, criminals, remnants of the Ba'ath Party and "foreign terrorists," Mr. Rumsfeld added, "They're all slightly different in why they're there and what they're doing. [It] doesn't make it anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance. It makes it like five different things going on that are functioning much more like terrorists."

Gen. Abizaid, however, used the word "guerrilla" twice during his press conference. "I think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is, you know, a proper thing to describe in strictly military terms," he said.

After that remark, Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita, who was with the general, took the microphone: "The discussion about what type of conflict this is, ... like so many other discussions that we're having within the context of Iraq, is almost beside the point."

Gen. Abizaid then said: "Look, war is a struggle of wills. You look at the Arab press. They say, 'We drove the Americans out of Beirut. We drove them out of Somalia. You know, we'll drive them out of Baghdad.' And that's just not true. They're not driving us out of anywhere."

Some Pentagon officials, including Mr. Rumsfeld, have refused to use the word "guerrilla" because it conjures up an image of an enemy that is well organized and has popular support. Instead, the official line has been that the Saddam loyalists are a ragtag force dispersed around the so-called Sunni Triangle from Baghdad to Tikrit.