US military worried over change in Iraq attacks

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story Sunday about US military concerns over changing tactics among Iraqi insurgents misreported a comment last month by Army General George Casey, the senior US commander in Iraq. Casey had predicted there could be ''fairly substantial reductions" in troops by next year, not ''very substantial" as the article stated.)

WASHINGTON -- Insurgents in Iraq have staged increasingly sophisticated attacks in recent weeks, according to US military assessments, moving beyond roadside bombings and suicide attacks to mount large-scale assaults against US and Iraqi forces and civilians.

The greater coordination and larger scope of the attacks has prompted some commanders to reexamine their belief that the insurgency was on the wane, even though the number of daily attacks has fallen since the landmark Jan. 30 election, according to leading US military officials.

Senior military strategists, speaking privately, also said they worry that insurgents are making inroads toward sparking a full-blown sectarian war and offered cautions about recent predictions that the United States could significantly reduce its forces from the current 142,000 within a year.

''One of the insurgency's strengths is its capacity to regenerate," said retired Army General John Keane, who returned recently from a fact-finding mission in Iraq. ''We have killed thousands of them and detained even more, but they are still able to regenerate. They are still coming at us."

Keane took issue with those military officials who have suggested that the insurgency was waning because the number of attacks across the country had declined to about 50 a day, compared with more than 200 per day last year, according to Pentagon figures.

''It's always dangerous to look at [the numbers of] enemy attacks," said Keane, a Vietnam veteran and member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. ''They can be very misleading, as much as the body counts in Vietnam. . . . It can lead to wrong conclusions."

On at least two occasions this month, sizable numbers of insurgents have tried to overrun US bases, a departure from the hit-and-run tactics that rely on roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as single suicide bombers.

In one failed attempt, three suicide truck bombers, backed by dozens of insurgents, tried to breach the perimeter of a US base on the border with Syria before being repelled by Marines. At least 40 insurgents launched an assault on the heavily defended Abu Ghraib prison complex south of Baghdad, where many captured guerrillas are being held. US forces fought off the attackers after several hours of fighting.

In another audacious strike, insurgents shot down a helicopter Thursday, killing 11 foreign contractors, including six Americans.

The violence continued yesterday, as bomb attacks across Iraq killed at least 16 people, including a US soldier.

Since the election, US officials in Iraq have avoided making public declarations about the state of the insurgency. In the past, military commanders have issued triumphant statements when the number of insurgent attacks fell, only to see the number skyrocket again in subsequent months.

Iraqis sympathetic to the insurgency, meanwhile, assert that fighters have increased their ability to strike effectively against US forces and the Iraqi government. The propaganda of insurgent supporters has grown increasingly strident, accusing the current Iraqi government of extending an illegal US occupation.

One group that calls itself the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance posts a daily ''Iraqi Resistance Report," translated into English on its website. Each report details attacks against US and Iraqi government forces claimed by the resistance, and the numbers often wildly exceed US reports.

''Right now, everybody's worried about it, so we're watching to see if that trend continues," a senior coalition military official told reporters Friday in Baghdad.

Rumsfeld's top spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, raised the prospect Thursday that insurgents may be ''marshaling their dwindling capacity" in undertaking more organized attacks, but acknowledged that was simply speculation.

''The Iraqi government, as well as the commanders, are working very hard to make sure that they can truly understand [if] there something more here that we need" to learn about the nature of the insurgency, he told reporters.

Still, US military commanders remain confident that the US-led counterinsurgency strategy has made significant inroads in recent months.

There have been these developments:

A US-led invasion of Fallujah last November deprived insurgents of a key sanctuary.

The creation of an Iraqi government and political system has inched forward.

US and European instructors are training greater numbers of Iraqi security forces, who now surpass the number of US troops.

Continued insurgent attempts to stop the distribution of oil, Iraq's main commodity, have largely failed.

The progress has led some top US military officials to predict that many US troops could soon hand off security duties to the Iraqis and that many Americans could then begin contemplating a return home.

The top US commander in Iraq, Army General George W. Casey, predicted in late March that ''very substantial reductions" in US troops could be made by early next year. Asked this month whether large troop reductions could be made by next year, the Army's top officer, General Peter Schoomaker, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that ''there is an opportunity if things continue and if we continue to see the kind of great progress that's taking place."

But military specialists say that such glowing assessments do not provide the full picture, that loyalists of Saddam Hussein, foreign terrorists, and criminals that make up the insurgency continue to pose a significant threat.

Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, seen as a main recruiting pool for the insurgents, has largely remained on the sidelines of the political process, a possible harbinger of future civil strife.

Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims have been killed and wounded in insurgent attacks, and the numbers continue to rise.

Indeed, while attacks on US forces have dropped by 22 percent since the Iraqi elections, according to the military, attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces have risen sharply, although coalition officials could not provide specific numbers on the Iraqis.

The threat of a civil war pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites was on gruesome display last week, as reports and photographs surfaced of the bodies of possibly hundreds of Shi'ites being pulled from the Tigris River. Some were dismembered, and others had been burned beyond recognition.

The insurgents have also slowed the economic and physical reconstruction of the country. Their attacks have added to pressure on such US allies as Spain to pull their troops out of the country prematurely. And they have eroded at least some of the American public support for the mission, polls have suggested.

''They have really evolved from the suicide bomb," Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the US Naval War College in Newport, recently told the Council on Foreign Relations. ''We will probably see better organized attacks, but fewer of them."

Keane said: ''Despite the fact that attacks are down and the psychological and political momentum is showing some success, we have to understand the insurgency is resilient, dynamic, and capable of significant surprise. They could undermine political support and political will. The military commanders are very much aware of this."

Echoing Keane's concerns, retired Army General George Joulwan cautioned against declaring military victory too soon.

''Never underestimate the enemy," he said in an interview. ''The worst thing we can do is paint too rosy a picture. The insurgents may not be able to defeat us on the battlefield, but they have developed their strategy. Can we prevail in the end, yes. But I think it is going to take a long time."

Thanassis Cambanis contributed to this report from Baghdad. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.