US: As the insurgency against US-led coalition forces in Iraq gathered steam in late summer, militants graduated from laying wire to detonate roadside bombs to using cell phones. It was a small sign of the growing sophistication of the guerrillas, as was the firing of mortars by remote control rather than from fixed positions.
"The enemy has learned to adjust," acknowledged Gen John Abizaid, head of US forces in the Iraq region. The US was adjusting too, he told reporters yesterday, but it needed better intelligence to break up the enemy cell structure.
US forces will meanwhile "attack and destroy the enemy where we find them," Gen Abizaid said, referring to "Operation Iron Hammer," a new policy of massive military response to cope with the guerrilla threat.
Asked about collateral damage from the new tactics the general said they would try not to further alienate Iraqis by causing civilian casualties, and that the tactical goal was to eventually withdraw coalition forces to the outskirts of cities and hand over security to Iraqis.
"People in Tampa no more want tanks in their streets than the people of Baghdad," he said in a press briefing at US military command in Tampa, Florida.
The "vast majority" of Iraqis were thankful the coalition forces were there, and were working with coalition soldiers, added Gen Abizaid, responding to Monday's CIA report suggesting that the insurgency could spread from the Sunni minority to the majority Shia population.
US-led coalition forces are engaged in a "low intensity conflict" in Iraq against an enemy that "does not exceed 5,000", and whose aim is "not to defeat us militarily but to break the will of the United States of America, to make us leave," he said.
The insurgents lacked popular support and often hired young, unemployed men, but they had considerable training, funding and supplies, Gen Abizaid said, acknowledging speculation that Saddam Hussein had planned this type of war all along against forces he could not defeat in a conventional war.
Gen Abizaid said he believed Saddam Hussein was "alive and moving around Iraq", but that he disagreed with the theory as Saddam was "one of the most incompetent military leaders in the history of the world."
While "there is no military threat that can drive us out", the commander conceded that "the battle cannot be won by military efforts alone" and needed to be synchronised with the political efforts of the Iraqi Governing Council.
National security adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice told reporters in the White House later that part of the response to the insurgency "is to increase the number of Iraqis in security" since "Iraqis can recognise Baathists and foreign terrorists."
Speculation is growing in the US that the Bush administration wants to create a smaller body within the 24-member Iraqi Governing Council, or establish one person as a strong leader like Mr Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan before elections that could be held early next year.