I'm going to cut and paste the entire International Herald Tribune article as it appeared in the NY Times on this even though there are those among us who warn against doing so.
Top U.S. General in Iraq Sees 'Classical Guerrilla-Type' War
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, July 16 ? A top United States general said today that American troops in Iraq were now facing a "classical guerrilla-type campaign" ? the sort of phrase Bush administration officials have so far avoided ? and he added that American troops should be prepared for duty tours of perhaps a year.
The blunt assessment by Gen. John Abizaid of the Army, who has responsibility for all military operations in Iraq, came shortly after the NATO secretary general made it clear that the military alliance had no interest in expanding its own limited role in Iraq.
General Abizaid, who recently succeeded Gen. Tommy R. Franks atop the United States Central Command, said that military planners were working to bring home some units quickly, including the Army's Third Infantry Division. But with parts of Iraq still highly unstable, yearlong deployments are possible, General Abizaid told reporters at the Pentagon.
His reference to guerrilla-style tactics, with its resonance of the messy, protracted and unpopular American involvement in Vietnam, was the sort of language the Bush administration has not used thus far.
But in the face of continuing deadly attacks, American officials have been gradually strengthening their descriptions of the resistance that troops face.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said for the first time a few days ago that the resistance might be regionally organized, if not nationally so. He also disclosed last week that the cost of American military operations in Iraq had hit $3.9 billion a month, far more than anticipated.
The casualty toll in Iraq reached a politically sensitive milepost today with the 147th combat death among United States forces since the war began on March 20. That is the same number as died in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
The comment about NATO, made in Brussels by Lord Robertson, may undercut mounting demands in Congress for the Bush administration to draw the military alliance into direct peacekeeping duties in Iraq to lessen the American burden there.
Yet that, in turn, could increase pressure on the White House to find other sources of support, particularly in light of the realities General Abizaid described.
American troops in Iraq, the general said, were facing "midlevel Baathist, Iraqi intelligence service people, Special Security Organization people, Special Republican Guard people that have organized at the regional level in cellular structure."
General Abizaid said they were "conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us." He added, "It's low-intensity conflict, in our doctrinal terms, but it's war, however you describe it."
General Abizaid, describing the level of resistance, said he was not sure whether the number of incidents had escalated. "But it is getting more organized, and it is learning," he said. "It is adapting, it is adapting to our tactics, techniques and procedures, and we've got to adapt to their tactics, techniques and procedures."
Amid the sharp sense of deterioration in the Iraqi situation, the Senate voted, 97-0, last week to urge President Bush to "consider formally and expeditiously" a NATO deployment to Iraq.
Congressional willingness to support the costs of war has clearly been affected by the failure to find evidence of banned weapons programs in Iraq and by questions about the evidence the administration cited for going to war.
On this count, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, loosed especially harsh criticism of the president today.
He said Mr. Bush now had a "dangerous gap in credibility" on national security, an apparent reference in part to the president's disputed assertion in January that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
"Americans should be able to trust that what the president tells them is true," Senator Kerry said.
And in remarks prepared for delivery in a New York speech, the senator questioned whether the United States had been made safer since the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Bush, he asserted, had "stalled" investigations into the 2001 attacks, and the administration "gave presidential sanction to misleading information and is still trying to conceal what happened."
The White House, seeking to move past one of the toughest political patches it has faced, asserted today that it had not inflated the Iraqi threat and said that its case for war was "very compelling and solid."
"We are confident that we will uncover the full extent of Saddam Hussein's programs, and confident we will find weapons of mass destruction," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said.
Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on Tuesday that Mr. Bush's postwar policy had brought "chaos for the Iraqi people and continuing mortal danger for our troops." He urged the administration to seek United Nations approval for a NATO peacekeeping role.
But Lord Robertson, in remarks reported by Reuters, said that he had made it "perfectly clear" to senators that NATO was already committed to providing logistical and communications support for a Polish-led force for Iraq, and wanted that endeavor to succeed before considering a greater load.
"No formal approach has been made about NATO doing more than that," he said, "largely because that is a fairly major commitment in itself."
"After that, it may well be that some of the nations would want to do more, but I think we should focus on making a success of what we're doing at the moment."
Beyond existing commitments by coalition partners to send some 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, no large country has shown any eagerness to take part in postwar military there, though talks with several nations continue.