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Iraq War, major combat phase
After a buildup by special operations forces and an intensification of air attacks under the Operation NORTHERN WATCH and Operation SOUTHERN WATCH "no fly" programs, major ground forces began to move into Iraq on March 20, 2003.
As with any war, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Both sides did consider Baghdad the key center of gravity, but both made incorrect assumptions about the enemy's plans. The U.S. was still sensitive over the casualties taken by a too-light raid in Operation GOTHIC SERPENT in Mogadishu, Somalia. As a result, the initial concept of operations was to surround Baghdad with tanks, while airborne and air assault infantry cleared it block-by-block. [1]
The U.S. also expected the more determined Iraqi forces, such as the Special Republican Guard and the Saddam Fedayeen, to stay in the cities and fight from cover. Before the invasion, the Fedayeen were seen as Uday Hussein's personal paramilitary force, founded in the mid-1990s. They had become known in 2000 and 2001, beheading dissenting women in the streets claiming they were prostitutes. "It was a very new phenomenon, the first time women in Iraq have been beheaded in public," Muhannad Eshaiker of the California-based Iraqi Forum for Democracy told ABC. [2] They had not been expected to be a force in battle. It was clear that the fedayeen had minimal military training. They seemed unaware of the lethality of the U.S. armored vehicles, and aggressively but haphazardly attacked them. [3] Senior Iraqi Army officers seemed to believe their own propaganda and assume that the war would go well, and there would never be tanks in Baghdad. It was only Special Republican Guard, Saddam Fedayeen, and unexpected Syrian mercenaries that seemed to understand the reality.[4] In an interview after the end of high-intensity combat, MG Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said "...there were many, I think, Syrian and other countries that had sent personnel; the countries didn't, I think individuals came over on their own that were recruited and paid for by the Ba'ath Party to come over and fight the Americans. We dealt with those individuals there for a two- or three-day period, had a lot of contact with them, but have not seen a reoccurrence of that at this point."[5]
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