Confused Start, Decisive End

Invasion Shaped by Miscues, Bold Risks and Unexpected Successes

BAGHDAD, April 12 -- It was the low point of the war for the two generals.

On March 27, outside the city of Najaf, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the U.S. Army's V Corps, met with Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division. As they sat on gray folding chairs in the desert wasteland, the war seemed to be in dismal shape.

The critical crossroads city of Nasiriyah had degenerated into a shooting gallery for U.S. convoys. An Army maintenance unit was ambushed on an overextended supply line. In just one day, 36 U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed, taken prisoner, or missing. Before dawn the next day, the first deep strike by AH-64D Apache attack helicopters was beaten back by small-arms fire that downed one chopper and riddled 33 others with bullets. Then a harsh sandstorm swept in, grounding U.S. helicopters, jamming some weapons, bringing most operations to a halt and demoralizing the troops. And they had not yet engaged the Iraqi Republican Guard, which they expected would greet them with chemical weapons.

Wallace, wearing cotton cavalry gloves and Wiley-X sunglasses, intimated in an interview after the meeting with Petraeus that, in light of the damage sustained by the Apaches earlier in the week, U.S. commanders were reconsidering their tactics. He added, "We're dealing with a country in which everybody has a weapon, and when they fire them all into the air at the same time, it's tough."

Just 13 days later, Baghdad fell.

What ended as a military victory that toppled the Iraqi government in 21 days was filled with moments of uncertainty, miscues and unexpected successes for U.S. forces. This article is an anatomy of the war as described by dozens of military officials and commanders, including key participants in the decision-making on the battlefield and in Washington. They provided an inside look at a conflict that upended a host of specific assumptions about how the war would unfold even as it delivered the final collapse of Iraqi resistance that commanders had forecast.

Some of these participants said the war got off to an unexpected and confused start. But it reached a swift conclusion in Baghdad in part because of the debilitating impact of air power against Iraq's Republican Guard divisions.

In particular, they said, a Special Operations campaign to guide bombing attacks against Iraqi forces even in the midst of a howling sandstorm appears to have been far more effective than generally realized.

But another Special Operations effort, to persuade Iraqi forces to surrender at the outset of the campaign, was suddenly overtaken by the decision of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall war commander, to start the ground offensive a day earlier than planned. This decision, the commanders and officials said, sparked a roiling argument within the military's elite Special Operations units about whether the start disrupted the surrender plan. Some officers say the course of the war would have been far smoother, with fewer casualties, had they been allowed to bring the surrender appeal to fruition.

Despite the successful drive to Baghdad, some commanders still believe the invasion force was too small, and that their supply lines were so stretched that there was a chance that front-line units would run out of food and water.

Finally, officers and Pentagon officials said that during the critical second week of the war, when the two generals met outside Najaf, a sharply different assessment of the state of the war emerged between the field commanders and officials in Washington.

A Sudden Start

The war plan was developed during more than a year of argument among Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Franks and other top officers. It had more gambles built into it than is usual for the U.S. military, officials said, and it was designed to encourage military leaders from Franks down to take chances.