A TACTICAL PLAN FOR IRAQ

Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before nationwide elections can be held in January, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to senior administration and military officials.

Recent military operations to quell the Iraqi insurgency in Tal Afar, Samarra and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of the new, six-pronged strategy for Iraq, approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the officials said. While elements of the plan have been discussed in generalities recently, the officials described it in much more detail, calling it a comprehensive guideline to their actions in the next few months.

As American military deaths have increased in Iraq and commanders struggle to combat a tenacious insurgency and a deadly spate of bombings, even administration officials involved in creating the plan acknowledge that American forces face an extraordinarily difficult task and that success is far from guaranteed.

Both the overall strategy and the specific military component were described by senior administration, Pentagon and military officials in interviews over the last two weeks in response to requests from The New York Times for an answer to the question, "Is there a plan for Iraq?"

The three military officers who discussed the plan have seen the briefing charts for the new strategy, and the three civilian officials who discussed it were involved in deliberations that resulted in the strategy. The civilians, in particular, agreed to discuss the newest thinking in part to rebut criticism from campaign of Senator John Kerry that the administration has no plan for Iraq.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08strategy.html?oref=login&th