Momentous choice faces the Allies

Go for the kill now with maximum momentum, or pause for reinforcements? As the battle for Baghdad gets under way, Rupert Cornwell writes, the choice facing decision-makers becomes ever more comple

The drama is reaching its climax. American troops are on the outskirts of Baghdad and the campaign, if not the final battle, for the Iraqi capital has already begun. A momentous choice, clouded by any number of imponderables, faces American commanders.

Do they launch their attack on the city now? Or should they wait for reinforcements to arrive, hoping that unchallenged airpower, special forces operations or some form of popular uprising or coup against Saddam Hussein (assuming he is still alive and in control) will spare them their worst nightmare – a savage street-by-street battle? Last night, the special forces appeared to be already on the move.

Both sides have powerful arguments. The next few days offer virtually moonless conditions, heightening the advantage enjoyed by attackers equipped with night-vision equipment and unmanned drones able to pin point targets.

The force likely to form the backbone of any organised defence of Baghdad will be significantly smaller than it might have been, assuming the damage inflicted on the Medina and Baghdad divisions of the Republican Guard in Wednesday's fighting is as devastating as US commanders claim.

A top priority is now to prevent units of those divisions making it back to the city to link up with President Saddam's praetorian guard, the estimated 15,000-strong Special Republican Guard commanded by President Saddam's son Qusay, and guerrilla fighters loyal to the regime. But American optimism is growing, with one spokesman citing "strong and credible signs that the Iraqi forces are being overwhelmed and will soon collapse".

President Saddam's best units are believed to have been split up and spread out across Baghdad, especially in civilian areas, to reduce their vulnerability from the air, and make it harder for American troops to take them on without inflicting the "collateral damage" Washington is desperate to avoid.

Even so, days of relentless precision bombing of known depots and bases of the Special Republican Guard are believed to have reduced their effectiveness. In a wider political sense, the sooner the war is over the better, to allow America and Britain to start the job of rebuilding not just Iraq, but also their reputations in many parts of the world.

But the arguments for waiting a little are equally strong. In the first place, many analysts do not believe the forces now available – the US 3rd Infantry Division, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and elements of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions – are enough to encircle and capture a city of some five million people.

If they tried, even with overwhelming support from the air, the battle could prove a bloody, inconclusive affair. That in turn would resurrect the criticism, quieted by this week's resounding successes on the battlefield, that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, put too small a force in the field in the first place.

So why not wait a week or two weeks for the 4th Infantry Division to arrive? (This division had been intended to launch a second front from the north, until the Turkish parliament in effect vetoed the plan.) The hints from the top in Washington suggest that having gone so far, so quickly, the American forces will not spoil everything by over-hastiness now. "Patience," urged General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier this week.

General Tommy Franks, in overall command of the war, may or may not have already made up his mind. In the meantime, his forces will seek to take control of Saddam international airport, gaining a supply base just 10 miles from Baghdad's south-western edge. The aerial pounding of "regime targets" will continue, while special forces and other reconnaissance units will step up sorties to gauge the resistance to be expected later.

The caution is more than justified. For the shape of the battle for Baghdad (if not its ultimate outcome) depends on several unknowns.

The first is whether, with the 3rd Infantry and the Marine force well within the so-called red zone around the city, President Saddam will use chemical weapons (assuming he has them). But the further the attackers reach into the heart of the city, the less likely that will be, given the certainty that those who suffer most will be unprotected Iraqi civilians and his own forces.

Above all, no one knows how strong the resistance will be. As Anthony Cordesman, a former senior Pentagon official now based at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in the UK, puts it: "The key question is how well and how hard Iraqis will fight as American forces penetrate deeper into the defences around Baghdad and face a denser and denser civilian population, and ultimately urban warfare. Can Saddam create a mass popular defence of the city?"

Part of the answer lies in the number of Republican Guard units that did make it back to the capital – and in the current disposition and strength of the other Guard divisions that had been deployed to the north of Baghdad.

An equal imponderable is the mood of ordinary people. Here again the basic question arises: are the Americans seen as neo-colonial invaders or as liberators? If reports of American troops being jubilantly welcomed by the citizens of Najaf (only 100 miles south of Baghdad) are true, then the latter may at last be the case.

And last but not least, what of President Saddam himself? For the past few days, the Bush administration, from Mr Rumsfeld down, has been taunting the Iraqi ruler to come out and prove he is alive, heaping scorn on statements read in his name by Iraqi officialson television.

The presumption is that he did survive the air raid on the dawn of 20 March on a residence in southern Baghdad. But suppose he was killed or badly wounded in that attack on a "target of opportunity?" If so, proponents of the "decapitation" theory must explain why, with its head lopped off, the regime hasn't folded. Instead, the continuing resistance, even without President Saddam, would suggest that Iraqis will indeed fight ferociously for their capital.

On the other hand – and there is always "the other hand" – if the Baghdad and Medina divisions have been essentially destroyed, some top Iraqi commanders may at last conclude that further opposition is futile. In short, if a coup is ever going to happen, now is the time. In this sense too, the 2003 Iraq conflict is reaching its climax.