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MSNBC - Insurgents' tactics more sophisticated :
The bridge demolitions are not the only evidence of the insurgents' increasing sophistication.
'When we first got here, it was just IEDs,' the roadside bombs known as improvised explosive devices, 'and mortars,' said Sgt. James Amyett, a scout with the 1st Infantry Division who arrived in Iraq just over a month ago. 'Then all of a sudden, it's full-scale ambushes.'"
>>>In another departure being studied by U.S. military intelligence, groups of fighters launched synchronized attacks Friday on several U.S. and Iraqi installations in Baqubah, a provincial capital north of Baghdad. By simultaneously striking U.S. troops at the police station, the provincial governors' office and a U.S. military office, the insurgents displayed not only a considerable amount of planning and positioning but also a level of aggressiveness far beyond the roadside bombings and firing of rocket-propelled grenades that occur daily in Iraq.
"This ain't just 15-year-old kids with RPGs," said a combat engineer in the 1st Infantry Division.
The new assertiveness of the anti-U.S. fighters was displayed further later that day on the outskirts of Baqubah, where dozens of RPG-toting fighters confronted a platoon of four Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to a 1st Infantry Division after-action report. "The platoon was literally surrounded by the enemy," the report said. One U.S. soldier and about 20 Iraqis were killed in the encounter, the report said.
>>>'Starting to stand and shoot'
"More and more, they're starting to stand and shoot," said Sgt. Maj. John Fourhman, the top enlisted soldier in the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "Before, they just ran."
In addition, Iraqi fighters have begun dynamiting highway overpasses in Baghdad. Though they did not destroy the spans, they succeeded in slowing traffic, depriving U.S. supply convoys of their best defense against ambushes -- speed. It is far easier to use roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades against a truck mired in traffic than it is to hit one moving at 60 mph.
The evolution of the insurgents' tactics is particularly surprising, military analysts say, because many such moves had been expected but did not occur during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last spring.
Attacks on bridges were widely expected within the Army because it was clear that the U.S. troops heading for Baghdad would have to cross the Euphrates. Also, while much of the Iraqi military, including its armored units and air force, was believed to have deteriorated badly after a decade of crippling economic sanctions, Iraqi military engineers, who would have overseen the destruction of bridges, were judged to be extremely competent. As it happened, not one bridge was detonated to block the path of the invasion force.
>>>"It's a combination of Saddam loyalists and Shiite militias," Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said in a brief interview here at FOB Duke, where he was reviewing combat preparations.
Batiste said the influence of former Iraqi Republican Guard officers was especially apparent in the fighting in the Sunni town of Fallujah, where, he said, many veteran officers made their homes. "You could staff a division with the Iraqi officers living there," he said.
Maj. Kreg Schnell, Pittard's intelligence chief, agreed with Batiste's assessment. "There's been a marriage of convenience between Sadr's militia and Saddam loyalists," he said.
What officers here say they are not seeing is a sharp increase in the number of foreign guerrillas involved in the fighting. That element, said Pittard, is tiny -- perhaps "about 2 percent."
Looks like Iranian Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards to me. Would they stick out as "foreign fighters" to the Iraqis, or would they blend in?

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