In Najaf, politics is dictating tactics. The stop-start approach is frustrating at times but broadly welcomed by US troops, Karl Vick writes from the front line.
The company commanders had their maps, their orders and their rules of engagement.
"As for the timeline, I'm going to ask you to remain flexible," said US Maj Doug Ollivant, running the pre-battle briefing earlier this month. "You've just entered the world of political war, and it's not a guy wearing a uniform who is going to be making the final decision on where and when this happens."
Maj Ollivant was flexible when the order to scrub the mission reached his armoured Humvee that night, on the way out of the main gate of the principal US base in Najaf with a column of Abrams tanks behind him. But three nights later, when the same message - no go - passed down again, the 1st Cavalry Division officer cursed.
"Welcome to my world," he ruefully told a Special Operations officer who also had been kept dangling for two weeks by the shifting political calculations dictating how US forces go about defeating a Shia Muslim militia fighting from inside the holiest shrine in Shia Islam.
The evidence is mounting daily in Najaf that it is the Iraqi government which is calling the shots.
Here, on the order of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, night raids bolt forward or are halted, bombs fall or remain snuggled beneath the wings of F-15s, and ambitious combined arms operations are meticulously planned and then shelved, only to be revived when a shift in the political winds has been detected.
Though sometimes trying, the situation is broadly welcomed by the US military.
The Najaf battlefield revolves around the shrine of Imam Ali, now one of the most sensitive religious sites in the Muslim world. Since the invasion of Iraq 17 months ago, US commanders have known to avoid the gold-domed site and leave its security largely to the Iraqi police. But now that the Shia militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army, has made the splendid shrine complex both a hideout and base, US officers say they welcome advice on how aggressively they can pursue a confrontation without enraging Muslims the world over.
"The only way people will accept this is if it is to be the desire of Iraqi leaders, not just the US military," said an American official in Iraq. And US officials and commanders say they are eager to see the Iraqi government assume real authority.
"That's what we want: we want them to take charge so we can get the heck out of here," said Col Dewitt Mayfield, senior planner for US forces in Iraq. "It's their country, a sovereign government. Not very good, maybe, but sovereign."
Since the US-led occupation authority transferred power to the Iraqis on June 28th, the chain of command has kept its structure but changed personnel. "It's civilian control of the military," said Maj Gen Peter Chiarelli, who commands the 1st Cavalry. "That's what our system's all about." Except now the civilians are not Americans.
At the desert HQ of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit outside Najaf, war plans were being made last week in marathon meetings kicked off by Iraq's Defence Minister, Hazim Shalan. "He sets the tone," an officer who was present said.
Mr Shalan was one of three senior Iraqi cabinet members in the base, shuttling from Baghdad to give counsel to the generals.
"We're following strict guidance from the prime minister," said Capt Carrie C. Batson, spokeswoman for the Marine command in Najaf. "We're talking to them probably five or six times a day."
It's a dramatic change from pre-June 28th, when the Americans could do as they pleased. "I used to have lunch with these guys," said one US commander in Najaf. "We never talked about tactics a year ago. They only wanted to talk about politics. Now we're asking them what our options are . . . Everything we're going to do is based on what the Iraqi government says."
Officers said the ban placed on US troops firing towards the gold dome of the shrine was worked out with the Iraqis, who understood the propaganda catastrophe that could result from damage to the site. The Iraqi government also requests occasional pauses in US offensive operations, as well as the lifting of such pauses for raids that remind al-Sadr just how big a hammer lay at hand.
So it was that on Saturday night, Maj Ollivant was finally leading a column of tanks out of the main gate towards a midnight rendezvous in the cemetery north of the shrine.
Maj Ollivant, who has a doctorate in political science from Indiana University and taught political theory at West Point, was philosophical about the last scrubbed mission, yanked back by Mr Allawi's announcement that Iraqi forces would lead the way in Najaf.
"Actually, in the long term, putting on my theory cap, it's a good sign," he said. "You've got a prime minister now who's actually countering al-Sadr's call."
Now the theory cap was off and night-vision goggles were on for a mission that, for the first time, brought US armour to the militia's back door, punching holes in a section of a parking garage not 400 yards behind the shrine. By 1 a.m., Maj Ollivant and his battalion commander were looking down on the assault from the eerie beauty of tombs silhouetted by the coloured lights draping the shrine's minarets.
Then a red line arced across the sky - tracer fire from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, answering a machine gun deep in the warren of mausoleums. A series of mortar explosions quickly followed as the militia homed in on the Bradley.
So it went for more than an hour, fire to the left, the right, and from down the hill, a rainbow of stuttering light as the Cavalry's armour detonated a string of roadside booby traps and lurched towards the target. The five command Humvees crawled through a narrow cemetery road when the machine gun opened up again. "Back up!" Maj Ollivant shouted as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated nearby. "Now!"
The entire column had to back up in unison at an excruciating crawl.
"You know what that was, Brian?" the major asked his intelligence officer back at the base, with the Cavalry armour headed home from a mission accomplished with no casualties. "That was a good, old-fashioned cowboy raid!"
That, apparently, is what Iraq's Prime Minister wanted. As the weeks have passed in Najaf and more ambitious military plans have been detailed, rehearsed and, in every case, set aside, Mr Allawi has made his wishes clear. Accordingly, US forces have calibrated a slow but steady tightening of the armoured noose around the shrine, while the government continually insists "a few hours" remain for al-Sadr to agree to a negotiated peace.
"This is classic, what von Clausewitz said about war being politics advanced by other means," Maj Ollivant said the morning after, referring to the Prussian military theorist. "If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that's what I was doing last night - using violence to make a political point." - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)