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With An Najaf isolated, rd Infantry Division now controlled the city’s outlying areas, which greatly facilitated capturing the city itself. Getting this far seemed, on the one hand, breathtaking in its speed and remarkably low U.S. casualties. But there had been some nasty surprises along the way—especially the Fedayeen—and the rd ID had had two miraculous brushes with near disaster. Were these episodes harbingers of what lay ahead for the rest of the road to Baghdad? Everyone knew Saddam had arrayed his forces in a tiered defense that got tougher the closer you got to the capital—would the rest of the journey be worse than what they had faced thus far? This was also when the “studio generals” started sharply criticizing the invasion plans. Supply lines were overstretched and vulnerable, and U.S. soldiers had been captured, all of which prompted many observers to speculate that a massive disaster was just beginning to unfold. Critics charged that too small a force had been planned, that as a result the army couldn’t sustain its momentum, supplies couldn’t reach the front, and the army couldn’t control the territory it had already captured. The pause at An Najaf looked like the offensive had run out of steam, leaving it stalled too deep into Iraq to pull out yet not deep enough to pose any serious threat to the regime. Everyone involved with the actual planning claimed the pause had been intended from the start, but reporters and commentators hinted this could just be the army trying to put the best face on their failed plan. Some media voices were already talking quagmire . Had the invasion force shot its bolt? Later events after Saddam’s fall would certainly add credence to the charge that not enough troops had been planned for the occupation, but as events would soon bear out, rd ID had just begun its dramatic dash. The army’s insistence that the halt had been planned from the beginning is echoed by air force TACPs involved with the execution of the plan. Intended as a rapid thrust through what they thought was going to be friendly territory, the first phase got rd ID to its first planned hard 9.Through the Gap, across the Bridge, and on to Baghdad Through the Gap, across the Bridge 171 fight, and now that that fight had been won, rd ID needed to consolidate its supply lines, refit, and prepare for the next lunge. Russell Carpenter, as a senior NCO, bore much of the responsibility for seeing that st Brigade ’s TACPs were ready for the next push, and as he explains, they too were resting and refitting, especially those who had participated in the hard fighting. Others were also actively engaged in preparing for the next battle. “Basically the Iraqis have separated from us. We have not pursued, we put out the scouts of course, the forward companies. But CAS activity is light. There’s kind of a lull; we’re bringing up the fuel, ammunition, all that kind of stuff, and it looks like we’re going to be there a couple three days. . . . You’re settling into sort of defensive [postures] against any counterattack as the rest of the log train catches up to it. . . . So, while we are doing that, the [TACPs] are reconstituting our gear, high-fiving everybody , ‘Okay here’s the next leap-off plan,’ . . . everybody’s looking now at Karbala Gap. Though to most observers the pause outside An Najaf seemed to be a time of simply consolidating supply lines, with little action, another phase of the battle was just getting into high gear. From the beginning of the war, Coalition air power had been scouring Iraq looking for military units vulnerable to air attack. Using the KICAS CONOPS developed just before the invasion, coupled with SCAR, which had been evolving for some time, warplanes had enjoyed some success. At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel McGee was leading the effort at the ASOC to iron out the new corps shaping concept he had helped develop. There had been some growing pains, but those had been worked out, and the biggest problem now facing this campaign, as well as the KICAS and SCAR operations, was trying to find Iraqi units that had so far remained dispersed and in hiding. Efforts to find those elusive units received a dramatic boost with the onset of the sandstorm, when Iraq began moving forces. Some were...

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