Soldier leads dual life in Iraq

At Friday's meeting, the Iraqi council members seemed to have taken gracefully to new democratic ways. They filled out their paper ballots, dropped them into the box and moved solemnly back to their seats. When their names were called, the council members, many of them old before their years, stood erect before their new constituents. In their first vote, the council members took a bold step, rejecting a new term for the mayor, Darwash, and deciding to find somebody else.

"Someone more capable," Ali explained afterward.

Sassaman presided over the meeting with a light hand. But when it appeared the council might take up the question of getting rid of the city's police chief, Sassaman quickly drew the line.

"I hereby confirm the police chief to a six-month term," the colonel said into the microphone, and there was no dissent.

Afterward, Sassaman said the police chief was simply too valuable an ally to lose.

"The police chief is a solid guy, and we need him too much," the said.

The peaceful environment for the Americans ends at the outskirts of town. In the rural areas around the city, the resistance to the American occupation has carried on without pause. American convoys are regularly attacked on the roads that connect the matrix of military bases here. Many of the bases in the area, including that of the colonel's battalion, are regularly shelled.

The hit-and-run conflict is typical of the war being fought in the area north and west of Baghdad.

Despite intensive American efforts, including house-to-house searches, detentions and the seizure of weapons, the attacks have continued apace. On average, American soldiers are attacked 30 times a day across Iraq, and about five soldiers are killed each week.

The failure to crush the insurgency in central Iraq has puzzled American commanders. Asked last week why the relentless American pressure had failed to reduce the number of attacks, a senior American commander conceded that he and his colleagues had no answer.

Sassaman said the attacks on his troops were being carried out by a relatively small number of Iraqis loyal to the old government. But he said he still could not count on most of the area's Sunni population.

Morale among the troops here remains high in the face of the attacks, but even so, the news of a comrades' fate spreads fear in the ranks. After the death of the two Americans last week, a group of American soldiers gathered around a computer to view photographs of a recent lethal attack on an American tank.

"You see something like that, and it really scares you," said Capt. James Bevan, the executive officer of the battalion's B Company. -->

To stem the attacks, the Americans have pressed ahead with house-to-house searches. Often, soldiers have discovered large caches of weapons and ammunition and some suspected guerrillas. Yet other times, the strategy seems to alienate Iraqis who might otherwise have withheld their judgment.