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On Friday, as called for in the original plan, the U.S. finally delivered the shock and awe, pulverizing targets in Baghdad and positions scattered throughout the country with a barrage of bombs dropped from hundreds of planes, as well as Tomahawks fired from 30 warships. By then, the Iraqi will to fight was weakening across southern Iraq. Close to 10,000 Iraqi troops surrendered in the first three days of conflict; on Saturday, Iraq's 51st Infantry Division, a 200-tank-strong corps charged with defending Basra, told U.S. commanders it was giving up. On Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said surrender discussions between U.S. officials and some Iraqi military leaders had intensified. "They're beginning to realize the regime is history," Rumsfeld said. "And as that realization sets in, their behavior is likely to begin to tip and to change."
Even a rapid victory for the allies must come with costs. U.S. and British forces lost 22 soldiers in the war's first three days. Nineteen died in military accidents. Early Sunday morning more than a dozen U.S. soldiers were wounded and one killed in a grenade attack on a camp housing the 101st Airborne Division; a U.S. soldier was held in connection with the attack. At least two soldiers died at the hands of overmatched enemy forces that nevertheless tried to fight off the invaders. Allied troops found themselves in fire fights near the cities of Samawah, Basra and Nasiriyah. Some Iraqi soldiers left their positions, put on plain clothes and vanished into the populace, raising concerns that they would stage guerrilla attacks on Western troops as they drew closer. Despite signs of weakening Iraqi morale, the mass surrenders witnessed at the end of the first Gulf War had yet to materialize. "We think they're coming," a senior Pentagon official said late last week. "We've really only been bombing for 24 hours."
American and British forces could still confront fearsome resistance if the Republican Guard units defending Baghdad are ready and willing to fight. No one expected Iraqi forces to put up much of a struggle in the barren, Shi'ite-dominated south, where support for Saddam's regime is soft. "We figured they would cave," says a Pentagon official. "They aren't the Republican Guard." But Saddam's most loyal fighters remain entrenched farther north, outside the capital and in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. While their numbers are dwindling by the day — from desertions if not from U.S. bombs — at least some are expected to try to lure the invaders into a bloody urban campaign. U.S. and British troops are also still scrambling to uncover Iraq's suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, a task that would reduce the risks to advancing troops and also validate their governments' chief rationale for war.