led coalition forces close in on Iraqi capital, what awaits them?
What was once a narrow, quiet Baghdad street is now a hellish canyon of smoke, gunfire and death. In alleys too narrow for U.S. tanks to maneuver, Iraqi gunmen in civilian clothes take refuge in residential buildings and attempt to pin down coalition troops with automatic-weapons fire. Thousands are killed or wounded as the coalition troops slowly advance on central Baghdad. Blackhawk helicopters dispatched to rescue injured American forces come under heavy fire from rocket-propelled grenades. This is what U.S. war planners so desperately wanted to avoid: The Battle of Baghdad. Everything the United States has hurled at the Iraqi leadership was an attempt to prevent this moment. But within a few days – as early as tomorrow if the weather cooperates – U.S. and British infantry divisions will arrive at the outskirts of the Iraqi capital. They may decide a bloody assault on Baghdad is the only way to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But urban warfare might claim the lives of hundreds of
