Baghdad, Iraq ? The recent string of high-profile attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Iraq has appeared to be so methodical and well-crafted that some top U.S. commanders now fear that this may be the war Saddam Hussein and his generals planned all along.

Knowing from the 1991 Gulf War that they couldn’t take on the U.S. military with conventional forces, these officers believe, the Baathist government cached weapons before the Americans invaded and planned to employ guerrilla tactics.

“I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency should Iraq fall,” said Maj.Gen. Charles Swannack, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division and the man responsible for combat operations in the lower Sunni triangle, the most unstable part of Iraq. “That’s why you see so many of these arms caches out there in significant numbers all over the country. They were planning to go ahead and fight an insurgency, should Iraq fall.”

In an interview Wednesday at his headquarters northwest of the capital, Swannack said the swiftness of the fall of Baghdad in April probably caught Saddam and his followers by surprise and prevented them from launching their planned insurgency for a few months. That would explain why anti-U.S. violence dropped off noticeably in July and early August, but then began to trend upward.

Not everyone in Iraq agrees with that theory. An alternative view is that the current resistance was not planned in advance — rather, Saddam loyalists were in disarray after last spring’s war and took several months to develop a response. In either case, the insurgents clearly gathered intelligence during that time on the vulnerabilities of the U.S. occupation force.

Swannack said there was no evidence that Saddam himself was orchestrating the attacks. “He has to move so much that he can’t do the day-to-day operational planning or direction and resourcing of the effort,” he said.

Detailed planning

Lt. Col. Oscar Mirabile, a battalion commander credited with running a sophisticated and largely successful security operation in the Sunni triangle town of Ramadi, agreed that the Baathist attacks were long planned.

“He released criminals out onto the streets,” said Mirabile. “Why would anybody do that? Saddam knew he couldn’t win a war head-to-head against coalition forces. He was setting the stage for what you’re looking at right now.”

A CIA report from Iraq received over the weekend supported the commanders’ views, saying that agency officers in the field believe that most of the insurgents are “former regime types” who were disorganized by the speed of the U.S. invasion but are now regrouping.

The CIA report also warned that if coalition forces cannot get the situation under control, Iraqi citizens may stop cooperating in the fight against the insurgents.

‘It could all go south’

“There was a time when the public was relieved the Saddam Hussein regime was gone and we were the most significant force on the ground,” a senior administration official familiar with the new report said Wednesday. “But now they are getting worried about retribution from them (the insurgents) more than us.”

He added: “When that becomes a critical mass, it all could go south.”

If these observations are borne out, it would be a significant departure from previous U.S. government assessments. Before the war, the Bush administration never gave any indication that it expected to face a large-scale, pre-planned guerrilla campaign. Just recently, U.S. officials who interrogated former Iraqi Deputy Prime minister Tariq Aziz and other former Iraqi officials said they found no evidence of such a strategy.

Whether the Iraqi opposition is waging a long-planned war, there is no question that enemy attacks on U.S. troops and their foreign and Iraqi allies are increasing in scope, intensity, sophistication and frequency.

As one top U.S. officer here noted, Wednesday’s suicide bombing of the Italian peacekeepers’ headquarters in an area which until now has been largely quiet appears to be part of a continuing effort “to spread violence to all parts of the country.”