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The United States has begun a major ground offensive against the Republican Guard units defending Baghdad, entering what is expected to be the fiercest combat of the war in Iraq.

The Pentagon is still hoping Saddam Hussein's regime will collapse before troops are drawn into bloody urban warfare in the capital, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

The Republican Guard forces targeted in the ground assault are the main military forces standing between American invading troops and Saddam's centers of power in the capital of more than 5 million.

"The circle is closing," around Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, before the ground battle with the Republican Guard intensified.

Military officials repeatedly voice worries that Iraq could use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces as they close in on the capital.

U.S. Army units attacked forces from the Republican Guard's Medina Division near Karbala, and farther to the east Marines near the city of Kut fought with the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard.

Days of thunderous airstrikes, artillery barrages and skirmishes with U.S. armed reconnaissance units have weakened both divisions.

"They're being attacked from the air. They're being pressured from the ground. And in good time, they won't be there," Rumsfeld said.

To reinforce degraded units, Iraqis moved parts of two Republican Guard divisions that normally operate north of Baghdad and near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit to the southern outskirts of the capital.

The Republican Guard forces are the best trained and best equipped in Saddam's military. Still, they've been in decline since losing the 1991 Persian Gulf War and rely on tanks and other heavy weapons that were out of date the first time they faced U.S. forces.

A dozen years of sanctions took their toll, reducing the numbers of Soviet-built tanks the Republican Guards could use and the number of spare parts they could stockpile.

A main question is whether the Republican Guard forces have some of the chemical and biological weapons that U.S. leaders say Saddam is keeping and whether they could or would use them. Though they have found no chemical weapons, coalition troops searching captured Iraqi areas have found thousands of chemical protective suits and masks as well as nerve agent antidotes and chemical decontamination equipment.

The initial fighting is over terrain where American troops have advantages: Open country and small towns, rather than the urban sprawl of Baghdad. Iraqi officials have said they hope to draw the American forces into urban combat, which is chaotic, difficult and bloody both for military forces and for civilians.

The urban environment shifts some of the advantage to the defender, who can use smaller numbers of fighters sheltered in buildings and underground to pick off invading troops. U.S. military doctrine on urban combat focuses not on the street-by-street fighting Iraq hopes to bring about but on grabbing and holding key areas such as government buildings and military compounds.

From the start of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon has predicted that ordinary Iraqis would revolt once it became clear Saddam's forces would lose.

Now that U.S. ground forces are beginning to cut through his Republican Guard on the outskirts of Baghdad, the question arises: Is this the moment that allied pressure on the ground, in the air and through psychological warfare tips the balance and resistance begins collapsing?

photo credit and caption:

Flight deck crew watches a F/A-18 Hornet being launched past them from the flight deck of the USS Harry S. Truman for a strike operation over Iraq, early Wednesday, April 2, 2003. The aircraft carrier is conducting missions in supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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