Addressing some concerns about lack of resolve and wobbling by the administration on the status of the U.S. in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez spoke yesterday:

Stung by the deaths of nearly 40 American soldiers over the past 10 days, the top American military commander in Iraq spoke of a "turning point" in the conflict on Tuesday and outlined a new get-tough approach to combat operations in areas north and west of Baghdad, strongholds for loyalists of Saddam Hussein.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said operations would be stepped up against shadowy groups behind the increasing tempo of attacks on American troops in the Iraqi heartland between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

...."We are taking the fight into the safe havens of the enemy in the heartland of the country where we continue to face former regime loyalists, criminals and foreign terrorists, who are trying to isolate the coalition forces from the Iraqi people and break the will of the international community," General Sanchez told a heavily guarded news conference in the Iraqi capital. He added, "They will fail."

....Dispensing with euphemisms favored by many Bush administration officials in recent months, General Sanchez, commander of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq, described what they were facing as a war.

He was blunt in assessing the challenge posed by armed opponents who faded away as American troops overran the country in April, only to regroup, mainly in the area known as the "Sunni triangle," between Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi. From those Sunni Muslim areas, the major beneficiaries of Mr. Hussein's rule, attackers have mounted an increasingly sophisticated campaign that the general said accounted for more than 90 percent of strikes on allied forces.

Citing a deadly Oct. 26 rocket attack on the Rashid Hotel in central Baghdad, timed to coincide with the visit to the hotel of the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the general said the attack was intended to "weaken the will of the coalition forces" and cause the United States to "walk away" from Iraq.

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