By Richard Halloran

The most arresting passage in President Bush's address in which he gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq was not about high politics or grand strategy but of ground-level military operations, particularly those of special operations forces, the commandos known as SOF.

In a message broadcast in Arabic, the president spoke to regimental and battalion commanders facing massed American forces. "It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor," the president said. "Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed."

"I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services," the president continued: "Do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life."

It was an extraordinary appeal from an American president; not in living memory has a president so directly appealed to adversaries to surrender to onrushing U.S. troops.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld echoed the president later in the week, telling news correspondents: "Iraqi soldiers and officers must ask themselves whether they want to die fighting for a doomed regime or do they want to survive, help the Iraqi people in the liberation of their country and play a role in a new, free Iraq."

President Bush's appeal to Iraqi troops to surrender was among many weapons in the United States' psychological warfare arsenal. Iraqis were bombarded with 17 million leaflets, constant broadcasts and e-mails, and a flood of authorized leaks to the press about U.S. war plans. Advertiser library photo • March 17, 2003

Those appeals were among the early moves in a campaign of psychological warfare intended to persuade the Iraqi armed forces to break with their dictatorial leader. Iraqis were bombarded with 17 million leaflets, constant broadcasts and e-mails. A flood of authorized leaks to the press about U.S. war plans was intended to intimidate Iraqi soldiers. Defense officials said special operations forces, such as the Army's Green Berets and the Navy's SEALs, had infiltrated into Iraq to persuade Iraqi commanders to quit without a fight. SOF were already operating in northern Iraq, where 17 Iraqi soldiers surrendered even before the U.S. assault started.

Rumsfeld, in his news conference, said that Americans have been in communication with the Iraqi regular army, with the elite Republican Guard, and even with the Special Republican Guard whose duty is to protect Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld said that all were "increasingly aware" that Saddam was about to be ousted.

In an undisguised effort to scare Saddam, the Bush administration leaked a detailed account of the Army's Delta Force, a SOF unit that had been trained to hunt down and capture or kill the Iraqi leader. The first air strike that targeted Saddam may have been based on intelligence from Delta operatives. Britain's Special Air Service, or SAS, is expected to join these operations as they earlier worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan. "They don't get much credit for it," said a U.S. military official. "but they have stood by us all the way."

Britain has historical ties with Iraq, having ruled it as a protectorate after World War I until Iraq gained independence in 1932. For the American SOF, operations inside Iraq are part of a crucial test of Rumsfeld's vision of a transformed armed force that is lighter, more agile, and more reliant on airpower, precision-guided munitions and other high-tech weapons and equipment. Note that the U.S. force surrounding Iraq today is only about half the size of the force that drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991.

Inside the Pentagon, Rumsfeld's thinking is highly controversial. Many senior military officers, especially those grounded in armor and artillery, are skeptical and will be watching the outcome in Iraq intently.

A personal footnote: As American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen take the field, they are due the unswerving moral encouragement and fervent prayers of all Americans, whether one applauds or dissents from the decisions taken by President Bush. These young men and women, and their leaders, have raised their right hands and sworn to defend us at the risk of their lives. The rest of us, not asked to offer that supreme sacrifice, owe them — and their families — no less than our complete allegiance.

Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.