WASHINGTON, September 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The prospect of a Battle of Baghdad with hardcore Iraqi troops fighting to the last is looming as the "nightmare scenario" for a war in Iraq, according to military experts.

While many reports have spoken of an operation with air strikes and lightning commando raids to isolate Saddam's regime, the worst case was raised Monday, September 23, at the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Joseph Hoar, former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), told the committee that "the nightmare scenario" is six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft artillery pieces defending Baghdad.

"The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community.

"U.S. forces will certainly prevail but at what cost and at what cost as the rest of the world watches while we win and have military rounds exploding in densely populated Iraqi neighborhoods."

The retired general said the U.S. government had to make sure it has enough forces ready to take on the Iraqi army and warned against excess confidence in Washington.

"There are people in this city who believe that a military campaign against Iraq will not be difficult because of the enormous advances of technology and the willingness of some groups in Iraq to revolt once a campaign has begun.

"I am not certain that a campaign of this nature will take that course. I certainly hope so. One thing I am certain is that there is a nightmare scenario," he told senators.

Hoar is one of three retired four-star generals, joined by Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a former NATO military commander, and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said that attacking Iraq without a United Nations resolution supporting military action could limit aid from allies, energize recruiting for al-Qaeda and undermine America's long-term diplomatic and economic interests, reports the New York Times.

The officers, some of whom warned that a war with Iraq could detract from the campaign against terrorism, while defending the U.S. right to act unilaterally to defend its interests, said the administration of President George W. Bush must work harder to exhaust diplomatic options before resorting to unilateral military action to oust Saddam Hussein and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction Iraq may have, said the paper.

"It's a question of what's the sense of urgency here, and how soon would we need to act unilaterally?" said Clark, an Army officer who commanded allied forces in the 1999 Kosovo air war. "So far as any of the information has been presented, there is nothing that indicates that in the immediate, next hours, next days, that there's going to be nuclear-tipped missiles put on launch pads to go against our forces or our allies in the region."

Cautioning that the Bush administration should get U.N. approval, Shalikashvili said, "We are a global nation with global interests, and undermining the credibility of the United Nations does very little to help provide stability and security and safety to the rest of the world, where we have to operate for economic reasons and political reasons."

Without confirming media reports that the Bush administration had war plans drawn up, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the reports "are saying the obvious."

According to the U.S. media, any war will not just be a sequel to Operation Desert Storm launched in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

It will target Saddam and his entourage and the institutions that hold up his administration instead of seeking to destroy infrastructure and large-scale troop concentrations as in the first Gulf War.

"Our interest is to get there very quickly, decapitate the regime and open the place up, demonstrating that we're there to liberate, not to occupy," one U.S. military planner told the Washington Post.

The U.S. invasion force would probably be about 100,000 troops, much smaller than the 500,000 deployed in the Gulf war in 1991, the Post said.

Buster Glosson, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general who devised the massive air campaign for 1991, said a massive troop deployment would be wrong faced with Iraq's chemical and biological weapon threat.

He told the Washington Times that there should be intense air strikes and only special operations on the ground that together would isolate the Iraqi leader and his troops in Baghdad, and cut them off from other main cities such as Basra.

"If our war-fighting asymmetrical advantage is maximized, Saddam will not last 30 days," he declared.

Experts said the U.S. military must first take control of the skies over Iraq.

"If we do go, and I think we will, I don't think we have any choice but to go in fast and hard and take down as much of his military structure before [Saddam] has a chance to react," said Jay Farrar, a military expert and vice-president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

After air strikes and moves "to consolidate as much territory as possible" the United States "will then start a huge airlift campaign to push forces in the region and it will probably be done twice as fast as during the Gulf War," he added.

Farrar said most military planners he had spoken with believe that "a core group of officers will stand with" Saddam and use "whatever means they have available, including biological and chemical weapons, as a last means of resistance."

The CSIS expert said Saddam might already have 'scorched earth' plans ready to blow up Iraq's oil and refinery facilities.

But Farrar also raised the Battle of Baghdad nightmare scenario could come out of such a strategy.