THE ENEMY WITH MANY FACES

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The violent reality of life in Iraq stands in contrast to the Bush Administration's sunny assessments of the country's progress toward democracy. A growing chorus of lawmakers, soldiers and U.S. military and intelligence officials warn that the U.S. faces a potential disaster in Iraq. Critics of the Administration pounced on reports saying a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which the CIA gave to the White House in July, lays out a distressing view of Iraq's future. According to a U.S. official familiar with the estimate, it envisions three possible scenarios for how events might unfold over the next 18 months. The official says the estimate foresees, "at best, a situation that would be, in terms of security, tenuous and, at worst, a trend line that could point in the direction of a civil war."

Officials from the U.S. military and the interim Iraqi government are playing down the significance of the intelligence estimate. "It says what we've been saying for months," a Pentagon civilian says. "There's a 1-in-3 chance of civil war." Officials insist that a sufficient portion of Iraq will be pacified in order to hold elections as scheduled in January 2005. But the insurgents have shown an impressive ability to regenerate. Jeffrey White, a former senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, says there could be "as many as 100,000 insurgents," including those who provide food, clothing and shelter. "This is not a small number of people," White says. And they're proving hard to kill. On Friday, Iraqi troops backed by Americans swept onto Haifa Street. Al-Zarqawi's militants responded with two car bombs. Heavy fighting could be heard for four hours. Speaking by phone during the battle, an insurgent relayed to TIME a message from al-Zarqawi's foot soldiers: "We have already slipped away. The others have gone to their homes. No one will find them. We are safe." Indeed, once the Iraqi troops pulled back from the area, the insurgents reappeared.

The U.S. still characterizes the insurgency as a loosely organized network that includes former members of the Baath ruling party, homegrown jihadis and foreign terrorists. But interviews with insurgents and materials obtained by TIME suggest that the most active and violent elements of the insurgency now come under the sway of al-Zarqawi and his allies. A series of audiocassettes obtained by TIME provides rare insight into their mind-set. In hours of sermons and "seminars," as they are called, leaders of Attawhid wal Jihad exhort their rank and file to slaughter Iraqis cooperating with the U.S. and the interim government. On one tape, a man named Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, one of al-Zarqawi's key commanders and a member of the organization's religious committee, preaches that any nation built on secular principles is "in the light of Islamic law a tyrannical infidel and blasphemous state." Anyone associated with it, he continues--especially soldiers and police, whether or not they are good Muslims--may be murdered, as "they do not represent themselves; they are means in the hands of the tyrants." Even Muslims "who pray" may be slaughtered to punish the Iraqi government or U.S. forces. "If the infidels have good people among them, and our fighting against them necessitates annihilating these good people, we are permitted to kill them because we are ordered [by God] to do so," he says.