Brigadier General Vincent Brooks was reacting to comments by Lieutenant General William Wallace, the US army's senior ground commander, that Iraq's stiffer-than-expected resistance and its reliance on subterfuge and guerrilla warfare had stalled the US advance on Baghdad and Saddam Hussein.

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," Wallace told The Washington Post at the Forward Operating Base Shell in Iraq.

He said that over-overextended supply lines combined with an enemy that is using unconventional tactics made a longer war than had been anticipated look likely.

But addressing a press briefing at the US military's computerized forward command center, Brooks said the campaign was "still consistent with our plan and how we designed it."

He denied that US war planners had misread the willingness of Iraqi troops to fight and said an assessment made at the tactical level on the ground, or "planet earth," would be different from the big picture seen at the operational level at US Central Command (CentCom).

"I don't think we've necessarily underestimated," the told reporters. "And I'm certain that we have accounted for enemy action.

"The specifics of the action? No one can ever predict exactly how a battle will unfold ... But I think we remain confident we have a good grip on what's going on here."

While the flow of supplies to the thousands of US troops who are rolling north from Kuwait to Baghdad had been temporarily slowed because of bad weather, "we're still able to conduct operations as we see them and we're still on our plan."

Brooks said that while tactics on the ground -- where Wallace operates -- may change from day to day, "at the operational level, with what we seek to achieve, it remains unchanged."

"That's what we're talking about at the CentCom level. It's a different view down on planet earth, if you will, as we describe it the closer we get to the line."

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