The media, present in force in the south, has been kept away from the west and officials have given only vague accounts of the action there to draw as little attention as possible.

But in a rare burst of publicity, the US Central Command revealed that US Army Rangers on Friday night assaulted an Iraqi commando headquarters for the west in darkness. Its location was not disclosed.

"That was a command and control headquarters of an Iraqi element that was essentially trying to retain control in the west," said Major General Stanley McChrystal, the deputy operations director of the Joint Staff.

The raid resulted in the capture of 50 people, as well as ammunition, gas masks and radios, according to Brigadier General Vincent Brooke, the deputy operations director for the Central Command in in Qatar.

A Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified, said documents also were seized that might be helpful in tracking down Iraq's hidden weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Largely unpopulated, the open desert in western Iraq has been a key objective since the start of the war in part because Iraq used it to launch Scud missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia in the 1991 Gulf War.

In this war, US commanders have concentrated intelligence and surveillance assets and special operations teams in the region because a Scud attack would likely draw Israeli retaliatory attacks, a complication Washington has been determined to avoid.

"What we're doing in the west could be called a lot a lot of things. It might be area denial," said McChrystal. "In a sense, we have taken away from the Saddam Hussein regime the ability to call the west their own."

"We're doing it with a very small number of troops leveraged with air power and intelligence, and we're denying him the ability to use traditional Scud baskets," he said.

"We're denying him the ability to maneuver them, to collect intelligence there, and doing it very economically," he said.

Although involving smaller commando units, Pentagon officials say the west has been no less active than the south.

Close air support was called in Friday against an Iraqi compound in Ar Rutbah, a town about 300 miles west of Baghdad on a highway leading to the Syrian border, Brooks said.

"Our special operations forces interdicted several movements in the west, including a group of 30 men dressed in civilian clothes carrying mortars, Iraqi military uniforms, petroleum bombs, and cash," he said.

Since the start of the war, coalition special forces have secured at least two air bases in the west -- H-3 and H-2.

US plans called for bringing pressure on Baghdad from all directions -- south, north and west.

Military spokesmen would not comment on whether the captured airfields are now being used to stage air operations in the west, or to bring in more and heavier ground forces.

But during the planning for the 1991 Gulf War, then defense secretary and now Vice President Dick Cheney espoused a plan to send ground forces across the western desert to Baghdad, believing it would shock the regime into collapse.

Dubbed "the western excursion," the idea was developed by aides, only to be set aside.

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