The situation, in fact, does not appear to be that simple. The unanticipated resistance from guerrilla forces in the south and the limited size of the American force in the region has slowed the tempo of the war plan. ------ Such a move could give the allies more forces to take on the Republican Guard, gain control of the cities in the south and stifle resistance from paramilitary units there and guard supply lines. ------ The sequencing suggests how the bacteria went wrong. Nearly a third of its genome consists of mobile elements of DNA on its chromosomes and in self-contained packets called plasmids. The toxic effects and drug resistance are a result of this mobile DNA. ------ Dr. Paulsen said that the greatest significance of the sequencing was in ''finding how much genetic exchange has gone on in the evolution of this pathogen.'' It is, he said, ''easy to transfer resistance genes among enterococcus bacteria and to other things like staphylococcus.'' ------ Drug-resistant staphylococcus is a major problem for hospitals and, Dr. Paulsen said, one or two strains had ''virtually certainly gained resistance genes from an enterococcus.'' ------ The Second Symphony was Ullmann's final composition, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and left incomplete -- in a piano version, with scoring annotations -- when he was sent to Auschwitz. Like ''Der Kaiser von Atlantis'' and some of the chamber music he wrote in Theresienstadt, this work moves freely between styles, with Mahler prominent among the influences. It has some powerful ideas, most notably a finale in which a Hebrew folk song, a Hussite hymn with Czech nationalist connotations and a Lutheran chorale are juxtaposed as a message of resistance. ------ Mr. Arnett then dug himself back in by telling an Iraqi interviewer that his reports about civilian casualties and the resistance of Iraqi forces helped the antiwar movement in the United States. ------ A week after he was hurt, battle is still raging in and around Nasiriya, where the resistance offered by Iraqi fighters came as something of a surprise to the petty officer and his comrades. ------ ''The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance,'' he told his interviewer. He also said that reports about civilian casualties in Baghdad had served to ''help those who oppose the war'' in the United States. ------ So, with each day of the war, the Americans have used more and more military power to carry out their missions, often inside Shiite-dominated towns, making for some grim realities in a part of the country where there had been little expectation of strong resistance. ------ Like many now, with hindsight, she has her own theories about why Iraqi resistance has proved stronger than anticipated. They are based on the reports she has heard, the weapons and equipment she has collected and an instinctive faith that the American cause is right and the Iraqi wrong. ------ The Associated Press reported that American forces had entered the Baath Party office in Hindiya. Inside, they found tens of thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition, as well as hundreds of mortars and many heavy machine guns. Loyalists of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party have appeared to lead resistance against the allied advance in several southern towns. ------ Even some of Mr. Rumsfeld's advisers now acknowledge that they misjudged the scope and intensity of resistance from Iraqi paramilitaries in the south, and forced commanders to divert troops already stretched thin to protect supply convoys and root out Hussein loyalists in Basra, Nasiriya and Najaf. But they also point to the air campaign's successes in the past few days in significantly weakening the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad. As one senior official said of the process that produced the war plan, as well as the pace and sequencing of troops, ''It was a painful process to match the political and military goals.'' ------ Even among ministers, perhaps especially among them, this concern to show fealty is obtrusive. Mr. Hussein may be rarely mentioned, but top officials who brief reporters on the war accomplish something similar by emphasizing, again and again, the leading role in Iraqi resistance, the ''spearhead role,'' as Mr. Sahhaf put it at least five times today, of the fedayeen. ------ ''There will be strong resistance to resolving this problem,'' said Rusen Cakir, a Turkish political analyst. ------ Since March 17, when Mr. Daschle said Mr. Bush's diplomatic failures had helped cause the war, he has been nothing but complimentary. Today, he again sidestepped a question about whether the administration had misjudged resistance, saying there would be time later for such an examination. ------ SIGNS OF WELCOME -- Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, was greeted by residents of Najaf with cheers as American troops mopped up remaining pockets of resistance in the town. The ''back of the resistance has been broken here,'' the general declared. It was one of the first open expressions of welcome received by American troops in Iraq, but it was not the only one. In Diwaniya, a young farmer walked off the plains at first light waving a white flag. ''I am with you,'' he told an American officer. A dozen other Iraqis behind him also approached American troops, asking for water. ------ Yet in private, military officials, diplomats and some officials involved in planning the reconstruction say that the Iraqi resistance and the lukewarm welcome for American troops in the south is forcing a re-evaluation of some of those plans. ------ The supply line problems are serious, but there is no evidence that the military would have been able to move much more swiftly, or with far fewer casualties, if the Army had used a much larger force. The big failure has been in political assessment, and the expectation that southern Iraqis would welcome the American troops and offer minimal resistance. The Bush administration seems to have gotten mixed intelligence about how the Iraqis would respond to an invasion, and the fact that the Pentagon chose to believe the optimistic reports was probably a function of political preconceptions rather than hardheaded judgments. ------ The Iraqi response to the American and British troops may warm up when Baghdad is taken. But so far, resistance in the south has been spoiling much of the original war plan. Because of it, troops have been pulled away from the drive to Baghdad to secure the cities that the supply lines must pass on the way to the front. Perhaps worst of all, the fear of terrorists disguised as civilians has soured military relations with Iraqis, who naturally resent being searched, confined to their towns and sometimes caught in cross-fire with guerrilla fighters. The unexpected difficulties in bringing in food and water have left many in a far worse state than they were under Saddam Hussein, at least temporarily. ------ General Petraeus said the 101st Airborne Division was poised to seize control of Najaf in the next day or so, which would probably make it the first significant Iraqi town to fall unambiguously into American hands. He said the ''back of the resistance has been broken here.'' ------ Najaf has already cost an unexpected price, since American military planners envisioned that it would show support earlier, and without significant resistance. Instead, the Iraqi government's paramilitary forces have used it as a base for attacks on American supply convoys. Four soldiers from the Third Infantry Division were killed by a car bomb at a checkpoint outside the town on Saturday. ------ It appeared that the tactic worked as three other battalions moved through the gap, encountering what the brigade's commander, Col. William F. Grimsley, said was disorganized resistance on the part of the Iraqis. ------ To that end, the council in Delhi began a week of satyagraha -- the kind of nonviolent resistance that was the signature of Gandhi, who was killed by a Hindu nationalist. In a carefully staged piece of political theater, the sadhus, sants and angry young men who have propelled the temple movement's rise crowded onto police buses like schoolboys impatient for the next act. ------ ''The industrials have been doing well of late,'' said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, which oversees $110 billion. ''It's pretty war related, with growing evidence that we're moving into Baghdad without much resistance.'' ------ It would help to see the rebels' ranks joined by Senator Susan Collins of Maine. She has talked a good game of resistance but has not yet taken a clear stand. A politician who is theoretically against tax cuts but who sides with the let's-party crowd when the chips are down is perfectly useless to the cause of sensible budgeting. Senator John McCain of Arizona has stressed that he is against any tax cut, including the half-measure, until later, when the war's costs are known. But this proven warrior should know the only promising battle in sight is about to be fought. If it is lost, the bulk of the budget-busting tax cut for the wealthy will be in place. The deficit will spiral out of control, and the burden of war and rebuilding Iraq could trigger mammoth national discontent. The grand principle is fine, but right now the nation needs every principled politician available to rally against this disastrous plan. ------ The Baghdad Division, a Republican Guard infantry division that was stationed near Kut, put up little resistance to the First Marine Division. Even before the marines arrived, the Baghdad Division had been bombed mercilessly and American officials rated it ineffective as a combat unit. Many of its soldiers fled toward Baghdad as the marines approached. Today, the marines advancing on the capital from the southeast were at one point about 40 miles away. ------ One reason the Republican Guard's resistance was so weak is that it has been a bull's-eye for American air power for days. The allied air campaign does not seem to have sundered the Hussein government's ability to command and control its forces in Baghdad. But it has had a devastating effect on Iraq's forces in the field. ------ Everywhere along the American advance lay the signs that the Iraqi resistance was cracking. ------ The debate over the use of computer simulations large and small was sharpened when Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the commander of the Army V Corps based in Kuwait, remarked that the guerrilla-style resistance of Iraqi militia groups made for an enemy that was ''different from the one we war-gamed against.'' The current situation in Iraq, some critics say, may highlight the problem of depending too much on virtual realities for training. They argue that military leaders can become too enmeshed in a gaming scenario to allow for what is actually happening. ------ Now the new findings, published in the March 20 issue of Nature, suggest that some of these extrapolations were wrong. ''We've always thought that drag or resistance increases with sea surface roughness and wind speed,'' Dr. Powell said. But when the team analyzed the sonde data, they found that the ocean caused less, not more, resistance in winds above hurricane force. ------ Over the last few days, after being surprised early in the war by the strength of resistance from Iraqi forces in the south, the invading American troops appear to have recovered much of their momentum. They now occupy wide swaths of territory and stand close to the main prize -- Baghdad -- although most urban centers, and so most Iraqis, are not under American control. ------ Such scenes have been very rare as American troops have pressed forward, encountering resistance or sullen disapproval in many places. ------ Labor union resistance to tampering with the present pension plan is sensitive political territory. In 1995, the last conservative prime minister, Alain Juppé , was brought down in part as result of widespread labor union resistance to pension reform. ------ Granting immunity would be a serious setback for advocates of gun control, who have turned to state courts increasingly in recent years after meeting resistance in legislatures. They have denounced the proposed legislation as an unfair favor to an industry and a federal usurpation of states' rights. They say Congress would be denying injured citizens and violence-ridden cities the right to sue companies supplying an illegal underground market in guns. ------ PLANS FOR THE WAR -- At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out plans to avoid a block-by-block fight in the next phase of the war. He said that coalition forces would cut off Baghdad, protect Shiite Iraqis who oppose Mr. Hussein, establish an American-led interim government and destroy any remaining resistance in the south. ------ THE ENEMY IN THE CAPITAL -- American military officers say that with large parts of Iraq's Republican Guard crumbling, the main enemy now is the Special Republican Guard and Mr. Hussein's internal security forces. Charged with defending the interior of Baghdad, this force of 15,000 to 20,000 is expected to put up fierce resistance. It was not known what weapons they possessed, or what orders they have been given. ------ There was no resistance to speak of, and the road seemed clear. The convoy moved so quickly toward Baghdad that Marine commanders had to stop to draw up another map. ------ The unexpectedly fierce resistance of Iraqi soldiers, which had framed coverage of the war until yesterday suddenly turned into unanticipated passivity: John McWethy, the ABC Pentagon reporter, told Peter Jennings that the defense of Baghdad's outskirts ''was much weaker than many anticipated.'' ------ As Mr. Bush went off to eat with the troops -- he stood briefly in the chow line for ribs and macaroni and cheese -- Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that allied forces would cut off the city, secure its large anti-Hussein Shiite population, establish an interim government and methodically eliminate any resistance in the south. ------ They had hoped for a short war with a minimum of inflammatory pictures of Iraqi civilian casualties. Instead, the daily message to the public from much of the media is that American troops are callous killers, that only resistance to the United States can redeem Arab pride and that the Iraqis are fighting a pan-Arab battle for self-respect. ------ ''This is weird,'' said Col. William F. Grimsley, commander of the division's First Brigade, whose troops led the assault on the airport, about 10 miles from the heart of Baghdad. ''It's like spooky weird.'' His forces had faced only light resistance at dusk and then later virtually no resistance at all. ------ The airport -- rather than Baghdad itself -- was the division's ultimate objective when it crossed the border from Kuwait on March 20. The absence, so far, of sustained resistance from Iraq's most vaunted and feared forces -- the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard -- baffled soldiers and officers, who had girded themselves for a final battle on the outskirts of Baghdad. ------ Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, the division's commander, said in an interview at midday that the Second Brigade had encountered resistance from Iraqi forces that he estimated to number ''several thousand,'' including parts of the Republican Guard's Medina and Hammarabi Divisions. ------ The source of the unexpectedly stiff resistance was unclear. On Wednesday, Iraqi front lines appeared to be buckling as dug-in units abandoned their positions around Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, after days of American bombardment. ------ Iraqi tactics in the current war -- forcing civilians into harm's way, executing innocents who seek refuge -- have confirmed the malevolence of their regime, and so Americans seem puzzled by any Iraqi resistance to their liberation. It may perhaps be typically American to expect others to greet our mighty righteousness with gratitude, but there is a larger contradiction at work: we see dictatorships as simultaneously all-powerful and yet completely brittle. ------ People in Korea have been deeply inculcated with anti-Americanism for two generations, since the Korean War. The psychological element underpinning resistance to any American attack would be very deep. In terms of the military forces, they are much better organized than the Iraqi forces. They are better equipped, they have a larger army than Iraq. This has been a regime prepared to fight the Americans for 50 years -- both literally and psychologically. Furthermore, they already had a war with the United States and they believe they won. ------ Early this year Mr. Lewis wrote an article for Newsweek International in which he made a case for American intervention in Iraq and argued that ''worries about Iraqi civilians -- fighting in the streets, popular resistance'' were overblown. Now Mr. Lewis has written an article for The Wall Street Journal Europe in which he argues that Iraqis may be reluctant to welcome American soldiers because antiwar protests reinforce their worry that ''the United States may flinch from finishing the job.'' ------ He continued to strike the city with inadequate company- and battalion-sized units with the excuse that he was trying to maintain his army's attitude of aggressive initiative. Gen. Omar Bradley, his superior, urged him to quit ''this pecking campaign'' and accept the so-called October Pause imposed in the aftermath of Market Garden's 12,000 Allied casualties. But Patton claimed a need to ''blood'' his newer recruits to the realities of combat. As if hoping to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy, he declared Metz conquered on several occasions, only to have to retract the claim in the face of continued German resistance. ------ The siege had become personal, and he exhorted his friend in the Air Corps, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, ''to blow up this damn fort so that it becomes nothing but a hole.'' But even a severe bombing campaign couldn't dislodge the defenders behindits 15-foot-thick walls. The steadfast resistance forced Patton to mount a bloody siege that he described as ''a mutual crucifixion.'' ------ Democrats in the Assembly are echoing the complaints of the Senate Republicans, a sign that Mr. Bloomberg faces substantial resistance in Albany. ''There is growing and deepening anger with the way the mayor has moved forward,'' said Assemblyman Steven Sanders, a Manhattan Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly's Education Committee. ------ Still, the situation is extremely fragile. The port of Umm Qasr, which was declared open with great fanfare this week when a small British relief ship delivered its supplies, is still threatened by mines, in need of dredging and short of the skilled manpower needed to unload large relief ships. The overriding problem throughout the south is that the same armed resistance that slowed the military thrust to the north continues to render most areas too dangerous for civilian aid workers. ------ The supplies and money for large-scale humanitarian assistance are being assembled. This week, the U.S. Agency for International Development pledged to contribute $200 million in cash to the United Nations World Food Program to buy emergency food for Iraq from other countries in the region, thus short-circuiting the need to wait for shipments from the United States. The U.N. itself has taken temporary control of an Iraqi oil-for-food account to pay for humanitarian aid, and some supplies trickled into the south yesterday. But all this will go for little unless the military devotes enough resources to suppress the armed resistance quickly and make all areas of Iraq safe for humanitarian workers to perform their lifesaving jobs. ------ But not the end of the war. The sun rose today with the quaking blasts of Air Force bombs dropping less than a mile away, as pockets of Iraqi resistance announced themselves with sputtering bursts of rifle fire and periodic mortar blasts. ------ MARINES MEET RESISTANCE -- After destroying the remnants of a Republican Guard division and advancing rapidly toward Baghdad from the southeast, the Marines ran into heavy Iraqi resistance. One marine was reported killed. American artillery lobbed shells at the Iraqi forces, despite their proximity to residential neighborhoods of Baghdad. Captured Republican Guard members said that fierce aerial bombardment in recent days had caught them by surprise. Seeing the destruction, many soldiers got into their vehicles and fled, the captured Iraqis said. ------ This week, he held forth at a lunch with conservative commentators and journalists. Some participants had backed the administration on Iraq when it faced criticism that the war plan provided insufficient force and that it had been overly optimistic about Iraqi resistance. ------ Nasiriya was strategically important for its pair of bridges, one over the Euphrates and the other over the Saddam Canal, bottlenecks in the route to Baghdad some 180 miles to the northwest. On Thursday March 20, the first day of the ground war, attack helicopters started pummeling Iraq's 11th Infantry Division around the town and at Tallil Air Base, the country's second-largest. The next day, tanks from the American Third Infantry Division rolled to the outskirts and drew artillery fire, but air attacks snuffed out resistance and hundreds of Iraqis gave up. ------ When we got to Ramallah, I picked up a few Palestinian newspapers. They were full of boasts about the holdouts in Umm Qasr and Nasiriya. They seemed to be trying to create a mythology around what they considered to be heroic Iraqi resistance. There was a four-column photo in Al Quds, the most popular Palestinian newspaper, showing a downed American helicopter and the farmer who, according to the caption, had shot it down. ------ As radical and impatient for democracy as the students are, however, most of them do not want to lead Iran into another bloody revolution. I asked Mehdi Aminzadeh, a 25-year-old student leader studying civil engineering, if there was anything brewing in Iran equivalent to Yugoslavia's Otpor, or ''resistance'' -- a grass-roots movement spread by Serbian youth that defeated the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. (One of the opposition satellite television channels that are beamed into Iran by the Iranian diaspora in California constantly replays the chronicles of Milosevic's destruction of Yugoslavia and Otpor's destruction of Milosevic, as if trying to suggest a script for the students to follow.) No, he said. For now there is no social movement or political party tough enough and well financed enough to organize such mass demonstrations. ------ Yet there were pictures, of Rachel standing her ground, megaphone in hand, and of Rachel bloodied and crumpled. Try as they did to substitute other images -- Rachel in a tutu, a dove costume, a bowler hat -- these were not pictures that a parent could ever forget, and they do want an independent investigation. They also feel bound to speak in her stead, to defend the ideas to which Rachel was committed, especially that of nonviolent resistance. Rachel had pleaded with them to care as much as she did about ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ''I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop,'' she wrote to her mother. ''I really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop.'' ------ Dr. Davidson noted other strong points, including resistance not only to deer but also to disease and insects, and an ability to tolerate drought. ------ Dr. Davidson noted other strong points, including resistance not only to deer but also to disease and insects, and an ability to tolerate drought. ------ Many big institutional investors are also pushing companies to separate the traditional roles of board chairman and chief executive. But this is often met with resistance. ------ Dr. Davidson noted other strong points, including resistance not only to deer but also to disease and insects, and an ability to tolerate drought. ------ The administration's task is helped and complicated by the competence within the Iraqi oil industry. Though the industry's physical plant is a mess, its work force of 60,000 or so is regarded as a model of professionalism among oil-exporting states. Any attempt by outsiders to take over, many regional experts say, could touch off a backlash. Iraqi resistance to American control of the oil industry could take the form of strikes or simple inaction. In that event, an American oil overseer would be faced with arresting strikers or firing them, and bringing in people from overseas, said Issam al-Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil minister. Resistance might even extend to sabotage or terrorism, other regional experts said. ------ That means the U.S. has to move quickly to create a process where moderate, but legitimate, Iraqi nationalists can emerge to start running their country, and U.S. forces can recede into the background. We have only one chance to make a first impression in how we intend to reshape Iraq, and we must make a good one. America somewhat underestimated the resistance it would meet when it invaded Iraq; it should not now overestimate how much time it has to rule Iraq, with U.S. generals, before meeting political resistance. ------ General Garner rarely refers to the United Nations in the meetings he is conducting here, participants said. As the Iraqis have put up more resistance than expected, he has expressed a modicum of anxiety about the tenor of his welcome, two officials who have spoken with him in the last week said. But he did not raise the possibility of a United Nations presence as a way of alleviating whatever concerns Iraqis may express toward American, or Anglo-American, administration of their country, they said. ------ As the war has dragged on longer than expected, and the Iraqis have put up stiffer resistance, the security of the members of the Americans in Baghdad has become a more urgent matter. ------ But some of these officials warned that other terror networks could quickly energize their followers to change tactics. They said the war in Iraq had already provided some warning signs of potential terrorism that could become a grim reality in postwar Iraq, where some analysts fear that resistance could seriously undermine reconstruction efforts. ------ The rapid advance of the army and marines toward Baghdad has followed a pattern. Enemy resistance is found and attacked from the air first, and the tanks roll in second. After that, the foot soldiers move in to attack enemy targets that have already been hit hard. ------ Karbala is located at the mouth of a gap that leads directly north to Baghdad, about 60 miles away, said Brig. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the assistant commander for operations of the 101st Airborne Division. It is also one-third of a triangle of holy cities that includes Najaf and Hilla. On Monday, the American forces had a fierce daylong battle at Hilla but did not enter the city. Later in the week, the 101st Airborne entered Najaf, meeting little resistance. ------ While the resistance was strong in pockets, the Americans were also fighting ghosts part of the time. Almost all of the regular Iraqi Army forces and the Republican Guard have abandoned their positions here. ------ But there was resistance. Firing rocket-propelled grenades, the Iraqis hit the track of an M1 tank, scoring what the military calls a ''mobility kill.'' The Americans tried to tow the tank home, but it caught on fire and they blew it up so that the Iraqis could not use it. At least six American soldiers were reported to have been wounded in the operation, some critically. ------ The Iraqi strategy, Mr. Sahhaf said, was to drive the Americans back to pockets of resistance outside Baghdad. One place mentioned was Abu Ghraib, west of the capital, notorious as the site of the grimmest prison in Mr. Hussein's gulag. ------ Although the American stay is likely to be shorter, it could generate the same kind of resentment if not handled with a deftness rare in the annals of triumphant armies. That, in turn, could fuel the kind of resistance to a new government that the United States wishes to minimize, even if Mr. Hussein is killed or captured. It could also further destabilize the Middle East as a whole -- precisely the opposite of what Washington has set out to achieve. ------ Some remnants of divisions have fled the battlefield into Baghdad and may try to regroup, while other pockets of resistance are drawing heavy fire from American warplanes, attack helicopters, artillery and tanks. But General Moseley said these fighters had no realistic chance of surviving. ''We either kill them or they give up,'' he said. ''There's no way out for these guys.'' ------ Syria is a very different case. In an interview published this week in a pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper, Bashar al-Assad, Syria's 36-year old president, who inherited the post from his father three years ago, said the war only proved that Mr. Bush ''wanted oil and wanted to redraw the map of the region in accordance with the Israeli interests.'' He urged Arabs to learn from Lebanon's history of ''resistance.'' ------ ''The weather will affect him differently than the other guys because Tiger is allergic to everything on the golf course,'' Earl Woods said. ''He has taken allergy shots as a kid and he has developed a resistance to everything. But when he gets to Georgia in the spring, that pollen gets to him.'' ------ As the owner of the Paramount film studio, Viacom might also logically have an interest in Vivendi's Universal Studios. But such a merger might meet resistance from antitrust regulators -- and from Viacom's own president, Mel Karmazin, who is known to have little enthusiasm for the unpredictable, capital-intensive movie business. ------ The local authorities are trying to make certain all demonstrations are well out of earshot for the golfers. Even if they succeed, club members should make it clear to Mr. Johnson that his resistance is all about pride rather than principle. The Augusta National is no backwoods fraternal order. It is the centerpiece of American golfing, its tournament televised around the world. CBS Sports, which broadcasts the tournament, should cover this issue, and women should make it clear to the network how they feel about this all-male club. ------ Even so, the business people were running what the Hunter Group indicated was a top-heavy shop. It had 1 manager for every 14 employees; comparable institutions make do with 1 for 17. That translated to between 150 and 220 extra managers. And trustees admit they put up little resistance when Dr. Rowe and top executives negotiated six- and seven-figure contracts. ------ To many trustees, though, the resistance of the doctors -- crucial players in such a marriage -- became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was easy to meld laundry and catering. Medicine was another matter. ------ Inserting this small and, so far, lightly armed force into areas where there is still substantial resistance to the American-led forces signaled a new front in the American and British efforts both to end the war and to prepare for the peace. But American officials conceded that their appearance at the front was just as important politically as it is militarily. ------ The brigade's Third Battalion, Seventh Infantry cleared an area of military barracks on the airport's north side without encountering resistance. A battalion of the Army's 101st Airborne Division that arrived here over the weekend, clashed with Iraqi forces on the eastern side of the airport. ------ Finally, today, after two weeks of limited attacks, British commanders concluded that the government's resistance was brittle and that it was time to begin a major attack. ------ This strategic prize has not come without a price. British soldiers said that the main resistance was coming from the paramilitary units. The British today estimated that there were 400 irregular Iraqi forces still fighting hard. ------ ''We have been building pressure all week with aggressive raids and trying to create the right conditions,'' a British officer said. ''We have now punched into Basra in a concrete way that we had not done before. Some of the battle groups have met some resistance from irregulars. We will continue to eradicate the Baath Party and the irregulars. We will consolidate in there and this will be a very good thing to achieve before Baghdad.'' ------ The thrust, after more than two weeks on the outskirts of the city, appeared to be part of a coordinated effort to take down what is left of Iraqi resistance. If Basra falls, as now seems likely, the Iraqi government's isolation will be sharply accentuated. While it was an achievement in its own right, it was also important for the larger American and British campaign. [Military analysis, Page B1.] ------ Although the fighting was fierce, British officers said they encountered less resistance than they had feared. They said that taking Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, could deal a psychological blow to Baathist holdouts in Baghdad and hasten that city's fall. ------ A staff sergeant with the unit said he had a selection of minidiscs to play for the Iraqis, from warnings for them to stay indoors because of imminent operations to ''inevitability themes'' telling them that they could not win and that resistance was useless. ------ It was not clear how much resistance the British would meet as they try to secure the rest of the city on Monday. Many people said the city's Baath Party officials and fedayeen irregulars have disappeared. ------ He said he also believed the bombing was counterproductive. ''The Allies tried to break the resistance of the German people by killing hundreds of thousands of people, but the resistance grew,'' he said. ''Like today with the Iraqi people. Perhaps many of them hate Saddam Hussein, but they will defend their country because of this bombing. It's so stupid.'' ------ While there was fierce opposition from isolated pockets of resistance, the response to the snow was outright capitulation in some quarters. For example, the home opener of the New York Yankees against the Minnesota Twins was postponed before the arrival of a single snowflake. ------ At a board meeting on March 28, several directors said, Mr. Georgine proposed returning his trading profits but met resistance from members who understood that this would increase pressure on them to return their own. ------ Justice Thomas said Virginia had not been interested in curbing racist expression in 1952, when it enacted the law, because the state had many segregationist laws on its books and was soon to begin its campaign of ''massive resistance'' to the Supreme Court's desegregation decree in Brown v. Board of Education. ------ The head of the Iraqi opposition group in Iran, Sayyid Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim, who fled into exile in Iran in 1980, has warned repeatedly that the United States will face armed resistance if its forces stay after ridding the country of Saddam Hussein. ------ He said he had learned things from the field commanders about how the remaining Iraqi forces were fighting and organizing their resistance that would cause him to make some adjustments in his battle plan. ------ At the dusty landing strip in Zubayr, General Franks was met by Maj. Gen. Robin Brims, commander of the British division headquartered there, and ushered into a command tent for a session closed to reporters. A British military spokesman said General Franks was given a description of current conditions in Basra. He said there was a fair amount of looting going on, which forces tried to stop if it was safe to do so, and called organized resistance in the city ''petty.'' ------ As for the fire company closings, they were announced after many months of resistance from residents of the neighborhoods affected and from members of the City Council. The Bloomberg administration has said the fire companies are underused and the closings would net $10.8 million in savings. ------ To overcome strong public resistance, the mayor appointed a commission -- formed in part with appointees from the City Council and the Fire Commissioner -- to study the matter. On Thursday night, the commission voted 5 to 2 in favor of closing the houses. The two opposing votes were from the City Council's appointees. ------ On one level the Iraqis are succeeding. After withdrawing from a series of frontline positions around Mosul early last week, they have put up unexpectedly tough resistance along a second defensive line. Over the last several days they have thwarted attempts by Special Operations teams to advance, despite the aid of hundreds of Kurdish soldiers and heavy American airstrikes. ------ At this stage, there will be no civil policing by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said its commander, Col. Richard Mills, whose unit is spread from Nasiriya in the south to Kut in the north, from the main highway in the west to the Iranian border. The unit's mission is to keep supply lines open, mop up resistance and capture senior military and Baath Party officials still at large. ------ In Basra, military officials said British forces were welcomed enthusiastically as the last vestiges of Iraqi resistance were wiped out. The British defense secretary said in London that the Iraqi military commander known as ''Chemical Ali'' had been killed in a bombing raid. The Iraqi, Ali Hassan al-Majid, has been accused of ordering use of chemical weapons against Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. ------ Despite the intensity and the duration of today's firefight, some marines here characterized the Iraqis resistance to them as tough, but uncoordinated. Some said it was closer to guerrilla war. ------ ''The resistance is fierce, but it's unorganized,'' said Capt. Matthew Regner, a military intelligence officer. Others said units of the Iraqi army were unable to communicate with one other. ''There are small groups, being led by a couple of officers,'' said Captain Regner. ------ Even in Britain, the one European country where the war has majority support, there is great resistance to American domination of the postwar running of Iraq. An opinion poll in today's Daily Telegraph showed that while Britons' enthusiasm for the war had grown to a high of 60 percent and their approval of Mr. Blair's conduct had also risen, there was only 2 percent approval of an American-controlled administration of Iraq. ------ In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said a declaration of victory would come ''later rather than sooner,'' and warned that the allies still faced stiff resistance in Baghdad and northern Iraq. ------ The British and American forces secured key cities, including Najaf and Karbala, 45 miles south of Baghdad, demonstrating an ability to conduct a limited kind of urban warfare with minimum casualties against disorganized and apparently collapsing Iraqi resistance. ------ There was fierce resistance by Iraqis whop were making attempts at a counterattack, with some of the fighting taking place inside the presidential compound itself. ------ A-10 Warthog tank-buster jets circled the sky above the battle, diving every now and then through the thick black smoke to drop ordnance, each bomb exploding with a burst of fire and black smoke. As the battle wore on, Iraqi resistance appeared to be diminishing. ------ The scene seemed to illustrate the plight of Mr. Hussein's government, whose army has mustered little effective resistance in the capital despite much oratory about the grim fate awaiting American soldiers. That official defiance continued despite the Americans' increasingly incontrovertible presence. ------ Airplane composites and the shuttle composite both have carbon fibers whose molecules are lined up to give the fibers strength in one direction. Those fibers are bound together by a matrix of molecules that have equal strength in all directions. In aircraft composites, where excessive heat is not a usual danger, the matrix is a noncarbon epoxy that is not particularly heat-resistant. (The exception, Mr. Maass said, is in aircraft brakes, which, needing great heat resistance, use carbon-carbon.) ------ Then the tall turbaned man, Sheik Muhammad Laabadi, claimed that it was in fact he who was in charge of the city in his capacity as the leader of the resistance movement. He said he belonged neither to the Dawa nor the Supreme Islamic Resistance Council, based in Iran, both Shiite resistance groups outlawed by the Hussein government. ------ Some officials said that an attack on Saturday aimed at Ali Hassan al-Majid, a regional commander in southern Iraq and one of Mr. Hussein's closest military associates, helped them take control of Basra. Mr. Majid's death has not been confirmed, but the officials said that it became accepted by local citizens and that when it did, resistance to British forces in Basra seemed to melt away. ------ First, the American military, under General Franks or a deputy, will maintain a security force officials describe as ''robust'' to root out pockets of resistance and any guerrilla attacks, and provide a security umbrella to allow aid to flow freely in the country. ------ Allied troops fanned out farther across Iraq today, venturing into cities that had seen no sign to date of the invading troops, who began crossing over from Kuwait almost three weeks ago. Except in Baghdad, resistance was generally light. ------ As dusk fell, the area held by the Americans fell silent, suggesting that Iraqi resistance -- fought relentlessly but ultimately hopelessly with rockets, machine guns and other light arms -- had died away. ------ That this should be so despite stubborn Iraqi resistance not only in Baghdad but also elsewhere must rank as one of the major surprises of a surprising war. Those who expected light casualties expected the enemy to collapse. ------ There may still be some difficult combat ahead in outlying Baghdad neighborhoods and areas north of the capital, including Mr. Hussein's hometown, Tikrit. American ground forces have yet to move into that region. No one knows whether Mr. Hussein and his two sons are alive or dead. And on paper, at least, there are still 10 Iraqi Army divisions available to fight. But the fall of Baghdad suggests that organized resistance to the invading forces could subside now that the centralized institutions of power in Iraq have been shattered. ------ ''As long as we've got J. P. Stevens, we'll never really succeed in organizing the South,'' James Sala, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. official, said at the time. ''Not because of textiles, but because of the example it sets for this kind of resistance.'' ------ Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.) ------ Ms. Boren, who is 38 and single, pays $128 a month for her combined cable television and cable modem services. Her personal line of resistance is the cellphone -- she has refused to get one, which she said made her ''practically a social pariah.'' ------ Still, Ms. Boren acknowledged a limit to her resistance. ''Twenty dollars is my breaking point,'' she said. ''If I could find a plan for $20 a month, I would have a cellphone.'' ------ In France, perceived concessions to English-American forms of law, no matter how slight, have run into strong resistance. ------ American intelligence officials continued to eavesdrop on Iraqi leadership networks, although those circuits were all but quiet today, as some Iraqi officials seemed to be trying to disappear into the country's cities and villages in an effort to escape coalition forces. American military officials said that command and control of Iraqi military units had all but ended, and that there was little sign of organized resistance. ------ They said the Iraqi units in the town of Khazir, which have been putting up stiff resistance, include a brigade from the Republican Guard's Adnan Division, which was thought to have moved to Baghdad weeks ago. Fedayeen fighters have also joined the fighting, they said. ------ ''All the sheiks in Basra were friends with Saddam,'' said Dr. Riva Kasim of Basra General Hospital. ''All the sheiks and tribal leaders are bad.'' With most armed resistance eliminated, British troops have turned their attention to stopping widespread looting. The city still does not have regular water service. ANTHONY DePALMA ------ There was also utter disbelief at the weakness of Iraqi resistance in Baghdad, when just weeks ago the tiny port of Umm Qasr down south held out for days against an allied onslaught. ------ Beginning just after dawn and continuing through the day, an invading army of American soldiers was greeted by thousands of people on the streets, waving and cheering, and asking questions. The resistance had all but vanished in this area about 50 miles south of Baghdad. ------ Allied forces did in fact encounter resistance in more places than they excpected, although that resistance was described as thin. ------ American commanders in the city barely paused to soak up the celebrations before warning tonight that much hard work remained to be done in extending the pockets of American control in east and west Baghdad into areas that remained no-man's lands, or worse, pockets of active resistance. ------ Bastions of Iraqi resistance were still holding out in north and central Iraq, military officials said. Mr. Hussein, his sons and his top aides, if alive, were still at large. The chemical and biological weapons and the laboratories for making them -- the destruction of which the Bush administration cited as a prime motive for war -- had yet to be located. ------ After his return to New York, Remington continued to report on another war, the one being fought between whites and Indians in the West. (He was at Wounded Knee for the cleanup after the massacre.) But he also turned his energies to shifting his career from illustrator to painter. Although the transition was slow and met with resistance, he eventually won critical opinion to his side. And he did so largely through his paintings of night scenes that, with their stripped-down compositions, close-valued colors, Impressionistic brushwork and psychological tensions, were greeted as serious in content and virtuosic in technique. ------ But I don't think that popular resistance to the Americans will arise in Iraq. (The suicide bombing in Baghdad yesterday may have been ordered by the Baathist remnant that will disappear soon.) Iraqis have been suffering or recovering from war since 1980, and the last thing they want to see is another fight. ------ Another trend Mr. Smith warned about was what he called ''the socialization of marketing resistance'' -- a pushback against what consumers deem to be aggressive hucksterism, which may prevent them from ever again perceiving advertising as ''an invited guest.'' ------ The reported doggedness of the Iraqi resistance has prompted some speculation within the Bush administration that the Iraqi forces might be defending members of the Iraqi leadership trying to flee to Syria. But defense officials said it was more likely they were trying to shield weapons or weapons programs. ------ The mystery of the fierceness of armed Iraqi resistance in the remote border town is among many uncertainties that senior American officials are weighing as they survey the battlefield in Iraq, where about one-third of the country still lies outside American control, according to senior Pentagon officials. ------ At the Pentagon, officials would not say how many American and British soldiers had been involved in the battle in the Qaim area, and they declined to estimate the size of the Iraqi resistance. ------ Across the Middle East, the collapse of the Hussein government inspired much editorial hand-wringing about the state of the Arabs and a few conspiracy theories to explain the disorganized Iraqi resistance. ------ In Saudi Arabia, the newspaper Al Riyadh warned that the actions of American troops in Iraq would determine whether the war was about to end or just beginning. ''If this army treats the Iraqis like an army of occupation,'' the paper said in an editorial, ''then it will be faced with resistance.'' ------ That remark, with similar predictions by other hawkish former and current government officials, was ridiculed by a flood of commentators and retired generals in the early days of the war in Southern Iraq, when Mr. Hussein's paramilitary fighters seemed to be putting up stiffer-than-expected resistance. ------ ''You can't do everything at once,'' General McChrystal said at the Pentagon, where there was continued resistance to the idea that the 130,000 soldiers now in Iraq could be diverted from war fighting to begin policing the violent and chaotic streets of Iraqi cities, where fires burned out of control in some neighborhoods, garbage mounted in the streets and basic services were collapsing. ------ Throughout the day, American troops battled pockets of resistance on the Tigris's east bank, one of them at a palace in the Adhamiya district that was among at least 20 kept for the Iraqi leader's use in Baghdad. American officers reported another firefight at the house of a senior Baath Party official. ------ But General Garner and his team are still in Kuwait, waiting for security conditions in Baghdad to improve enough for them to move there. Continued sporadic resistance has prevented his team from setting up headquarters at Baghdad's airport, where General Garner could assume greater control over efforts to rebuild an Iraqi police force. ------ ''They can be used in infantry missions where there might be a pocket of resistance in an urban area and it would be to everyone's advantage that Americans not be seen engaging in lethal activity,'' said the 53-year-old colonel. ------ The brief fight here this afternoon reflected the enduring difficulties of the military situation in Iraq. An important center of resistance has formed in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, 110 miles north of Baghdad. The road south of Kirkuk, the other major northern city, has become a no man's land frequented by Iraqi irregulars, or fedayeen. ------ ''Out of the Ashes'' is based on Dr. Perl's autobiography, ''I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz.'' Producing such a story for television involved several hurdles. There was the challenge of overcoming viewers' potential resistance to yet another Holocaust movie, for example. But Marianne Moloney, one of the executive producers, felt Dr. Perl's story was singular and worthy of attention. ''Not only did she have a great life that was ripped from her,'' Ms. Moloney said, ''she was just not to be denied.'' ------ Despite consumer skepticism, physician resistance and litigation by the pharmaceutical industry to block their use, generic drugs have steadily carved a niche in the health care market. Last year, for the first time, American pharmacists dispensed generic drugs more often than they did brand-name drugs, filling prescriptions with generic products 51 percent of the time, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. ------ ''If we put up resistance, will we have to go to the back of the line?'' asked Jerry Puiia of Glastonbury. ------ In Iraq, we should assume that the tensions of reconstruction will be formidable, magnified by the religious, ethnic and cultural differences that separate the West from the Middle East. In addition, the mutual recriminations will likely be intense. Honest citizens will hang their heads in shame at what happened to their society. Yet they won't be able to stop themselves from subconsciously blaming their liberators for having forced their country's dirty laundry into such a public display. In Iraq, this may be doubly galling, as its citizens had been told for years that they were symbols of anti-American resistance for the whole Arab world. ------ Creating a new national mythology will not be easy. As France emerged from the war, de Gaulle perceived that a heroic and highly inaccurate myth -- that France liberated itself -- was essential to bind his country's wounds. A patchy resistance movement against the German occupiers gave him just enough material to make his case. In Iraq, however, where the opposition was terrorized for years, there is, lamentably, far less material for myth-making. ------ Added standing, the theory goes, could provide political muscle to beat swords into bigger tax cuts. Not to mention permission to drill for oil in the Arctic, enact tort reform, confirm new judges and secure victory on other issues where the popular war-time president has run into stiffer than anticipated resistance on the home front. ------ Coalition maneuver operations focused on increasing stability south of Baghdad to enable humanitarian assistance and on conducting combat operations to clear zones within Baghdad. V Corps and First Marine Expeditionary Force forces expanded into the areas that are shown on this image, using the same convention we've used in the last few days. These are areas where new operations occurred in the last 24 hours. You can see there's a significant increase in the southern area because of the addition of one more unit -- in this case, the 101st Airborne Division. In some cases there were pockets of resistance encountered, and those were defeated. ------ On March 27, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the Army's V Corps, said bad weather and the unexpected resistance of the Iraqi forces had slowed the advance and increased the chances of a longer war than military planners had forecast. ''The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against because of those paramilitary forces,'' General Wallace said. ------ But the fighting proved much tougher than expected. Umm Qasr was declared captured during the first 24 hours of the ground war, but unexpectedly stiff resistance from Iraqi forces within the city continued for several days, delaying the opening of the port for aid supplies. The first two American combat deaths came on March 21 in Umm Qasr. One marine was killed in fighting near the port, another near an oil pumping station outside the city. ------ All these actions were designed to undercut the continuing resistance; more important, they were aimed at the minds of the uneasy civilian population. ------ American commanders have said they lack the troops to curb the looting while their focus remains on the battles across Baghdad that are necessary to mop up pockets of resistance from paramilitary forces loyal to Mr. Hussein. ------ Now, American commanders are trying to eliminate several major pockets of Iraqi military resistance. The capture of Tikrit is not the only objective of the multipronged American offensive that was set in motion today and could represent the final phase of the war. ------ Because of its central role for the Iraqi government, there may be determined Iraqi resistance in Tikrit, but American intelligence officers do not know just what to expect. Tough resistance would be more likely if the city is defended by paramilitary groups and not just Iraqi military forces. ------ At the same time, American forces are trying to eliminate two other major pockets of resistance. Iraq's 12th Armored Brigade has been a focus of concern in recent days. It is stationed at Ramadi, where it guarded the western approaches to Baghdad. American helicopter gunships were poised to attack that brigade. ------ Progress on these diverse fronts will effectively expand the zone of American control to the north and west of Baghdad and eliminate a pocket of resistance to the east. It follows the collapse of the Iraqi defense of Kirkuk and Mosul farther north. The capture of those northern cities still needs to be consolidated by the arrival of more American troops -- possibly those of the Fourth Infantry Division, which is getting ready for operations in Iraq. ------ One remaining objective is Kut, a town to the southeast of Baghdad and a former hotbed of resistance. There have reports in recent days that several hundred paramilitary troops were holed up in the town. But local leaders say that that the paramilitary units are no longer in the city and that they are willing to allow American marines into it. American military officials are working to clarity the status of the city. ------ The operation appears to be shaping up as the last major engagement of the war. American commanders in Baghdad said they expected serious resistance from the holdouts, who are thought to include several senior members of the Republican Guard and possibly senior members of Mr. Hussein's government. ------ General Austin said the resistance was adamant, yet the Iraqis ''never had a significant impact.'' He also made a point about American technology, saying it overcame the problems of blinding sandstorms that reduced visibility to a few feet. ------ Sgt. Harold L. English, a squad leader with the brigade's Second Battalion of the Seventh Infantry, had his own theory for the resistance, having fought in the first war against Iraq 12 years ago. ------ If Kut falls the way many of the southern cities have fallen, silently, then a host of questions arise for the reconstruction. Where did the resistance go? Will they reform as some sort of paramilitary gang, the kind that plagues Serbia? Will they plunder when the marines are gone? Or will they forget the whole thing and become contributing members of society? ------ That evening, there was much discussion of knots and tactics. Rett Foster, of Clayton, N.Y., extolled the action imparted to the fly by a loop knot and I agreed. Next day, when Juan called out two nice permit way up the flat, I had tied on my crab fly with a loop. I reached out as far as I could cast with my 10 weight and led the fish. He tipped down on the fly. His mouth opened. I struck, felt momentary resistance, and that was all. ------ I was just finishing a first novel, but before it was done I started writing the second. I did not understand right away that the second novel was about him, that he and his life were the main thread around which all else was woven, that the other characters were peripheral, there only to illuminate him. Slowly and with much resistance on my part he took over the book. ------ Mr. Abbas has assembled a proposed list of ministers that would take crucial ministries, including those in charge of security and justice, out of the hands of men tied to Yasir Arafat. As details of the proposal spread today, it met resistance from Mr. Arafat, whose anger, and that of other leaders of his Fatah movement, delayed the scheduled presentation of the list to Al Fatah's central committee, Palestinian politicians said. ------ In recent months, the Russian government has claimed to have all but wiped out organized guerrilla resistance within Chechnya and has said it is beginning a large-scale program to restore life in the region to normal. Many thousands of refugees in nearby Ingushetia are being prodded to return, sometimes under protest. The government said Chechens voted overwhelmingly in favor of a pro-Russian constitution re-establishing civil rule in Chechnya in a referendum in late March. ------ The past 25 days have been among the most stressful, emotional and turbulent of the second Bush White House, from the first, audacious attempt to kill Mr. Hussein to the toppling of his statue to the discovery today of seven prisoners of war. A White House that worships order had to react to the chaos of war and a script that kept changing. Sandstorms, unexpected resistance from the enemy and verbal grenades lobbed at the war plan by armchair generals at times forced the White House into a defensive crouch. ------ By midweek, critics were beginning to question the relatively small size of the allied force in Iraq and to ask why the C.I.A. had not foreseen the fierce paramilitary resistance in the south. Mr. Bush's aides say the president never shared those doubts, even as he was pressing them incessantly for updates. When a reporter was visiting one top aide for 20 minutes that Tuesday, the president called twice pressing for new details. ------ That a small group of perhaps 15 or 20 Iraqi soldiers tried to attack an American armored column suggests that the resistance in Tikrit may prove to be stiffer than what American forces have encountered in other areas. ------ No casualty figures were available tonight for either side, although Colonel Sinclair said his force had made significant progress toward its objective, which he described as ''to kill all the people who need to be killed.'' He described those people as Iraqis who were still trying to offer armed resistance. ------ In many cases, Arabs now live in homes seized from Kurds years ago. A central component of the Kurdish resistance to Mr. Hussein was a commitment to the freedom of Kirkuk and the restoration of traditional property to Kurds. ------ But elsewhere in the world, the United States is being seen in a new way, as the latest -- and perhaps most powerful -- of the imperialist powers that bestrode the globe over the centuries. As evidence, critics cite not just the sudden collapse of Iraqi resistance, but the stunning American military triumphs in recent years, in Afghanistan, Kosovo and in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. ------ ''The availability of resistance exercise equipment in fitness clubs creates opportunities for additional unsupervised strengthening exercise,'' the study said, ''and contributes to assumptions that such exercise is without risk and that 'more' must be better.'' ------ That, experts said, is a good example of a leading theory about superspreaders -- that their infective powers are not genetic, but are due simply to unhappy coincidences. They have shedding sores in the throat that make their coughs extra deadly. They have no symptoms and feel well enough to go out. They have an occupation like flight attendant, doctor or prostitute that involves close contact with many strangers. Or they get sick while in a group of people with low resistance. ------ Scientists say the properties that make the chemicals attractive to industry -- their chemical stability and resistance to high temperatures -- may potentially have serious effects on the environment. ------ Several city officials said this resistance to granting concessions explained why the savings package proposed by the unions contained so little that was meaningful. ------ And if there were any concerns about how the White House was waging this war, they fell with Baghdad. For example, in the space of two weeks, there has been a turnaround in the number of Americans who believe the United States correctly assessed the resistance it would encounter from the Iraqis. Fifty-nine percent now say the United States was accurate in its prewar assessment, compared to 31 percent who said it underestimated the fight the Iraqis would put up. And 44 percent said there were fewer casualties than they had expected. ------ In this attack, toward Tikrit, the force met little resistance in the towns of Baquba on the east side of the Tigris River and Samarra. And I'll just point those out again. Baquba on the eastern side of the Tigris River, along the Diyala, and Samarra along the Tigris River, further to the west. ------ Where we do find them, they're well armed. We think that some of the explosive vests were meant for them. And in the over 300 vests we found there were indications that some had already been removed. Up to 80 were not accounted for. And so we certainly recognize that there are still threats. Even though there's not organized regime resistance, there are individuals who may be willing to carry on acts of violence and acts of terrorism without regard to any ideology or any national cause. ------ There was a fight, to be sure; it took most of Sunday and most of the night. But when daylight came and marines began to move, the fierce resistance anticipated here gave way to empty streets. Mr. Hussein's men were gone. ------ ''There wasn't a lot of resistance,'' Maj. Chris Snyder said. ''We're not sure where they all went.'' ------ With the war, Mr. Assad made some rather pointed remarks, expressing the wish that the United States would either be defeated militarily or forced to flee by internal resistance. His comments clearly had some resonance across the Arab world. At a demonstration at Al Azhar mosque in Cairo last Friday, the chant booming off the walls was ''Bashar, Bashar, set the world on fire!'' ------ There will never be a popular time to close firehouses, even those that may be anachronisms rooted in population patterns and manpower decisions from a century ago. Innate resistance to change was evident in a sign at the Harlem rally: ''No F.D.N.Y. cutbacks. Not now. Not next year. Never.'' It bore the logo of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. ------ Still, the resistance of the G.O.P. dissenters is not acceptable in Mr. Bush's renewed detaxation mania, and those Republicans must stand fast against selling out as the White House sends a platoon of emissaries to the states to lobby for the maximum cut. ------ Last month, for example, Mr. Grasso encountered sharp resistance to his proposal that Sanford I. Weill, the chairman of Citigroup, join the exchange's board to represent the investing public. Mr. Weill bowed out after Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, protested that appointing Mr. Weill to represent the public would be a ''gross misjudgment and a violation of trust.'' Salomon Smith Barney, one of the nation's largest brokerage firms and a Citigroup subsidiary, recently agreed to pay $350 million in fines to settle the investigation brought by securities regulators into conflicts of interest among research analysts on Wall Street. ------ But in the last three months, the president's plan has come under heavy resistance from Democrats and even members of Mr. Bush's own party, who argue that large tax cuts at a time of an expensive war and growing deficits are irresponsible and that they would do little to stimulate the economy. ------ In Washington today, President Bush declared ''the regime of Saddam Hussein is no more.'' But he cautioned that there was still armed resistance in some parts of Iraq. ------ The resistance to a larger tax cut by two Republican senators, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and George V. Voinovich of Ohio, was what caused the budget to be constructed the way it was in the first place, with one tax cut number for the Senate and another for the House. So Republicans, in concert with a re-engaged president and White House operation, will either have to persuade the two senators to change their minds or lean on some other opponents to switch. ------ But he was not able to overcome stubborn resistance to the planned merger mounted by the Ruben Berta Foundation, a nonprofit trust that is meant to represent the interests of Varig's approximately 18,000 employees. ------ Mr. Carmichael said he was aware of the resistance he would probably face as a result of proposing changes to the standards auditors must follow in reviewing financial reports of public companies. ------ But the officials said that the American units still face pockets of resistance in Qaim and in some other locations, and they have yet to enter some towns. ------ It is impossible to know how many martyr declarations were gathered. At the party headquarters in this city of 25,000, 46 such statements were on file. Yet the quick collapse of Iraqi resistance and the relatively low number of suicide attacks suggests that loyalty to Mr. Hussein was thin. ------ During the remainder of the session, the only panelist to venture a defense of theory -- or mention a literary genre -- was Mr. Bhabha. ''There are a number of people around the table here and a number of people in the audience, in fact most of you here are evidence that intellectual work has its place and its uses,'' he insisted. ''Even a poem in its own oblique way is deeply telling of the lives of the world we exist in. You can have poems that are intimately linked with political oppositional movements, poems that actually draw together people in acts of resistance.'' ------ As Ms. Lebsock herselfs writes, the Pollard case is a ''sad coming-of-age story for Virginia.'' It is evidence that ''for the roughly 40 years between emancipation and disfranchisement, our Southern story must include considerable division and ambivalence among whites, a hundred forms of resistance among blacks, and at times coalition across the race divide.'' Too bad most of that explanation and analysis is confined to her final chapters and afterword. ------ The frustrated Americans have referred to the chain-smoking cleric as a clown, a false prophet, a sham holy man, a boob. But the more they slander him, the mightier his stature and his message of resistance to American domination seem to become. ------ It seems that the more Mr. Abbas's presence grows, the slipperier the Americans' grip on power and the good will of Kut residents becomes. In front of the destroyed grand mosque today, more than 5,000 gathered in prayer, an offense punishable by torture just a month ago. But rather than hail the forces that had made such gatherings possible, the cleric called for resistance against the dividers, an oblique reference to the Americans. ------ ''The U.S. is facing a pretty stiff resistance from other members of the Council on this,'' a European diplomat said. ''The U.S. position is, 'We're there in Iraq and it's going to be our effort, and maybe someone from the U.N. can come in and give it a blessing.' That's not going to fly.'' ------ The situation was further complicated on the north side of the Diyala bridge, because what was left of the Iraqi resistance had resorted to guerrilla tactics. The Iraqis still firing on the marines were not wearing uniforms. They would fire a few shots from a window, drop their weapons, run away as though they were civilians, then go to another location where they had hidden other weapons and fire those. ------ For the Joint Chiefs, the fog of war was lifted to a much greater extent. The trillions of megabytes of real-time data that flowed from the front lines to mission control were an exponential increase over transmissions in the 1991 campaign, giving generals in distant Doha and as far away as the Pentagon virtually unprecedented knowledge of battle conditions, resistance, losses and enemy positions. Decisions could be made more remotely, field commanders observed more closely and middlemen effectively cut out of the chain of command for the sake of speed and efficiency. One indication of how remote-controlled this war was: 68 percent of the bombs were precision-guided. ------ But within the ranks, there are enormous pockets of resistance. In large measure, this is because officers build their careers by believing in the technology they have seen perform in battle. They are suspicious of new things being foisted on them by procurement officials, and there is historical basis for this distrust. The Patriot missile, to choose a recent example, proved almost completely ineffective in 1991 in large part because it was rushed into battle. ''People are making all these promises, and they really haven't a clue if they can deliver,'' says Chuck Spinney, who has worked at the Pentagon for 26 years. ------ ''Over the past two months,'' Mr. DeMaria said, ''we are seeing some resistance to high prices. Homes that are priced right will still sell within a week or two, but overpriced listings will sit, which was not the case a few months ago, when everything was selling.'' ------ When a fellow Marine evacuation doctor and I spoke to commanders about the wisdom of the mission, we were met with resistance. ''It's just marines trying to help marines,'' came the response to our suggestion that the helicopter pilots were making bad tactical decisions. But my aviation background and my colleague's time as an officer in the Special Forces eventually helped our case. So, too, did common sense. The novelty of being fired on gradually wore off for many of the Marine pilots; the wisdom of not risking lives and equipment for minor injuries became self-evident. By the end of the conflict, communication between field and base over when to launch had improved, as had basic decision-making. ------ Melville T. Miller, a Hellfighter from Brooklyn died old, so he was around at age 75 to appear (with only mild resistance) in Mr. Miles's documentary. He recalled marching through a liberated town in Alsace-Lorraine at the end of the war. ''The people was on both sides and they were waving,'' Mr. Miller said. ''Now whether they were happy we were there or cheering out of fear, trying to win us over, I have no way of telling. But that day the sun was shining and we were marching and the band was playing and everybody's head was held high. We were proud to be American. We were proud to be black. We were proud to be in the New York State 15th Infantry. What's your next question?'' ------ The First R.C.T. went into Nasiriya, marines recalled ''with all our guns blazing,'' after the Iraqis mounted unexpected resistance. ------ Resentment could eventually spawn a resistance effort by unconventional forces inside and outside Iraq, just as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 spawned the Hezbollah movement. If Mr. Hussein or his sons are indeed alive, they could lead such an effort, and even suspicions that they are alive, kept in play by things like the Abu Dhabi tape, can foster political restlessness. ------ The most severe clash between on-the-ground reports and official accounts in Washington came with comments from some commanders that Iraqi resistance had caught them off guard during Week 2. ------ Applause drops off sharply overseas. A Lebanese television station has introduced its news report with a recording of Mr. Rumsfeld boasting of precision bombing overlaid with scenes of bleeding civilians. A recent cartoon in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram showed Mr. Rumsfeld flashing a victory sign, while behind him a United States soldier was punched by the Iraqi resistance springing out of a jack-in-the-box. ------ King Abdullah II of Jordan, who came to Iraq as a young man with his father, King Hussein, told a group of American reporters a few weeks before the war began that the conflict could be over in seven days. In the end, it took nearly four times that long, and American troops, at almost every step of their 350-mile drive from Kuwait, met resistance from Hussein loyalists, and reluctance to assist on the part of Shiites who felt betrayed by the lack of American support for their uprising in 1991. ------ But of popular resistance to Mr. Hussein, until the end, there was virtually no sign. Reporters taken out to see American bombing targets found crowds gathered beside blasted telephone exchanges, in neighborhoods where bunker-busting bombs had left 60-foot craters, and at two marketplaces where dozens of civilians died. At a marketplace in the western Shuala district of Baghdad, where officials said 62 people were killed, many of them women and children, there were signs that the weapon might have been an Iraqi antiaircraft missile gone astray, or an American missile lured by placing an Iraqi air defense radar nearby. ------ The mutinous legislators, emboldened by their open defiance of the government, are expected to coalesce around resistance to reforms Mr. Blair is proposing in the most critical area of his domestic agenda: the delivery of public services. ------ Mr. Blair confided that he had also worried, during the second week of the war, that it might be longer and bloodier than anticipated. ''There were moments when it looked like we were getting bogged down, and 10 days in, you were worried how long was this going to go,'' he said. ''Had we miscalculated the degree of the depth of resistance?'' ------ The public has been disappointed by the lack of visible progress in these areas despite a series of stage-managed announcements of goals and new financing. Mr. Blair has encountered resistance within his party to changes like establishing independent hospitals within the National Health Service, imposing university tuition fees and assigning private contractors to carry out public works. ------ No one got the level of resistance quite right. We doves correctly foresaw that the war would not be a cakewalk, but for all our hand-wringing, there was never prolonged street-to-street fighting in Baghdad. ------ But more than a dozen players interviewed over the last month questioned whether the union's resistance to broader drug testing really reflected the views of the majority of players. ------ General Hahn said the Army was especially pleased that the recent curfew order in Baghdad, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., was met with virtually no resistance from the Iraqis. ------ The resistance is even more striking given that so few lost pets are reunited with their owners -- only 2 percent of lost cats and 15.8 percent of lost dogs, according to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy (www.petpopulation.org), a consortium of humane societies and animal control groups. Pet experts agree that return rates can be significantly higher if a pet has a microchip. Mr. Knox says it could be at least four times as high. ------ In many ways South Africa has been a special case among sub-Saharan countries, with its history of white minority rule, brutally applied segregation, and its popular struggle to reverse these conditions. During apartheid, artists played a prominent role in the resistance movement by giving visual form to volatile ideas. Much of their work was unapologetically single-minded. Its mission was change, absolute and immediate. ------ But that is only part of the picture. The market in polished diamonds is worth around $60 billion, and half of it is in the United States, where De Beers is effectively barred from doing business by the Justice Department's antitrust inquiries. Jonathan Oppenheimer insists the company is far more squeaky clean than Washington seems to think. After initial resistance, De Beers played a prominent part in a campaign to outlaw ''blood diamonds'' -- as conflict diamonds are sometimes called -- and insists its new strategy is a departure from its cartel-like practices. ------ In the aftermath of the Iraq war it's time to re-examine the ban on women in American front-line forces. Women are barred from about 30 percent of active-duty positions, and there's still a deep emotional resistance to exposing American women to deadly violence. ------ Mr. Bush also said the resistance faced by American troops in southern Iraq in the conflict's first weeks was fiercer than he had expected, an admission that seemed at odds with the Pentagon's insistence at the time that the war was unfolding according to plan. ------ In describing the war from his perspective, Mr. Bush combined acknowledgments of doubts and pressures with accounts of dramatic moments and humor, including his fascination with the relentlessly upbeat accounts of heroic Iraqi resistance provided by the information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf. ------ The result was that American forces faced ''significant resistance,'' the president said. ------ If Mr. Ghobadi's dominant theme is the devastation of the Kurds, his subdominant tone is one of strength, resistance and fertility. Communities are destroyed, but families are created as all three men forge new emotional alliances, either by falling in love or adopting children. The Kurdish nation, Mr. Ghobadi suggests, is really the Kurdish family, extending in all directions through a region in which everyone seems to know, or at least to have heard of, everyone else. DAVE KEHR ------ Partly as a result of that repression, the Communist Party here became a kind of catch-all opposition group, one with a reputation that rested more on its resistance to Mr. Hussein's rule than its ideas for managing political power and national wealth. ------ Another diplomat agreed, saying, ''My suspicion is that there is likely to be initial resistance in the Council mainly on control of the oil.'' The Bush administration moved quickly to coalesce around a proposal in part because it feared being pre-empted by countries like France and Russia, each of which floated quite different ideas this week. ------ The task force's proposed narrowing of its mission statement -- now, essentially for Olympians and Paralympians to win medals -- was met with resistance by groups representing Pan American and deaf athletes. ------ The next night, over sushi, Mr. Duers tried out an age-old line on the wary Ms. Gundell. ''I said, 'I'd love to see how a single woman on the Upper West Side lives,' '' he recalled. Ms. Gundell, whose brother was staying with her at the apartment, surprised Mr. Duers by putting up little resistance. ''When I said, 'Great, you'll get to hang out with my brother Andy,' '' she recalled, ''I could see the color fade from Grant's face.'' After he gave her ''a sort of hug,'' he headed back to his hotel. Nonetheless, she added, ''chemistry ignited.'' ------ That may offer some reassurance to Americans who watched the events in Karbala last week and wondered if the freedom to indulge in ritualistic self-mortification was the cause for which more than 100 American soldiers died. Had America played with the fire of fundamentalism once again, as it had with the Afghan resistance to the Soviets more than a decade ago? ------ Northern Iraq has long had a small cadre of jihad fighters, including some who Kurdish intelligence officials say trained in western Pakistan in the 1980's, when the United States was underwriting the guerrilla resistance against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. ------ But recent surveys have shown resistance among Latinos to racial classification. Almost half the respondents to a national survey last year by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation said they would rather answer ''Hispanic'' or ''Latino'' -- and leave it at that -- than choose from the standard racial categories. ------ This resistance to racial categorization worries some advocates for minority groups. ------ Several obstacles to treatment exist, including cost, training bias, resistance to radiosurgery and the belief ''that brain disease is hopeless,'' Dr. Lunsford said. ------ ''I asked him to come to the trenches of resistance with Hamas,'' Dr. Rantisi said of Mr. Abbas. ''He said nothing, I said nothing.'' ------ The second Persian Gulf war was America's largest campaign since Vietnam, and its outcome was never in doubt. But in their hour of triumph Americans must not forget that Saddam Hussein's army was a third-rate force that put up sixth-rate resistance. At the same time the United States has discovered that organizing a functioning military government is no less challenging than waging a military campaign. To be up to its new multirole mission, the American military needs to move even faster away from its cold war model. ------ The speech of the new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, to the Legislative Council yesterday was promising. He not only denounced terror, but he also acknowledged Jewish suffering and concerns. But as the events that followed so tragically illustrated, much more than words will be required of him and of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to surmount the last 31 months of violence. Both face powerful resistance -- Mr. Abbas from militant rejectionists, Mr. Sharon from his right wing, which demands that the peace plan, called the road map, be rewritten into a set of conditions the Palestinians must meet before the Israelis make any concession. ------ It was not clear if, in condemning terrorism, Mr. Abbas included attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians overwhelmingly consider such violence legitimate resistance to occupation, but Israel calls it terrorism. ------ Another legislator, Abdel Jawad Saleh, said Mr. Abbas erred in not calling for nonviolent resistance to Israel. ''You should be a Gandhi,'' he said, as the suicide bomber was making his way toward Mike's Place. ------ ''Do we find resistance sometimes? Sure,'' said Admiral Giambastiani. ''Do we have to bash our way through the bureaucracy? You bet. But there is goodness in that. It's good to have give and take. But you have to make progress.'' ------ Faced with resistance within the royal family, the crown prince has so far taken a very cautious approach to political reform. He would begin with elected provincial assemblies, with only men voting. An elected national legislature would be six years away. Bolder, faster changes are needed. ------ Mr. Atwan said the arrival of the letter had not surprised him. ''Three days ago we received a letter from the Iraqi resistance leadership telling us that Saddam Hussein is still alive and he was going to address the Iraqi people within 72 hours, so we were expecting something,'' he said. ------ He said he would never kill women or children. Shiite beliefs, he said, allow revenge, almost demand it. Plus, he said, he considered killing members of an oppressive government ''some sort of resistance.'' ------ A former prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu says he wants to remake the Israeli economy by lowering taxes and creating incentives for the private sector to grow. But he is meeting stiff resistance in a country founded on socialist principles, and where many citizens are accustomed to extensive social programs. ------ In an experiment giving tobacco plants the readily detectable trait of resistance to antibiotics, he spliced a gene necessary for photosynthesis to one from an enzyme that deactivates the antibiotic chloramphenicol; he then spliced this hybrid to the altered Agrobacterium and inserted it into tobacco seedlings. The resulting plants resisted the antibiotic only when they received light. Though the experiment had no practical value for the tobacco plant, it was an important step in developing genes that act only in specific plant tissues or in specific parts of growing plants. ------ Today, biotechnology is used to endow plants with resistance to disease, environmental stresses and chemicals, creating crops that can survive in harsher environments and produce greater yields. Genetic engineering of food, however, has drawn widespread opposition, especially in Europe. ------ Residents are wondering who is firing. Iraqi soldiers put up little resistance when Americans advanced into the city, avoiding a potentially bloody urban war. Are those fighters now mounting a guerrilla offensive? Or is it religious groups angry at the American occupiers? Or is it possibly criminals who, freed from Saddam Hussein's jails before he fell, are now back at their trade? ------ ''America didn't have any resistance from the Iraqi Army, because we know who Saddam Hussein is -- we don't fight for him,'' he said. His brother, standing by, had suffered the amputation of part of his ear for missing two days of military service. ''But if America doesn't deliver what it promised, Baghdad will be a grave for American soldiers.'' ------ After the Israelis subdued most of the Palestinian resistance, they again called on Mr. Abu Hein and two of his brothers, also Hamas militants, to send out the dozens of family members in the house and then surrender. The demand was met by renewed bursts of gunfire from the three brothers, who barricaded themselves on the roof. ------ ''Yesterday they were talking about peace; today we wake up to this massacre,'' said Haleema Radwan, an elderly woman frantically looking for a wounded nephew at Shifa Hospital. ''Abu Mazen should not take the weapons from the resistance groups and try to make peace at the expense of the Palestinians.'' ------ Most of the resistance to Mr. Hannas's argument, however, comes from linguists who say he is trying to revive a discredited theory about the connection between language and thought. The idea that the language you speak affects how you think dates back at least to Wittgenstein. But it was most famously associated with two 20th-century American linguists, Edward Sapir and his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, developed in the 1930's, the mental categories by which people perceive the world are determined by their language, so that people who speak different languages can be expected to think differently. ------ Like the Roman Catholic clergy in Communist Poland, Shiite leaders in Iraq became the main font of resistance to Mr. Hussein's repressive government, and were long persecuted for their stand. Now that Mr. Hussein is gone, the Shiites appear to have an undisputed moral authority in wide areas. Across Iraq, including large parts of Baghdad, Shiite leaders have begun to assert control and take up essential public services. ------ The men and women who make films need to put up more resistance to the rising tide of interactivity, because, ''Casablanca'' notwithstanding, there's no guarantee that the fundamental things will continue to apply as time goes by. The more ''interactive'' we allow our experience of art -- any art -- to become, the less likely it is that future generations will appreciate the necessity of art at all. Interactivity is an illusion of control; but understanding a work of art requires a suspension of that illusion, a provisional surrender to someone else's vision. To put it as simply as possible: If you have to be in total control of every experience, art is not for you. Life probably isn't, either. Hey, where's the alternate ending? ------ For instance, it looked at the proportion of owner-occupied apartments as opposed to sponsor or investor-held units. A building that has more owner-occupied apartments is generally considered more financially stable. And a corollary factor, Mr. Miller said, ''is resistance by lending institutions to provide apartment loans in those buildings with a higher investor-sponsor concentration.'' A building with 20 percent or more investor or sponsor-held apartments experienced a discount of 1.63 percent in a condominium, and 0.15 percent in co-ops. ------ One former officer, Michael Beerbower, is to stand trial on May 19 on charges that he punched a sailor he had handcuffed outside a bar. Another officer was accused of pepper-spraying a suspect who was offering no resistance, a third reportedly beat a man with a baton, and two more officers were accused of falsifying reports about the beating. ------ One involved Lt. Al Flowers, who resigned last year after the state attorney's office found that in 1998 he had told a subordinate to falsify the record of an arrest in which he pepper-sprayed a man who was offering no resistance. ------ The idea of confrontation with Hezbollah is extremely delicate in a country that suffered 15 years of civil war among sectarian groups. Lebanon's government and military consider Hezbollah a legitimate resistance force to Israel, which they say occupies a tiny patch of land called Shebaa Farms. ------ Mr. Dohnanyi, urbane and deeply thoughtful, is an adventurer and a provocateur, as keenly engaged with the music of the Second Viennese school as with that of the First. Though surrounded by politics from his youth, when his family was instrumental in the resistance to Hitler, to his adulthood, when his brother was mayor of Hamburg, he has largely remained outside that fray. ------ While Mr. Zoellick said there was still resistance to American proposals to reduce trade barriers, particularly in agriculture and particularly from the French, he was leaving Europe ''with some slight additional optimism.'' ------ Ms. France has made the magazine's embrace of Everywoman and its resistance to celebrity key components of Lucky's identity since it first appeared in December 2000. But she said she is willing to give the famous-face gambit a chance. ------ ''I doubt anyone would answer their call, for as long as there is occupation, no one can even propose disarming the resistance,'' Reuters quoted Sheik Hassan Izzedine, a senior official of Hezbollah, as saying. ''We are not worried a bit about the future.'' ------ The festival has helped support both traditions; its proceeds subsidize police escorts for neighborhood parades through the year. Jazzfest has also permanently changed the Mardi Gras Indian calendar. The Indians -- who drew their iconography from Wild West shows, hinting at solidarity with American Indian resistance -- used to unveil their handmade, painstakingly beaded costumes on Mardi Gras morning and then disassemble them. Now they hold on to those costumes through Jazzfest, and some perform year round with their own bands. ------ With Mr. Mandela and 154 others, Mr. Sisulu stood trial for treason. The defendants were acquitted in 1961, but the top leaders of the resistance were arrested again in 1963 at a farm hideout in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, and convicted of conspiring to overthrow the state. Although the government demanded the death penalty, the men were sentenced to life in prison. ------ ''As for the lack of resistance,'' the court added, ''failure to struggle with a cohort of deputy sheriffs is not a waiver of Fourth Amendment protection, which does not require the perversity of resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer.'' ------ Over all, such switches benefit the health system by wringing out unduly high drug prices and unnecessary doctor visits. For Claritin alone, the savings may reach hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The F.D.A. can expect stiff resistance from the drug industry if it tries to force additional switches opposed by manufacturers. But any drug that can safely be sold over the counter ought to be made available without prescription. ------ What is important at present, though, is the friction-generating character of her work. In the era of ''compassionate conservatism,'' as some say gains won by the civil rights movement are unobtrusively rolled back and old emblems of resistance to the establishment are expertly neutralized, her beautiful-scary images keep pieties and prohibitions alike on the hot seat. If people are confused by what she's doing, she seems to say, that's fine. If they're fired up, that's better. It means they're paying attention, which is what any artist, and any political thinker, wants. ------ Hamas said it would respond to the Israeli attack. ''There is no way but to escalate the resistance, and that is what will happen now,'' said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza. ------ Piazza's resistance to even practicing at first base has been clear all along. He has said that Tony Clark, who has replaced Vaughn, is the best first baseman he has ever seen and has said repeatedly that the Mets are best with him behind the plate. ------ Particularly useful is Applebaum's account of the camps during World War II. It was precisely at this time that the system reached its peak of lethality. Fully a quarter of the inmates perished during 1942, but the appetite of the security forces was so insatiable that the gulag's population dropped less than 20 percent. Following the war, whole new categories of inmates flooded into the camps: German P.O.W.'s, anti-Communists from the western borderlands or from the new Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. Little known in the West, some 600,000 Japanese troops fell into Soviet hands, forced to labor for years after the cessation of hostilities; only a fraction ever returned home. Stalin also punished with deportation entire nationalities -- Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars notably -- ostensibly for collaboration with the Nazis but, in fact, Applebaum argues persuasively, to eliminate nationalist resistance to Moscow. ------ Mr. Goldsmith depicts complex linear tangles, adding outlines that further schematize them into reductive designs. Ms. Moser's clustered, bubble-shaped images are more organic, with looping lines that wind in on themselves like coiled springs. Ms. McQuillin's ink drawings on resin-coated paper subtly exploit the resistance of the two media, forcing distortions that recall seismic graphs. ------ Among the sore points for Barry Gibb was family resistance to a suggestion he made five years ago that each group member write and produce for other people. ''Neither Robin nor Maurice would accept that,'' he said. ------ At the same time, in the face of rising unemployment in the West, resistance has also grown to importing high-tech professionals from India. In the short term, that may actually prompt moving more work to India to reduce public resentment. ------ At the Agriculture Department, officials have reclassified research topics relating to industrial farms and health, including antibiotic-resistant pathogens, as ''sensitive.'' As a result, at least one scientist, James Zahn, has left the department. ''It was a choke hold on objective research,'' said Dr. Zahn, who had studied swine and bacteria until he left last fall. ''Originally we were praised for the work we were doing. All of a sudden we were told, no more antibiotic resistance work.'' ------ The sheik also said, when asked about support for an Iraqi resistance to American troops, that ''our position in principle is to support any oppressed people that is subjected to tyranny and occupation,'' but he stopped short of offering specific help. ------ In the rugged hills of southern Lebanon, the group has created what amounts to a theme park of anti-Israeli resistance. Pictures of young men ''martyred'' in attacks on Israelis line the road, like macabre political campaign posters. Images of Shiite clerics abound, including a larger-than-life, double-sided cutout of Ayatollah Khomeini standing on top of a captured Israeli tank. ------ Turning the Fighters into a winner will be a herculean task, even for a man as patient as Hillman. The few non-Japanese managers who have coached here have rarely lasted more than two years, and many have had to overcome huge obstacles, including resistance from players, owners and fans. ------ Stevens officials say they are well aware of this, and Dr. Kunhardt admits there was considerable resistance among the faculty to Technogenesis at first. But he says that any lingering resistance is due misunderstanding the concept. ------ The prime goal of the vaccination campaign remains valid -- to protect enough health workers to investigate any outbreak of smallpox, care for the victims and vaccinate others in danger of being infected. The only issue is how large the cadre of vaccinated personnel needs to be. The initial goal of 500,000 was always a bit arbitrary and now seems wildly unrealistic. With the program slowed by resistance in the medical community and fights over liability and compensation, only about 36,000 people have thus far been vaccinated. ------ When I saw my patient in Papua New Guinea, I felt sorry for her and for us. I saw fear and resistance to change in the face of widening infection. I saw overreaction, as well as reaction that was too little too late. As a doctor and a human, I would never be the same. ------ ''On the other hand,'' he said, ''when we have seen a lack of resistance from the Treasury and other central bank officials to the decline, there is a suggestion that they accept the trend as a reflection of the economic realities of the day.'' ------ As the quality of private satellite resolution has improved in recent years, the government has come to rely more heavily on them, but with that trend has come bureaucratic resistance and occasional in-fighting. ------ ''He's not an ordinary president,'' said Jihan Tarhini, an English teacher who was with third and fourth graders from Al Mustafa school, which is loosely affiliated with Hezbollah. ''He's a Shiite president. He supported the Islamic resistance in the south for liberation. This is the main thing that makes us welcome this president.'' ------ ''I loved the idea of playing first,'' Carter said. ''There was no resistance from me. I wanted to play every day, and that kept me in the lineup.'' ------ Democrats in the Senate and the Assembly and officials in the Republican administration of Mayor Bloomberg said many parts of the proposal stood little chance of becoming law because of political resistance. ------ ''The land of Lebanon holds its head high through the presence of the resistance in this modern age,'' Mr. Khatami said, referring to the Hezbollah militant organization that confronts Israel at Lebanon's southern border. Yet even while calling such resistance legitimate, Mr. Khatami said violence and terrorism in the name of religion ''constitute a great danger.'' ------ The United States has demanded Hezbollah's withdrawal from southern Lebanon and an end to Iranian and Syrian support for Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government embraces as a legitimate resistance force. Hezbollah denies committing terrorist acts, and says its only target is Israel. Hezbollah attacks helped end Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. ------ The ayatollah returned to his hometown of Najaf on Monday after years in exile in Iran as the leader of the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He has already met resistance from one group of clerics, led by Sheik Moktada al-Sadr, who have promoted themselves as the representative of long-suppressed Shiites. ------ Piazza cracked double figures in runs batted in -- he has 11 -- and has hit 342 home runs as a catcher, nine short of Carlton Fisk's record. That chase has likely been a factor in Piazza's resistance to even working out at first base. ------ In the face of at least initial audience resistance, Mr. Mortier remains imperturbable about the need to rethink the classics and in his faith that audiences will eventually respond to the experimentation by him and his successors. ------ While the rebels have justified their resistance in the name of self-determination for the Chechens, he added, ''these crimes are aimed at their own people.'' ------ The attacks this week appeared to have been intended to demonstrate that the separatists planned to continue their resistance against Russian military and security forces, and against Chechens who cooperate with them. ------ But the Israeli forces encountered resistance, ranging from stone-throwing by teenagers to militants firing antitank rockets, and several battles erupted. ------ Prosecutors said Bosnian Serb forces expelled women and children and executed men and boys after capturing the town when Muslim resistance collapsed after years of fighting. The bodies were dumped in mass graves. ------ Congressional Democrats maintain that what Mr. DeLay is really doing is protecting his own job, by using his considerable muscle in Texas as a cushion against the possibility of Republican losses in House elections elsewhere next year. Colorado has just completed its remapping, which would bolster a Republican seat, and Republicans have similarly eyed Georgia but met resistance from Democratic legislators. ------ With a $120 million payroll, the Mets are forced to settle for moral victories. Infielders Rey Sanchez (thumb) and Jay Bell (groin muscle) were limited by injuries today and outfielder Timo Perez could not run because of a strained right calf muscle. Catcher Mike Piazza has finally blossomed offensively the past two games, producing three home runs, but most of the lineup has offered little resistance. After the Mets surrendered the lead today, Tony Clark, Shinjo and Joe McEwing went down in order in the ninth inning. ------ Instead, Indonesia will have to rely on selling the stakes in banks and other assets it acquired when it bailed out the banks during the crisis. Such sales have in the past been delayed by political resistance to foreign takeovers of national assets, but Indonesia last week managed to sell 51 percent of the country's fifth-largest bank to a Singapore-based consortium for nearly $350 million. ------ Described as a musical comedy, ''Les Marches'' (whose title refers to the red-carpet ritual that had concluded half an hour earlier), presents, in no particular order, newsreel and video snippets of festivals past, including a montage of red-carpet mishaps, a close study of the history of movie-star décolletage, manglings of the French language that make Ms. Bellucci sound like Voltaire himself, and sundry other high points and embarrassing moments. Since the 1930's, there have been riots, rainstorms, episodes of individual and collective public drunkenness, resistance from the locals and bulldozers on the city's beaches. (And also, unmentioned in Mr. Jacob's film, the suspension of the festival during World War II, and again in May 1968). But Cannes, then and still, is Cannes. ------ Mr. Anemone, formerly the top-ranking uniformed officer in the Police Department, said, ''I did nothing wrong to deserve this punishment.'' The real reason for the firings, he said, is that the corruption investigations undertaken by him and Mr. Casale ''met with resistance, obstruction and eventually retaliation by M.T.A. management.'' ------ This resistance is likely to heighten pressure on the Japanese central bank to take additional steps to ease monetary policy. In the two months since the bank's new governor, Toshihiko Fukui, took office, the monetary policy board has increased the amount of stocks it will buy from banks, added cash to the money markets, and expanded the range of collateral it will accept at the bank's loan window. ------ But both countries have defied American requests to control Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement in southern Lebanon. The United States considers it a terrorist group and blames it for the kidnappings and killings of Americans in the 1980's. The Syrians and Lebanese maintain that Hezbollah offers legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation of a disputed patch of land bordering the Golan Heights. ------ The resistance to Sorenstam playing a PGA Tour event rankles Feherty. ------ Even so, some took the study as proof that education is the most effective weapon against substance abuse. They said that while screening may give rise to a culture of resistance, in which students take pride in beating the test, the best results come from convincing children that most children do not use drugs, making drugs less appealing. ------ Thus, one comes to Francine Prose's first young-adult novel, ''After,'' with high hopes. Prose, an accomplished and celebrated author of adult fiction including the novels ''Blue Angel'' and ''Household Saints,'' portrays the rise of a totalitarian leadership in a high school and the reactions of denial, apathy and resistance that ensue. ------ Mr. Sharon's goal, one of his advisers said, was to demonstrate to Mr. Powell how much resistance he will face if he follows the ''road map'' favored in Washington, a plan that envisions a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in just three years. Mr. Sharon has serious objections to that plan and wants to change it. ------ The border area controlled by Hezbollah is quiet for now, he said. ''But we do not want the resistance concept to vanish,'' he said. ''We want this idea to live among the Arab people, the Islamic people.'' ------ Mr. Brown's obdurate resistance has revived rumors of a rift between him and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who favors the euro. The two men issued a statement on Friday denying that they were are at loggerheads. ------ A reality backlash seems to have hit network television, even as many of the programs remain among the most popular prime-time shows. One issue is wariness by advertisers regarding the questionable taste of programs like ''Married by America.'' But some producers of reality programming say their genre is meeting resistance from network television's entrenched system of program creation, in which big production studios, talent agencies and networks all conspire to see that scripted comedies and dramas, in which all those groups have a vested financial interest, continue to dominate network prime-time schedules. ------ Once the British realized that the Iraqi resistance had for the most part evaporated, they quickly had to focus on the looting and crime that enveloped the city. ------ We now face a serious choice. Should we continue this technically unsupportable resistance to Indian Point at the expense of addressing other terrorist risks, like a chlorine-based water-treatment facility in Westchester County? Or should Entergy and the counties surrounding the plant work together to fix the minor shortcomings in the Indian Point emergency plan? Let's hope those concerned allow knowledge to win over fear. ------ By late afternoon, no rebel casualties had been reported and troops were meeting minimal resistance, said Maj. Gen. Syafrie Syamsuddin. One Indonesian marine was killed in an accident while landing on a beach in bad weather, he said. ------ Several Iraqi political figures said they now wanted to press ahead with the formation of an interim national assembly that could appoint a provisional government, despite resistance from the Bush administration and Mr. Blair's government. ------ But the approach of Common Sense is likely to run into resistance from the industries it aims to monitor. ------ Carleton Woodworking is housed in an industrial loft with other furniture makers and designers. Well-lighted and clean, it seems to have every imaginable machine. Mr. Graves instructs in a pleasant hands-on manner. His attention to safety (including where to stand to observe his demonstrations) put me at ease right away. He described machines' functions, hardware and proper hand placement while working the wood. He spoke in a physics patois of vectors, torque, variables and resistance: we used a ''triangle marking system'' and ''critical dimensions,'' and did everything we could to avoid ''blowback.'' It all made perfect clever sense. ------ In other news here today, Tagliabue reiterated his commitment to bringing a Super Bowl to the East and said he wanted to hold it in either New York or Washington. The 2007 Super Bowl is headed for Miami. The 2008 game, which will be awarded at league meetings in October, would be the first for either city. Neither has a domed football stadium. Tagliabue says the game could be played outdoors in cold weather, but that idea has met strong resistance from some owners. ------ But such a move would face resistance in Mr. Sharon's cabinet, which is heavily weighted toward conservative and religious parties, experts on Israel say. ------ Mr. Schell brilliantly depicts some of the great revolutionary upheavals, including the Glorious Revolution in England, as well as the French and Russian Revolutions from this angle, showing that these revolutions were themselves mainly nonviolent and that it was only their aftermaths that turned out to be bloody. In many respects, Mr. Schell's real gurus are the architects of resistance in Eastern Europe, especially Vaclav Havel, the playwright and former Czech president; the Polish journalist Adam Michnik; and the Hungarian novelist George Konrad, whose ideas and related movements brought totalitarian regimes to their knees by nonviolent cooperative action. He is also astute in describing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the miraculous, almost bloodless, transformation of the South Africa of apartheid. In addition to the leverage that can be achieved by various forms of nonviolent struggle, Mr. Schell emphasizes the ethos of self-determination as underpinning a politics of resistance to conquest. ------ But in its time there was little dispute that the covert war was one of the most successful C.I.A. operations ever undertaken, a deadly confrontation conducted through a surrogate with the Soviet empire in its death throes. Only a handful of people in the government knew that behind the Afghan resistance was a pirate's crew of misfits, most notably Charlie Wilson himself, whom Crile affectionately profiles as the lawmaker who widened the war through a series of backroom deals on Capitol Hill that were never publicly disclosed or debated. ------ From a few million dollars in the early 1980's, support for the resistance grew to about $750 million a year by the end of the decade. The decisions were made in secret by Wilson and other lawmakers on the appropriations committee. To help make his case, Wilson exploited one of the decade's scandals, the Iran-contra affair, arguing that Democrats who were voting to cut off funding for the contras in Nicaragua could demonstrate their willingness to stand up to the Soviet empire by approving more money for the Afghan fighters. ------ That is changing. The most striking harbinger of transformation is the 10-story steel superstructure of the $324.7 million, two-block-long Bronx Supreme/Criminal Court complex, rising between Sherman and Morris Avenues. In its openness, the framework hints at what will be a remarkably transparent glass facade, by Rafael Viñoly Architects and DMJM. Samples of the glass wall have been tested successfully for bomb blast resistance at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. ------ Simultaneously, the system closes the E-ZPass truck lanes and directs all trucks to a booth where toll takers check them against ''overheight'' bars. After the too-high truck is found, it is sent to the side of the road and the state police are called. Mr. Huang said he met no resistance selling the project to Thruway officials. ''This was pretty easy,'' he said. ''It was the right thing to do.'' A less sophisticated detection system was installed in the mid-1990's at a toll plaza on the Thruway's Niagara extension, near the entrance to the Grand Island bridges. ------ Not all personal trainers are like drill sergeants. Mr. Frank said that his young clients don't always take his advice. Part of the battle with teenagers is their resistance, he said: you tell them something once, twice and then some. ------ ''We'd jump out to the cars, back and forth,'' said Victor Nemetz, 82, a B-24 tailgunner in the Army Air Corps who was shot down near Germany and saved by French resistance fighters. ''Now we're too old for that.'' ------ Also, dozens of Israeli armored vehicles carried out a dawn raid on the refugee camp in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, searching house-to-house for suspected militants. The Israeli forces faced no serious resistance and made several arrests, the military said. Those detained included two American activists with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group. ------ The State Senate, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, has already passed two so-called ''pay-to-play'' bills that would restrict political donations by those who do business with the state and limit contributions by county and municipal party organizations. Even though the measures have met resistance in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, the governor is pushing for a stronger bill, which would require far more financial disclosure by lawmakers and contain a stricter conflict-of-interest provision. Cathy Ellis, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGreevey, said the governor was sincerely interested in passing the strongest bill possible. ------ About the same time that the general's order was issued, a crucial battle of the Iraqi war was unfolding. The United States Army had arrived at a Tigris River bridge on the edge of Baghdad to find Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers positioned at the other end. A deadly crossfire ensued. A call for help went out, and despite heavy clouds and fog, down the river came two A-10's at an altitude of less than 1,000 feet, spitting out a mix of armor-piercing and explosive bullets at the rate of 3,900 rounds per minute. The Iraqi resistance was obliterated. This was a classic case of ''close air support.'' ------ Viruses can replicate rapidly and, in many cases sloppily, giving rise to mutations that make them resistant to drugs, though bacteria can also evolve resistance. And for fast-moving viral infections like flu or a cold, a drug must be very powerful to make a difference before the disease runs its natural course. ------ The proposal never reached a city council vote. Support faded in the face of fierce resistance from The Times, whose publisher lobbied the council himself, arguing that it would be unfair for El Diario to receive tax incentives that were not given to Gannett when it expanded in El Paso in the 1990's. ------ The Bush administration responded by accepting that the Chechen resistance was linked to international terrorism -- but that was it. President Bush promised to work to persuade Congress to revoke the obsolete Jackson-Vanik legislation, which threatens economic sanctions against Russia because of emigration policies not followed since the Soviet era, but so far he has failed. In the year following the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration abandoned the ABM treaty with Russia and then supported the enlargement of NATO. ------ The United States has relatively little to offer Mr. Putin. After years of discussion about American-Russian energy development, the Russian oil sector is doing well on its own. Russia's attempt to enter the World Trade Organization has, unfortunately, encountered domestic resistance and no longer tops the meeting's agenda. And after four years of annual economic growth averaging about 6 percent, the Russian economy requires no financial aid. ------ One resident who said he was a former brigadier in the armed forces of Saddam Hussein said that residents were carrying out organized resistance and that they would keep attacking American forces until dead Iraqis were avenged. ------ While many cities in Iraq have returned to a measure of normality, Falluja has become a bastion of resistance and hostility to occupation. ------ Mr. Bush, his aides say, has no illusions about the resistance he will encounter -- from Europeans still bitter about Iraq, Arabs deeply suspicious of Mr. Bush's Middle East road map, and many others still resentful of American power. ------ Not surprisingly, some new residences have been greeted with resistance. Some neighbors tried to stop the Teahouse from being built, according to Mr. Marterer, by complaining to their local council that it was too modern. And when a futuristic glass tube designed by Georg Driendl was built in a nearby part of town, one longtime resident declared that the area had gone ''kaput.'' But most neighbors have been surprisingly tolerant of the newcomers. ------ ''Arguments that low-yield weapons serve U.S. interests because they produce less collateral damage and are therefore more usable than high-yield weapons are shortsighted,'' a group of eight prominent nuclear scientists wrote in a letter sent to senators recently. Democrats said they would press their resistance when opportunities present themselves. ------ Advocates argue that such policies have become conventional wisdom, helping governments around the world make ends meet while encouraging conservation. Not only here in South Africa, however, but also in other developing countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, privatization and water pricing have met strong resistance and public protests. ------ The Fourth Infantry Division, which is deployed north of Baghdad, also has responsibility for the area from Tikrit to Kirkuk and toward the Iranian border. Its soldiers also monitor the Mujahedeen Khalq, the Iranian resistance movement that has turned over its heavy weapons and stays in designated areas northeast of Baghdad. There have been a series of attacks by rocket propelled grenades and a recent drive-by shooting directed against the Fourth Infantry Division. Citing the large area it has to cover, the division has asked the V Corps to send more forces up north, officials said. ------ Wear resistance is often tested with a device called an automated buttock that slides a weighted humanlike form back and forth across the seat to simulate years of use. ------ ''It was a strange thing for the banks,'' said a financial investigator with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''There was resistance initially, because they weren't exactly sure what to do. They'd never seen something like this before.'' ------ Ms. Colley, meanwhile, dismisses the idea that nationalism can come about only with literacy and a nation of voting citizens. ''I think you have to look at religion as a crucial part of identity in many preliterate societies,'' she said. ''Most of the people who starting resisting the British Raj in India could not read or write, but they felt passionately Indian. The Russians who put up a fierce resistance to Napoleon's invasion were often illiterate but had a strong sense of holy mother Russia and the land as scripture.'' ------ But it was a moment that could have produced much more. No, Kariya should not be expected to drop his gloves and challenge Stevens to a fight. You don't do that when you are an artist with a history of concussions. But a glove to Stevens's face, a shove to his shoulder, a harsh word, even a dirty look -- any sort of resistance -- surely would have drawn a crowd of supportive teammates. ------ 'The needs are so great; everywhere you turn, it's a priority,'' said Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian diplomat who oversees the United Nations presence in Afghanistan. He is a veteran global troubleshooter who has also worked in Haiti and South Africa. In the late 90's, he tried to broker a peace between the Taliban and the fast-collapsing forces of the resistance, many of whom -- through the miracle elixir sometimes referred to here as vitamin B-52 -- are now central figures in the government. ------ Back in 1979, Ismail Khan was merely a junior artillery officer. He became involved in a mutiny against the Communists then ruling the country. And later, after the Soviets invaded, he became a guerrilla commander. By dint of battlefield success -- as well as of the coincident deaths of other contenders -- he emerged as the leader of the resistance in Afghanistan's west and a self-proclaimed emir. After the Soviets skulked away in 1989, he assumed the governorship of Herat, his popularity ebbing and flowing during a turbulent time of civil war. He was in an ebb phase when the Taliban -- then known as pious champions of law and order -- succeeded in taking the city in the fall of 1995. The emir escaped to Iran, and when he later returned to fight, he was the victim of an ally's betrayal and ended up as his enemy's most famous prisoner. He spent more than two years in a Taliban jail, often manacled in a zawlana, an iron device that hitched his neck to his wrists and ankles. A young Talib intelligence officer helped him in a nerve-racking escape through the desert. Ismail Khan's getaway vehicle hit a land mine, and his leg was broken in the explosion. The Taliban were furious when the wounded emir surfaced safely, again in Iran. ------ The season's most significant new mainstream drama, Richard Greenberg's ''Take Me Out,'' may have featured an all-male cast, but over all, Broadway's gender dynamics were more like those of the musical ''Nine.'' In David Leveaux's glossy revival, a winsomely overwhelmed Antonio Banderas found himself surrounded by girls, girls, girls, of different shapes and sensibilities, all of whom managed to make a fierce impression -- from a transcendently kittenish Jane Krakowski to a panther-like Chita Rivera. Actually, girls is a misnomer. The figures who ruled the theater this year were unmistakably women, creatures of strong minds and loins, before whom their menfolk could only bow (despite some token acts of resistance). ------ There has been an odd resistance to giving Scott credit for the Nets' drastic turnaround. I've seen coaches who have done far less -- who have never even reached the conference finals -- be touted as hoops gurus. Scott has been on the job for three years, he leans on his staff and he doesn't promote himself -- or carry himself -- as the second coming of Dr. Naismith. ------ Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is back, but banished to water patrol duty as punishment for his excessive zeal in the Barksdale investigation. He is still hungry to uncover crimes his colleagues would just as soon let lie, but this time he is seeking revenge on his superiors as much as justice for the victims. His work is hampered by the maneuvering of the longshoremen's union, as well as by the resistance of his police bosses. None of the top officials seem too worried about stemming the flow of drugs, which continues even though a major crime boss, Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), is in prison. ------ Falluja seemed to be just another obscure Iraqi town when American soldiers rolled into Baghdad, but in the last few weeks it has become a symbol of anti-American resistance. ------ They have been killed in a string of sudden attacks -- assaults that have grown far more common in the past week and have begun raising questions among some families about whether there are enough United States forces in Iraq to handle mounting resistance. Soldiers have been shot at as they stood guard at vehicle checkpoints. They have been ambushed as they traveled along roads in convoys. ------ With thousands of lives at stake, optimism was not an option. Sensibly, we based our strategy on the greater likelihood of fierce resistance. That decision was as right when made as it was mistaken in retrospect. ------ The attacks came as the American military was preparing to send significant forces west of Baghdad to quell pockets of resistance in several cities. [Page A10.] The strikes indicate there is still armed resistance to the allied occupation within the capital, especially in the Adhamiya neighborhood where Mr. Hussein had climbed atop a vehicle and exhorted a crowd to resist American forces before he went into hiding. ------ Experts say that resistance to injected prions may be related to the fact that some animals rapidly clear misfolded prions, dumping them before they become toxic. ------ Finally, an experiment created to study a strong species barrier recently stunned those in the field. At the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, a branch of the National Institutes of Health in Hamilton, Mont., Dr. Richard Race injected infectious hamster prions into mice known for their resistance to hamster disease. Most never got sick. ------ Principal among them is Israeli resistance to dismantling settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian insistence that refugees from the 1948 war for independence have a a ''right of return'' to what is now Israel. ------ Poland, a country of 40 million, will probably vote to join the union, but it will do so despite deep anxieties and a large-scale passive resistance, especially in rural areas. Those anxieties and that resistance were so well in evidence one brilliant sunny mid-morning at the Hala Mirowska, a former czarist stable that is now a colorful, popular Warsaw market where one can buy anything from pajamas to frozen fish. ------ WellPoint's planned acquisition of Cobalt, based in Milwaukee, could face resistance from consumer groups and regulators. An effort by WellPoint to take over Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Maryland and the District of Columbia has been blocked by consumer groups, regulators and the Maryland Legislature. Opponents of the takeover objected to various financial inducements that WellPoint offered to officials of the Blue Cross companies. The national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, where Mr. Schaeffer is influential, retaliated by revoking the Maryland company's right to use the shield and cross logos and names. ------ Each instrument sounds different, too. You can hear this in the jazz riffs and rippling arpeggios, some passages more mellow, others brighter, that float through the building, a cacophony provided by piano shoppers happy to test the merchandise. If you put your hands to the keyboards you can feel the different resistance in each action as well. ------ The pope's exhortations to fellow Poles bolstered their resistance to Communist rule, and his trailblazing visit to Cuba loosened some restrictions on Roman Catholics there. ------ Today's fatal attack comes at a crucial time for American commanders and the residents of this tense farming town of 600,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates River. After a series of almost weekly attacks on American forces here, United States commanders are adopting a get-tough approach in Falluja, a town that has emerged as a center of anti-American resistance in Iraq. On Thursday, Mr. Meeropol, who is 56, and his brother Michael, who is 60, (they took their adoptive parents' name) will attend a program at City Center in Manhattan to ''commemorate the Rosenbergs' resistance'' and benefit the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which Robert runs. ------ Leaders of the two national conservative parties and Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta have objected to tampering with marriage traditions. But political resistance appears to be subsiding as polls indicate that a majority of Canadians accept the premise that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry. ------ Georgian officials declined to speak in detail about the level of resistance they encountered when they entered the gorge. But they offered one example of where, they said, Georgian forces had proved effective. Last fall, they said, they forced a group of about 30 mostly Chechen fighters back across the border. The group, they said, walked right into a force of Russian soldiers, who killed many of them. ------ Inside, he said, the girl was unharmed, and Mr. Hynson put up no resistance when he was placed under arrest. ------ The raids had been planned for days, military officials said, and appeared to be the latest phase of an effort to break the back of a nascent armed resistance that had sprung up in the swathe of the country dominated by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority. More raids are expected this week, military officials said. ------ ''This thing is happening all over Iraq tonight,'' said Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz, who oversaw raids early today in the southern half of Falluja, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has become a center of armed resistance. ''It's a massive, coordinated effort.'' ------ She is free now, and the Husseins are gone. But in many ways, despite her bubbly, expansive nature, the punishment continues. Those who know her, and Mrs. Noaman herself in snatches, describe the high price of her defiance: the slow decline of a prosperous lawyer to near destitution and uncertain sanity, the steady blurring of the boundary between resistance and reason. ------ The three men were reportedly seized after they emerged from a remote jungle where they went to meet a band of ethnic Hmong hill tribe fighters who have continued armed resistance since the Communist victory in 1975. ------ From demonstrations against Israeli soldiers, the resistance grew more severe: Hamas members kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers, engaged in battles with P.L.O. members and turned to suicide bombing as a tactic. ------ Other well-studied examples of human-driven adaptive change include the evolution of pesticide resistance in insects after widespread spraying and the increase in the numbers of dark-winged forms compared with light-winged forms of the peppered moth in the United States and England after industrialization turned air sooty and polluted. ------ The researchers also made energy-storing capacitors out of their nanotube fibers and wove them into fabrics. Because the electrical resistance changes when the fibers stretch, they could potentially be used to make clothing that could track body movements of athletes, ballet dancers and soldiers. The fibers have also garnered some interest from NASA for tying together arrays of satellites in space. ------