WASHINGTON, May 9: Senior US military commanders have begun to say that although militarily the United States is winning, strategically it is losing in Iraq, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

In a long, 2,400-word, front page article, which includes interviews with several senior commanders, the newspaper highlights two major fears: US casualties in Iraq may increase as the fighting continues and it is becoming increasingly difficult to hand over power to an Iraqi government.

"The major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading and being voiced publicly for the first time," the report said.

Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believed that at the tactical level, the US military was still winning. But when asked whether he believed the United States was losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, said a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the US failure in Vietnam.

"Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," said Col. Hughes who lost his brother in Vietnam. "Here I am, 30 years (after Vietnam), thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."

The Post said the debate among senior US military commanders revolves around a key question: how to end a festering insurrection that has made many Iraqis feel less safe and created uncertainty about who actually will run the country after June 30 when power is transferred to an Iraqi government.

The report pointed out that among career army officers an extraordinary anger is building at Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top advisers.

Some of the commanders interviewed by the Post said it's important to sack Mr Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for the restructuring of America's Iraq policy because they are responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the past year.