  Recently we have conjectured that (in-)elastic collisions of (pre-)hadronic
high momentum states with the bulk of hadrons in the late fireball might
substantially account for the attenuation of the high transverse momentum
hadrons at RHIC. The potential hadronic attenuation has therefore to be
addressed in further detail before definite conclusions on possible QCD effects
in a deconfined QGP phase can be drawn with respect to the materializing jets.
  From our transport studies we find that the interactions of fully formed
hadrons are practically negligible in central Au+Au collisions at \sqrt s = 200
GeV for $p_\perp\geq 6 GeV$, but have some importance for the shape of the
ratio $R_{AA}$ at lower $p_\perp$ ($\leq 6 GeV$). However, a significant part
of the large suppression seen experimentally is attributed to inelastic
interactions of 'leading' jet-like pre-hadrons with the dense hadronic
environment. In addition, we also show within this scenario first (preliminary)
results of near-side and far-side correlations of high $p_\perp$ particles from
central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV. It turns out that the
near-side correlations are unaltered -- in accordance with experiment --
whereas the far-side correlations are suppressed by $\sim$ 60%. Since the
experimental observation is a nearly complete disappearance of the far-side jet
there should be some additional and earlier partonic interactions in the dense
and possibly colored medium.
