U.S. Still Has Half of Falluja to Clear of Weapons

http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=955474&tw=wn_wire_story

<snip>

Lieutenant General John Sattler told reporters Marines would search every house in Falluja to pave the way for rebuilding and stabilizing the city ahead of elections scheduled for January.

He spoke after the visiting secretary of the U.S. Navy told Marines at a Purple Heart medal award ceremony that the Falluja offensive "broke the back" of the insurgency in Iraq.

U.S. air strikes, artillery barrages and infantry operations wrested control of Falluja this month, and the military said they killed over 1,000 foreign Muslim militant fighters and insurgents loyal to toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

<snip>

"We will keep searching for weapons until we put a green X on the last house in Falluja," he said.

Marine officers have said they would inspect an estimated 50,000 houses in the city west of Baghdad, a tedious task that involves searching everything from ventilation systems to couches as guerrilla snipers await opportunities to fire.

they say they are going to rebuild, searching for these weapons?

The US won't be rebuilding anything in Iraq except perhaps oil pipelines....


:(

<snip>

But Marines still face resistance in Falluja, where many buildings were reduced to piles of rubble.

in

Seems only the foreign press is discussing.

Why does that not surprise me?

The media can only tell the heroic stories and the humanitarian stories.
They cover the story about the marine who threw himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers but they don't tell about the soldier who died only hours after his son was born.
Can't talk about the numbers of casualties or those who are in hospitals with parts of their bodies missing.
That would not be patriotic and could wake the sheep up from the trance.

using rpgs

Looks like they've reached another "turning point" and that there is now, "light at the end of the tunnel."

No doubt LTG Sattler will go down as the general who "won the war in Iraq."

:eyes:

to the weapon storage untis this time.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p10s01-woiq.html


<The marines used explosives, axes, and even their boots to break down doors and storm houses.

They searched rooms and destroyed food stores when they found them to deprive insurgents moving from house to house of support.

"The problem with this, is we are opening the whole town up for terrorists to move in," said an intelligence officer with the unit.>

Another piece of propaganda from the US military transcribed by a lazy journalist. The correct version would be "15 foreign Muslim militant fighters and 985 insurgents". That's if the 1,000 figure is even accurate to begin with which is highly doubtful.

Surely we killed a few bad guys!

:-)