Battle for Fallujah May Take Several Days ( and how long to hold it?)

WASHINGTON - There could be several more days of intense fighting in the U.S.-led battle to retake Iraq (news - web sites)'s rebel-controlled city of Fallujah, the commander of land forces said on the second day of the assault.



Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz refused Tuesday to say how many American troops have been killed in the operation, saying only that casualties can be counted "in a dozen" and not specifying whether that included the wounded.


Metz said troops have captured a very small number of rebel fighters but had "imposed significant casualties against the enemy." Again, he didn't give a number.


~snip~

Although capturing or killing the senior insurgent leadership is a goal of the operation, Metz said he believed the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had escaped the city

more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=3&u=/ap/20041109/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq

Gosh...could they be reporting something that isn't accurate?

:eyes:

Sixteen Americans were reported killed over the past two days across Iraq — including three killed in Fallujah combat on Tuesday, two killed by mortars near the northern city of Mosul and 11 others who died Monday, most of them as guerrillas launched a wave of attacks in Baghdad and southwest of Fallujah.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=2&u=/ap/20041109/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_developments

The US military pretends that social progress is being made here, when in fact all they are doing is reclaiming real estate that they are bound to lose as soon as they leave the city. Count al-Zarqawi as another Bogey man that all the king's horses and all the kings men can't bring to "justice".

Unless the marines plan on occupying the entire city forever, they will have to do this again in a few weeks or months.

How many times did our military geniuses use this tactic in VN? Samo old shit, different war.

The military simply can't maintain enough forces around the country to hold these cities safely. Eventually they have to break off their forces to peruse the enemy elsewhere, and them more rebels pop up driving U.S. forces back repeatedly. OBL and the Afghanis were successful in driving the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, the same strategy is in play here, we lose either way, loss of life or financial exhaustion. In the end the Iraqis will pay with their dead, and the Americans will be broke.

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It makes me think of Nixon and didn't he say he was not going to be the first President not to win or some such thing.

There's a surprise.

I would like to know how many people lived there.

People gone and what left dead and building bombed to the ground. Great win Bush.Napoleon would not hear his people when they said bad move either. I think it took a few months for him to see he had nothing. The Russia he wanted was gone.We seem to be fighting smoke.