An "indefinite" ceasefire has been struck in Falluja, but Marines encircling the city prepare to attack
And these dead and wounded are mostly men of military age and *not* "women, children and the elderly" as the Lying Liberal Left media would have it!
But as all of our military commanders in Iraq and Bush Administration officials keep saying, the Falluja "insurgents" won't have the option of the
or ceasefire forever, particularly if they keep shooting at our Marines and/or refuse to give themselves up.
President Bush is using his weekend "off" to make conference calls and hold roundtable discussions with his War Cabinet at Camp David to discuss the ultimate disposition of Falluja:
Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.
After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.
[...]
As Mr. Bush discusses strategy for Falluja, administration and senior military officials portray his choices as dismal.
"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions
[Of course, we all have to be hypervigilant when reading the NYTimes due to their record of poor truth-telling, but when they say "one senior official," meaning someone who won't go on the record, you really have to take what is said with more than a grain of salt!]
said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."
[I take it that here he means minimal casualties on both sides.]
No decision to begin military action has been made yet.
The chief of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, visited Falluja on Saturday with Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, to consult with frontline commanders. They appeared to be making a last-ditch effort for a negotiated settlement.
But in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed strong doubts that the Falluja political and business figures the Americans are talking to hold any sway over the insurgents.
On Saturday, as a blinding sandstorm
[Ever since last year and the March Up to Baghdad, I hate these, but I bet our soldiers hate them even more.]
swept across a sprawling former Iraqi Army base near Falluja, Marine commanders were getting assignments for potential targets, studying maps and planning lines of attack for a battle that they expect could come in the next few days. The Marines have encircled the city, awaiting Mr. Bush's decision.
But the city, a sandy mix of wide boulevards and back alleys along the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, poses what military officials say is an immensely complicated and dangerous urban combat terrain.
While administration officials say they would like to carry out a precise attack on an estimated 2,000 hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents
[...but there are Iranian Shiites in there, too, I'm sure.]
, military officials say there is no way guided missiles or pinpoint bombing can do this job.
Instead, the military is planning swift raids by Marine riflemen — backed by helicopters and gunships — aimed at the insurgents' leaders and their gunmen, while encouraging others in the city to evacuate or stay under cover.
For Mr. Bush, struggling through the most casualty-ridden month in Iraq since the war began 13 months ago, the kind of operation now being contemplated is hardly the sort of painful choice his administration anticipated nearly a year after he declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq and the defeat of Saddam Hussein's government.
[This is, of course, the NYTimes making stuff up and engaging in the obligatory bashing of President Bush and his Administration. We are at war and in war, there are casualties. While they may seem "high"--and of course, every soldier killed or seriously hurt is a net loss to us all--our casualties in Operation Iraq Freedom don't come close to those we've endured in other wars and still amount to about 1/4 of the civilians who were slaughtered on 9/11.]
The president and his advisers, said officials familiar with the deliberations, are keenly aware that if the operation to root out the insurgents kills many civilians — or simply appears to when reports are broadcast on Arab networks
[Ha! Just Arab networks?
The global Lying Liberal Left media will follow Al-Jazeera's lead!
And they'll portray it as "America bad." no matter what happens.]
— it could spark uprisings elsewhere around Iraq, from Baghdad even to some Shiite strongholds where tolerance of the American occupation has worn thin.
[Love the way the NYT skips back and forth across Iraq and between the Sunni and Shiite sects with n real distinctions!]
In Washington, officials still describe the fear of uprisings in Iraq as a theory, one they say may be overblown. But it clearly has Mr. Bush and his advisers deeply concerned. They have only 10 weeks to form an interim government, and it will be May, officials say, before the United Nations envoy charged to put together such a government, Lakhdar Brahimi, returns to Iraq.
[...]
It was this growing concern, officials say, that led Mr. Bremer, who is to leave Iraq in 10 weeks after handing sovereignty over to Iraqis, to warn on Friday that "Iraq faces a choice."
His message was that the country could miss its best chance to establish a democratic government, and he used a starkly grimmer tone than his usual upbeat message about life returning to normal.
Mr. Bush is described by many officials as convinced that if the insurgents hold off American forces there, they will try to do the same in other Iraqi cities.
[If this is indeed President Bush's line of thought, he may be right, but we also have to deal with the Shiite cleric al-Sadr and what remains of his "Mahdi Army" holed up in Najaf.]
[...]
Another person involved in the talks is the mayor of Falluja, Mahmoud Ibrahim. But it is unclear how much power he wields. Marine officers who have dealt with him say he is roundly disliked by many of the residents. He had been the mayor for several years under Saddam Hussein's rule. The political situation has been somewhat murky, with rival city councils named by American civilian and military officials, and it is unclear how Mr. Ibrahim remained mayor.
In any event, he told Marine officers earlier this week that he had no control over three sections of the city — Jolan, Hayal Askeri and Shuhada — which make up about half the city.
On the outskirts today, hundreds of people were still trying to get back to their homes despite the apparent threat of imminent attack, but soldiers and marines at the checkpoints turned them back and allowed no one in.
Hundreds of other people were fleeing the city. The rule was that only families were being allowed out. At several points, young, military-age men were seen grabbing protesting children by the hand to make their way out past the checkpoints.
[What horrible cowards! Of course, the Marines are pretty scary!]
The American military surrounding Falluja — and, indeed, all across Iraq — took quiet and nearly invisible steps to prepare for an attack that increasingly seemed inevitable to commanders.
[...]
Behind the scenes, senior American officials reached out to members of the Iraqi Governing Council, some of whom had publicly criticized the initial combat missions to pacify Falluja after violence flared two weeks ago. The goal of the talks, Pentagon and military officials said, was to guarantee the Iraqis' support for an offensive to quell the insurgency in Falluja should all other attempts to pacify the town fail.
A final information campaign also was being prepared, senior officials said. Just before an allied offensive into Falluja, messages would be broadcast into the town urging all noncombatants to leave the city and seek refuge in designated areas where food, water, medicine and shelter would be provided by the American military.
All we can do is to continue to watch and wait.
It would be nice if the IslamoNazis saw sense and reason and decided to surrender, but I doubt they will and our Marines will have to go into the streets and alleys of Falluja to fight and kill these "dead enders."
We were going to have to have a showdown with the enemy sooner or later and as the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam and his Republican Guard was so fast and easy, it should surprise noone that we'd be fighting this battle now.
They're just to the north of this area, are our staunchest supporters (and likewise, the biggest haters of Baathists) and are some of the best fighters, yet we've heard nothing about them for weeks.
Pray for the best; prepare for the worst.
That's what the Marines are doing.
And as the partisan press bemoaned our certain bloody military defeat in Iraq three weeks ago when this anniversary uprising started, as sure as God made little green apples, they'll carry on that American soldiers are "brutal baby killers" when we subdue the troublemakers in Falluja decisively, if it turns out that we have to attack the town to save it from the killers.
The journos are so predictable.
Right-thinking Americans and clear-headed Iraqis know the truth: our soldiers are good men and women who will do what must be done with minimal casualties and for the good of the most people.
In the case of Falluja, it will be a firm response to the Islamist guerrillas' assault on the democratic future of Iraq.
Home
