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Fallujah has 500,000 plus residents. The "cheering crowd" numbered in the dozens.

Do you find it unusual that a large number of youthful, male Muslims would have happened on the scene, staged a jubilant celebration playing to the camera, and decide to drag the burnt corpses to a bridge for display?

This was a staged event. The gunmen knew when the victims left their location, knew their route, and made sure excitable dipsticks, and select provocateurs were on the scene to manufacture an outrage.

They want the patriot Freepers to want to kill Fallujahians in emotional overkill. They want the Leftist traitors to gain fodder for their opposition to Bush and the War, to blame him for the carnage and to affirm the desire to cut and run in desire to destroy the President's reelection. They win either way.

Bush doesn't play by the script of ambush killers. We didn't nuke Mecca or drag Arab Americans from their homes after 9/11. We're not going to raze Fallujah and kill innocents to "send a message". That's the message our enemies expect and desperately try to elicit. Bush is a measured, disciplined leader who has measured, disciplined advisors and lieutenants. This is a long haul War for our survival, and no visceral revenge is worth compromising the Iraq operation and its importance to the eradication of the threat of International Islamist terrorism.

U.S. Commanders Mull More Troops in Iraq

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - U.S. military commanders have begun studying ways they might increase troops in Iraq should violence spread much more widely, a senior officer said Monday.

Generals believe they have enough forces to handle the attacks that have been coming from various quarters, including the recent violence by a Shiite militia group, but they want to know what is available if the situation gets worse, said the officer, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

Separately, President Bush criticized the radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads the militia. Over the weekend, supporters rioted in Baghdad and four other cities in fighting that killed eight U.S. troops, a Salvadoran soldier and at least 52 Iraqis.

"This is one person that is deciding that rather than allowing democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force," Bush said. "We just can't let it stand."

The senior officer portrayed the weekend's violence as an attempt by al-Sadr to increase his influence in Iraq ahead of the expected June 30 transfer of power from the U.S.-led occupation to an Iraqi government. The officer is with U.S. Central Command, the military authority overseeing operations in Iraq.

Bush said he is committed to the June 30 deadline despite the violence and questions from some members of his own party whether the date should hold.

"The deadline remains firm," Bush said in Charlotte, N.C.

Gen. John Abizaid, the head of Central Command, and other senior generals ordered their staff to study options after the outbreak of violence from a previously relatively quiet sector of Iraq: members of the Shiite sect of Islam. Most violence so far has been attributed to Sunni Muslims — either members of Saddam's Sunni-led government, or Sunni extremists who follow al-Qaida.

The senior officer said the planning for additional troops was only a contingency in case violence spreads much more widely. At this point, the official said, that isn't believed likely. Most Iraqi Shiites at least tolerate the U.S.-led occupation, and officials tried to paint al-Sadr as a radical outsider with a limited following.

An Iraqi judge has issued a murder arrest for al-Sadr for the killing of another Shiite leader, coalition officials said. The warrant was issued some time ago, but the senior Central Command officer suggested coalition forces had previously avoided going after al-Sadr because it appeared his influence was waning.

He has also been difficult to find, the officer said, except when he is speaking at mosques, where U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies are reluctant to enter for fear of angering Muslims.

The senior Central Command officer said al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, would be systematically disarmed. The militia numbers about 3,000 fighters. Many of the U.S. troops were killed retaking police stations in Baghdad that were captured by the militia, the officer said.

Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had raised the prospect Sunday of extending the transfer deadline, questioning whether Iraq would be ready for self-rule.

On Monday, John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, called on the administration to explain its post-July 1 security plan.

"This administration has so stubbornly resisted what I've been calling for and what others have called for for months, which is a genuine significant outreach to the global community" to assist in Iraqi security, he said.

Bush spoke with reporters Monday after meeting with the family of a soldier who died in Iraq. The president was in Charlotte to speak at Central Piedmont Community College.

In his speech, Bush said, "We're still being challenged in Iraq, and the reason why is a free Iraq will be a major defeat in the cause of terror. Terrorists can't stand freedom. They hate free societies."

"But we will stay the course," he said. "A free Iraq will change the Middle East. A free Iraq will make the world more peaceful. A free Iraq will make America more secure."

Let's look at some of our own history, specifically the Southern and Border States between 1890 and 1930, when thousands of blacks (and some others) were lynched, in some cases with a level of brutality and mutilation that matched what happened in Fallujah. (There were also race motivated lynchings in non-Southern states like Indiana, Arizona, and Delaware. It was not exclusively a Southern problem.) For instance, in at least one case, the victim was skinned alive and several rednecks later tanned the skins to make razor strops. These lynchings sometimes did put a swift end to the lives of criminals, but too often killed blacks who violated the unwritten sexual and cultural codes of the South or who were wrongly accused of violating those codes. In many cases, the lynchings were sanctioned by local officials and local elites. Some lynchings were public affairs, with picnickers and commemorative postcards. In one case (Tulsa in 1921), white violence degenerated into an anti-black pogrom, with much of the African American section of that city burned to the ground and several hundred people, mostly black, killed. The police and the state militia took no action until the violence had played out.

That the lynching party was relatively small and the witnesses in many cases were few does not eliminate the complicity of local officials and elites. Jail guards went off duty before the lynchers came, or did not put up a fight. State and local officials usually did not investigate the lynching and seldom prosecuted the lynchers.

There was an ideology that motivated the Southern (and other) lynchers: white supremacy combined with a redirection of Southern anger toward their failed secession attempt onto the African-Americans. The white supremacist beliefs derived from a form of Darwinism that applied the biologist's evolutionary principles to racial differences. This ideology, in a more virulent form, motivated the German Nazis. Until the 1920s, most Americans, even those who thought lynchings were horrible, believed that whites, especially Nordic whites, were the superior race.

Had Theodore Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge sent Federal troops into the South to stop lynchings and protect black civil rights, they would have provoked a second civil war. In Coolidge's time, with the Ku Klux Klan having several million members in the Northeast, Midwest and West, as well as the South, the civil war would have had combat zones from Maine to California. Catholics, Jews, blacks, Indians, union members, and white liberals (both old style liberals like H.L. Mencken and Robert Taft and socialistic modern liberals) would have been arrayed against a probable majority of white Protestants. With tanks, machine guns, and warplanes, such a civil war would have made the 1861-65 troubles look like a barroom brawl.

The end of lynching and equal rights for African Americans had to await several decades as public opinion, even in the South, was swayed to oppose at least the crudest manifestations of white supremacy. After the 1920s, theories of the genetic superiority of Europeans were largely debunked by science. Southern politicians and businessmen recognized that the virulent racism of prior decades hurt the region's economy, keeping investment out. Losing millions of blacks to Northern cities diminished the South's labor pool and created a voting bloc in the Northern industrial states that pushed Northern politicians for Federal action against segregation. The horrors of Nazi Germany, the ultimate race based regime, disenchanted many from racist views. From the late 1920s through the 1950s, the number of lynchings declined dramatically. Those that occurred mostly took place in small towns, not in Dallas or Atlanta, and usually happened under cover of darkness.

By the 1950s, the South had changed sufficiently so that when Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson sent Federal troops and lawmen into the region to end school desegregation and arrest white supremacists, there was no general uprising as there likely would have been at the height of the lynching era. Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace blustered and proclaimed their support of segregation, but they did not order their respective states' National Guards to resist the Federal authorities. Neither did they call for armed uprisings in Little Rock or Birmingham. (There was one small insurgency at Oxford, Mississippi, where several thousand segregationists, led by retired Army General Edwin Walker, fought a force of Federal marshals attempting to desegregate Ole Miss. However, regular Army units soon routed the Rebel wannabes.)

Times changed, but it took over 30 years to do so.

I have used this discussion of American history to lead into consideration of the issues of a police-type response vs. a military response to the outrages at Fallujah, Iraq. This particular part of Iraq is a stronghold of anti-American sentiment. Do we really have the luxury of many years to win the hearts and minds of those Iraqis motivated by either Baathist or Muslim extremist ideology to abandon those beliefs? It appears that half-hearted measures, like sending Federal marshals into the South in 1924, would be futile. The only solution is a massive exercise in force to make the Iraqi elite and masses realize, as did the Germans post V-E Day, that resistance is signing one's death warrant.

In the immediate days after World War II, Nazi diehards, called werewolves, tried an underground resistance. The werewolves, when captured, were shot on the spot by Americans, Britons, and Russians alike. Resistance soon ended. Those Germans who were pro-Nazi, but not as fanatic as the werewolves, soon learned their lesson.

There is no substitute for victory.

"We didn't nuke Mecca or drag Arab Americans from their homes after 9/11."

We nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and dragged Jap Americans from their homes. And won that War, for keeps.

(And in the other theater we bombed Dresden and Berlin, innocent civilians, with the intention of ending the war, from the bottom up).

We are treating the war against islam(ic) extremism like a police case, one criminal and gang, at a time.

Point: In the end, it took a MASSIVE shock, to stop Jap fanaticism.

What is different, about this war?

Muslims worldover are making WAR. USA, Israel, Sudan, Spain, Turkey, Russia, India, Philippines, Indonesia.

They TARGET innocent civilians, yet their civilians escape with impunity.

I argue it won't end, until it becomes clear perhaps 10,000 of their own civilians will die, for each person they kill.

Why is this war not like others, whereby you beat the enemy down, until he surrenders? Islam(ic) extremism has not surrendered, yet.

Germany and Japan were eventually capable of self-governance. But they had to be rid of their "extremists."

Getting there took the deaths of many non-combatant ("peaceful") civilians, and national recognition of defeat.

I guess my argument is that it is not until the society feels the brutal costs of the war, and total defeat, will they willingly undertake becoming a re-newed society.

We frequently hear of "the Arab Nation" and the "muslim World." They are responsible for their own, for better and worse.

Perhaps we (and Spain) have become "too civilized" to inflict total defeat.

Spain's rational response to Madrid SHOULD have been sending tens of thousands MORE troops, to Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO's response to Istanbul and Madrid SHOULD have been sending hundreds of thousands of troops.