I checked out the Fallujah/ Operation Valiant Resolve analysis by Wretchard.
I advocated such tactics on Post 17 of this 1 April 2004 thread and on an earlier thread.
Predictably, the press will call the early phase a "quagmire".
What's your opinion on the tactics of Operation Valiant Resolve, Travis?
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17 posted on 04/01/2004 10:37:01 PM PST by Polybius:
You don't need to mutilate dead bodies, MOAB women and children or act like Nazis. You merely have to identify your enemy, isolate your enemy and then kill your enemy. That is what war is all about.
Here is how I would handled this Sunni Triangle snake pit:
1. Set up a cordon sanitaire around Fallujah. Nobody goes in. The residents only go out, once, through check points to be sorted into "totally harmeless" or "in need of imprisonment".
2. Wait as long as it takes to have nobody left in the city except the Bathist die-hards.
3. Wage mechanical urban warfare on the city and the holdouts with heavy emphasis on air power and artillery and practically no emphasis on infantry.
4. Sustain the attack until there is not a stray dog left alive to roam the streets.
You have killed your enemy, spared the innocent and taught the enemy in other cities that it is unhealthy to mess with the U.S.
Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.
17 posted on 04/01/2004 10:37:01 PM PST by Polybius