You haven't even seen what is going on in Fallujah, so how can you either like or dislike it.
I'm rather surprised at the emotional hand wringing I'm seeing. Bush is NOT running the war, he has given his generals full freedom. That said, the generals are aware that winning the battle and losing the war is not an option. We have some pretty clever people over there, and since I seriously doubt if anyone in the media is being clued in on what is happening, I suggest we all withhold judgement until we can figure out what the plan is here.
I do know that Chief Wiggles (an intel officer in Iraq) had questioned a couple of Iraqi generals and he determined they were pretty good guys. Perhaps these are the generals who are going to be put in charge. If they can put together a troop of Iraqi military who are worthwhile and they can take out the guys in Fallujah that would be a win in my book. If it doesn't work and they turn out to be bad guys, we can bomb them right along with the rest.
Firm grasp of the obvious.
If they can put together a troop of Iraqi military who are worthwhile and they can take out the guys in Fallujah that would be a win in my book
True, although that's a pretty big if.
What I do know is that we surrounded Fallujah and announced the Marines were going in to pacify the city. Didn't happen. Then, for many days U.S. Generals said if the Iraqis don't adhere to an agreement to turn in their weapons, we were going in. They didn't and we didn't. Then we were going to have joint U.S. and Iraqi patrols. Didn't happen. Now, we are told U.S. forces are pulling back and an Iraqi unit is going into Fallujah. I agree, that might work in killing or disarming the bad guys. Wanna place a small wager on that? I bet they find precious few bad guys or weapons.
As the cleric in the article said, right now the bad guys think if they hang tough they can face us down. They think they've won a round. If we do eventually go in, that will make our job that much harder. This is not the picture we want to present. That part of the world respects strength and disrespects restraint.