[meenie]

Before I can make a judgement as to what we should support and what we should condemn, the objective should be made. In Fallujah is peace desired or is more killing the desired effect? If more killing is desired, who do we wish to kill? Are their enough terrorists embedded in the population to justify the number of innocents that will surely be killed in the process.

Will the Iraqi general and his troops combine to resist any reoccupation? If so, they will have to be liquidated. Was the United States wise to issue additional weapons to the Iraqi volunteers, if they do in fact combine with the insurgents whenever a reoccupation is attempted by the marines? Conclusion. This is one hell of a mess and I don't see many intelligent decisions being made on our side.

[ambrose]

The goal is to hand over this pile of crap to a semi-sane non-Islamic fundie civilian authority on 6/30/04.

[gandalftb]

The goals are clear: kill the foreign rebels, get the heavy weapons, stop the locals from fighting. Peace and disarmament is the strategy, killing is just one of the tactics. Al-Fawlan in Fallujah has only about 2k out of 40k locals remaining, so not a big embed problem. Not wise though to kill many of those 2k to get the 300.

Latif/Falluja Brigade are a concern if we go back in. We will have to fatten up their paychecks and post a watch. We gave them AKs only to make them legitimate, we control the ammo, and, this is key: they don't have kevlar.

It is a complex mess. But we got the right people on it.