It is important that not only do you claim victory, as we did in Fallujah, your enemy must agree that he is beaten.
The Baath in Fallujah does not agree that they are beaten.
We must, again, surround the city, let non-combatants exit, and this time anyone voluntarily remaining in the city must go to meet their maker.
I wasn't there, I don't know all of the political issues being balanced in the decision to end the seige, so I don't know if it was the right one or not. But I know that the right decision now is to finish it. To do otherwise is to invite a nationwide revolution that will sweep away everything we have tried to build. Fascists who believe God is with them must be denied any further evidence that God is with them or their numbers will only grow.
We have to finish them.
IMHO there was only one political issue being balanced: over 100 marines were KIA just to barely claw into the city..
No, we don't. The Iraqis have to finish them and they will finish them completely in a way that we can not because of "world opinion".
I'm not sure it was a mistake to pull back. There was getting to be too much uproar about the battle. The media was misportraying it and making it sound like we were slaughtering innocents. When the Iraqis go in, there will be no cameras, there will be no reporters, there will just be death to the "insurgents". Just remember, the new leaders of Iraq all survived Saddam, they did that by being smart and tough. Let's wait until a week or so after 6/30 before we say this was a failure.