FYI, those Blackwater guys were warned not to take that route. They were told that it was considered too dangerous to use. But they drove it anyway.
The USMC wasn't geared up to take revenge on the 'insurgents' for what some contractors did, but when they did get geared up and got stomping the Administration stopped them from really winning that engagement they way they should have.
Those cease fires? Ha! That was just time for the Bad Guys to reload their mortars and rockets and shoot at us. The Marines would go out and kill bad guys by the bunch and then get pulled back just when they could have really done some serious damage to them. Those were some intense times!
I said at the time of the Fallujah massacre that after starting to lay siege to the city, I couldn't believe we pulled back and were giving the enemy 2 weeks to regroup, resupply and reconnoiter. That was a really stoopid move on our part, IMHO.