We were in Fallujah well before the election in November 2004, and Rummy resigned the day after the election in 2006, so he wasn’t even around to ask Congress for funding in 2007. Major fail there, I’d say.
Exactly, right AFTER the election. Not till after, no doubt that timing was planned months earlier,
And the post Rummy new Pelosi congress strategy was?
The surge.
GWB wouldnt want to be forcing a GOP congress BEFORE the 2006 election to come up with funding for a surge when he had been assuring Americans that the war was going fine.
That could produce nasty results at the polls,
Most major elements were staged in CAMP Fallujah prior to the election and 3/5 conducted feints against the city prior to Al-Fajr kicking off.
The election was held 02 November 2004. We were still at the ITC when they relayed the election results via radio. Al-Fajr started on 08 November 2004 with the encirclement of the city in conjunction with rotary/fixed wing strikes, MikWiks, and artillery. This was followed by major incursions into the city in the hours between 08/09 November, with a main push in the hours between 09/10 November.
To sickoflibs. The administration had wanted to avoid major causalities (on both sides) and campaigns in urban population centers. The so called "Fallujah Brigade" claimed they would control the city and maintain law, order, and peace. In reality, it was nothing more than a safe haven for terrorists and a launching point to conduct operations in the rest of Al-Anbar. That was the diplomatic approach. Following the Blackwater Bridge incident it became apparent Al-Fallujah would need to be cleared by force.
Allowing Fallujah to fester, albeit unintentionally, proved to be a smart move. It concentrated a previously unseen and hard to track enemy in one location. "We" also told "them" that if they wanted a chance to kill Americans and fight for allah, Fallujah was where the party was going down - this prompted other terrorist bastards to flock to Fallujah for their chance at glory and martyrdom.
While urban areas are brutal on conventional forces (I myself was wounded then/there) it provided us the opportunity to go toe to toe with the enemy. We killed nearly 3000 of those bastards and while a slow process was the initial major blow to the insurgency in Iraq.
And in late late October, we were briefed we WERE going into Al-Fallujah, but it would NOT be until AFTER the election.............
HOWEVER, by this point we had already conducted clearing operations in Hit, Hadithah, Ana, Rawa, Haqlaniyah, Barwana, and elsewhere - we expected gun battles to happen there - hadji just fled to Al Fallujah and waited for us there.