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In the end, the Americans left themselves with only bad options," said Michael Clarke, professor of defense studies at King's College, London. "They could either destroy the city, causing heavy loss of life. Or they could walk away. Both are a disaster, but the Americans chose the less disastrous of the two."

"They could either destroy the city, causing heavy loss of life- THIS would have been a GOOD option.

A Victory.

An Example - serving as a DETERRENT to future acts against the Coalition. Lets remember that Sadr started his crap AFTER the Americans were burnt and cut up and eaten and hung from a bridge.

THEN we could have gone in and established an Iraqi defense force.

The Marines should have never promoted this Matis guy. He is just looking after getting more stars. He's the one who changed the 1st Marines motto to "First do no harm". What crap!

We would not have had to level the entire city and kill all its inhabitants. Although if ever a city deserved it, Fallujah did. We had most of the enemy cornered in the Jolan neighborhood. Gunships, 155 arty tanks and 2000 lb laze bombs round the clock, would have crushed the enemy in 72 hours in that neighborhood- and our snipers where having a field day.

Instead Urbanturban legends will make Falujans sound bigger than David and Goliath.

Condi Rice, at the 911 hearing, had it backwards when she says we didn't avenge the Cole because we though it might EMBOLDEN the enemy and because we didn't have the right target or the right forces or this or that blah blah.

Failure to respond to attacks is what emboldens the enemy.

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Exactly the opposite has happened. At Karbala and Najaf, restraint in attacking "the city" combined with surgical slaughter of the bad guys has utterly decimated the enemy fighters.

I'm all for destroying a city if that's absolutely necessary, remembering that every one of those . . . what? 200,000 people has relatives who probably were not anti-American and almost CERTAINLY were not violent until you kill their relatives. Now you've just added 200,000 more "insurgents" to the ranks, rather than thinning them by 2-3,000. I think this way is better, and I trust the officers.

"The Marines should have never promoted this Matis guy. He is just looking after getting more stars. He's the one who changed the 1st Marines motto to "First do no harm". What crap!"

I thought you were joking, did a google search, and here it is

"Instead Urbanturban legends will make Falujans sound bigger than David and Goliath."

Exactly!

This was about not allowing the instability of actually defeating an enemy before rebuilding him threaten a turnover date in an election year. Guess a few dozen Marines who thought that they were dieing for something else can be rationalized away.