A lot of misinformation is being posted on news sites by people that don't have our best interests at heart.
Drudge still has the 35 U.S.Marines captured by the terrorists up on China View.
That's a whole platoon of Marines and there is no way they surrendeed.
Ramadi is not in the hands of the terrorists and if they are in the center of the city then they are easy targets.
No one knows how many Iraqi soldiers are fighting with the U.S.troops so to say 200 deserted is a suspect story.
We don't know how many terrorists we have killed so to post 42 is another bad story.
Baghdad is quiet today,so is Mosul,Basra and Tikrit.
Zargawi is probaly in hiding with all the drones and aircraft in the sky.
Can you say "target rich environment"?
Good points you make. Ive read the Iraqi deserters were out of a total of 2000, so 90% stayed to fight.
And 35 Marines do not allow themselves to be captured, I dont buy that story for a minute.
Also this story says nearly 100 terrorists confirmed dead already. Along with this useful intel tidbit:
"In southern Falluja, soldiers found a notebook with photos believed to be of foreign fighters."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/09/iraq.main/index.html
These mid-operation are all speculation in any event. We discovered during the BASH last year that the most reliable reports had come exclusively from CENTCOM, not surprisingly. The second most reliable were from some of the best Blogs, like Belmont and CommandPost. The least reliable were from our sworn enemies like Aljazz, China, liberal English, and France.
Most of the rest of the world knows that, too.