[ElectricStrawberry]

Of course the "leaders" fled early....martyrdom is for the underlings.

[My2Cents]

I doubt they've been in Fallujah for the past 7 or 8 months, or however long it's been since we pulled up short of flattening the place the first time. Al Zarqawi and friends have been pulling the strings from a safe distance, and have been for some time, is my bet.

[Rutles4Ever]

Why on earth didn't we seal the place off before taking a week to amass equipment and telegraph our punch?

[OXENinFLA]

"I personally believe that some of the senior leaders probably have fled. I would hope not, but I've got to assume that those kind of leaders understand the combat power we can bring and the fact that we will free Falluja of the anti-Iraqi forces," Metz said.

This was a bad sound bite to let the press have.

I like Rummy's response to this yesterday better.

---

Q Does that mean you will capture Zarqawi in this instance, or you're hoping to?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I have no idea if he's there.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Sounds like the US forces have surrounded the city...?

[stockpirate]

It will be a great honor for you to die for Allah, I will remember you for a long time, at least until tomorrow....lol

[fortheDeclaration]

Once the city comes under Gov't control, the terrorists have lost their base of operations.

They will be nothing more then armed thugs without any place of refuge.

They will be hunted down by the Iraqi gov't as the criminals they are, having lost the illusion of being a military threat.

We should be jumping up and down at this victory.

We thought we were going to have a bloody fight on our hands, instead the 'resistence' is being shown for it is, a bunch of armed thugs.

Don't let the MSM steal our victory, which is what they are going to do by telling us that we did not accomplish this or that.

They were hoping for a bloodbath to make Bush look bad, instead our military came through again.

[DoctorMichael]

.....fled......

Too bad.

[LiberalBassTurds]

No leaders = no cohesiveness = dead jihad-a-kazis.

[Skinn_dogg]

You would have to be living under a rock in Kalamazoo to not have known about this attack on Fallujah.

Why would Zarqawi and his cohorts stay there?

[WestTexasWend]

So 72 virgins isn't enough anymore, huh?

[bilhosty]

I thought they all wanted to be martyrs.

[mojito]

Only the MSM could be so deluded, and so ignorant of the realities of warfare, that they could envisage that these pathetic vicious creeps, the same scum that al-reuters calls "insurgents," would be able to engage in combat with the men of the USMC on something like an equal footing.

[oceanview]

many of us saw this coming. it was pretty obvious really.

I am still hopeful for some operation disconnected from the fallujah offensive that gets these guys. otherwise, we are likely to come out of this fallujah operation, and still have near the same level of car bombings et al, as we did before, because these guys are operating someplace else now. the media will have a field day with that.

[First_Salute]

Nice fireworks display.