The fall of Fallujah continues

I am glad that the assault on Fallujah so far has seen limited U.S. casualties. And of course our Marines have done a fine job of doing their job. That is one bright spot from a real no win situation.

You see, many believe the insurgency in Fallujah has done what the Iraqi army did during the initial invasion; melt into the populace to fight again later. Some, according to the New York Times, left ahead of the assault and are now helping to coordinate attacks in other parts of the country:

Before the offensive began, some military officials said Mr. Zarqawi could be operating out of Falluja, but his precise whereabouts have not been known. "I personally believe some of the senior leaders probably have fled," Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, said in a video conference with reporters on Tuesday. "I would hope not, but I've got to assume that those kinds of leaders understand the combat power we can bring."

Insurgent attacks continued to exact a heavy toll across Iraq on Tuesday. Two American soldiers died in a mortar attack in Mosul, where government authority appears to be ebbing. Gunmen assassinated a senior government official in Samarra. Guerrillas fired mortars at police stations in downtown Baghdad while hundreds of fighters massed in the center of the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west of Falluja.

A suspected car bombing outside an Iraqi National Guard base in Kirkuk killed three people and wounded two others, Reuters reported. The attacks on Tuesday followed several others over the weekend, both in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle.

The American military said on Tuesday that six people had been killed in the car bomb attack Monday night outside Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad. Five were Iraqi policemen, and the sixth was a civilian, the military said. In the two church bombings the same night, one Iraqi was killed and several wounded, and one of the bombers was disguised as an Iraqi policeman, according to a report put out by a Western security contractor.

This spate of what appear to be coordinated attacks, as well as the dispersal of top insurgent leaders, suggests that the Falluja offensive alone will not crush an insurgency that has been gathering strength. And it raises the prospect that insurgents will try to regroup and infiltrate Falluja after the fighting is over, as they have done in Samarra.

The U.S. battle for the land is becoming more and more inconsequential. We can fight all over the country of Iraq, but we will never be able to hold every single building in every single city. And once we move onto a new hotbed, insurgents will backfill the area that we have left.

We are fighting a people who do not care if they live or die. If they survive, they are proud members of the revolution. If they die, they are martyrs in the war against American occupation. These are the types of people we are up against.

I fully believe we will take Fallujah with ease. There will be little resistance because it will not serve the purpose of the terrorists. They favor techniques that continue to evoke terror, like car bombings and kidnappings.

Gunmen abducted three members of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's family from their Baghdad home, his spokesman said today, and militants said they would be beheaded in two days if the siege of Fallujah was not lifted.

A cousin of the premier, Ghazi Allawi, the cousin's wife and their daughter-in-law were snatched Tuesday night from their house in the the western Yarmouk neighborhood Tuesday evening, government spokesman Thair al-Naqeeb said.

Meanwhile our methods will have the unfortunate consequence of being responsible for stories like this one:

Mohammed Abboud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home yesterday, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down.

"My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment," said Mr Abboud, a teacher.

"We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out."

It's a no win situation. We need a new idea on how to deal with these people, one that doesn't involve violence and unwanted civilian casualties. We need it soon.