Word: fallujah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...unity of the country as a whole. I hope we see more of the Bush who campaigned from the center in 2000 than the Bush who governed from the extreme right in 2004. But even if these hopes are dashed, he needs national support in the critical battle for Fallujah and throughout the Sunni triangle in Iraq. The military is poised for one of the bloodiest and most difficult of all its campaigns since the actual invasion. We cannot let them--or the Iraqi people--down. In the run-up to the Iraqi elections, on which hinges so much...
...just muddling along. The unanticipated vicissitudes of the warfare have so far allowed for only short-term tactical decisions, and an endgame by definition is constantly evolving. Now the military is probing and testing fresh options for quelling violence: "Do we negotiate in Ramadi while bombing Fallujah," asks a senior official, "or vice versa...
...Allawi and the Coalition have calculated that they have no option but to take the pain of the "surgery" required to restore control over Fallujah, and their battlefield plans will be designed to make the operation quick and decisive. The last time the Marines were sent into Fallujah, in April, they were pulled back as U.S. officials felt the heat of a political backlash spurred by the images of civilian casualties beamed around the world by al-Jazeera cameramen inside the city. This time, however, the political echelon in Washington and Baghdad is unlikely to hit the brakes...
...insurgents have not simply been waiting for the Marines in Fallujah. Instead, they have dramatically escalated their actions elsewhere, killing 85 people in a series of attacks throughout the Sunni triangle and in Baghdad since Friday, possibly hoping that opening up new fronts away from Fallujah might ease pressure on the city and also to signal that even after the city falls, the fight will continue elsewhere. Particularly symbolic in that respect were Friday's coordinated bomb and mortar attacks in Samarra, a town recaptured from rebels by U.S. and Iraqi forces only weeks...
...even greater concern to Allawi and his backers than insurgent actions elsewhere, however, may be the political fallout from Fallujah. The battle's long-term impact will be measured in light of the contest between the Coalition and the insurgents for Sunni hearts and minds in Iraq. The insurgency has been sustained by a strong nationalist sentiment among Sunnis, who had been the dominant social group in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - indeed, ever since the country was first created by Britain. A widely held sense of uncertainty over their future as a minority in a democratic Iraq had been compounded...