I think all but the most extreme understand this would be a disaster that would be with us for years.
Hey brainless...this war IS a disaster that will be with us for years...
Al
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Decision on Possible Attack on Iraqi Town Seems Near
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: April 25, 2004
ASHINGTON, April 24 — Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.
After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.
In a wave of heavy violence across Iraq, at least 14 Iraqis were killed Saturday in an attack on a crowded market in Baghdad, and 14 more Iraqis were killed by a bomb as they traveled in a bus south of the capital.
Seven American soldiers were killed Saturday in two attacks. Later, in Basra, two American soldiers died when suicide bombers attempted water-borne raids on the nation's main oil terminal.
As Mr. Bush discusses strategy for Falluja, administration and senior military officials portray his choices as dismal.
"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible." Intense fighting stands the chance of intensifying resistance to the coalition, both in Sunni and Shiite centers.
No decision to begin military action has been made yet.
The chief of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, visited Falluja on Saturday with Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, to consult with frontline commanders.
They appeared to be making a last-ditch effort for a negotiated settlement.
But in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed strong doubts that the Falluja political and business figures the Americans are talking to hold any sway over the insurgents.
On Saturday, as a blinding sandstorm swept across a sprawling former Iraqi Army base near Falluja, Marine commanders were getting assignments for potential targets, studying maps and planning lines of attack for a battle that they expect could come in the next few days. The Marines have encircled the city, awaiting Mr. Bush's decision.
But the city, a sandy mix of wide boulevards and back alleys along the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, poses what military officials say is an immensely complicated and dangerous urban combat terrain.
While administration officials say they would like to carry out a precise attack on an estimated 2,000 hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, military officials say there is no way guided missiles or pinpoint bombing can do this job.
nytimes.com |
