Well, it hasn't been a month yet, so my prediction isn't necessarily off, but the Fallujah fighting is still ongoing. Things have actually been pretty slow this past month, more like a siege than an assault, but Donald Sensing thinks the end game is approaching:
Over this month American forces have steadily closed the cordon within the city, reducing the terrain available to the enemy slice by slice. President Bush told the media today that in large areas of the city, life has returned pretty much to normal. More and more Fallujan civilians are reported to be escaping from the rebel areas, meaning that the civilians have seen the writing on the wall and no longer wish to hitch to a weak horse, or the insurgents no longer can stop them. Or both.
What we seem to be doing in steadily forcing the enemy to concentrate themselves into a smaller and smaller area. Not only does this liberate more civilians, it makes future targeting and intelligence gathering much simpler.
Some commentati have said that our self-imposed pause allowed the enemy to fortify their chosen redoubt within the city. No doubt. But it won't matter. The patty-cake of Marines getting into street gun battles with insurgents will not continue. The insurgents' modern Alamo will be futile. Imagine if Santa Ana had possessed a few F-15s, Cobra helicopters and Abrams tanks in 1836.
I hope so. My basic sense of things is that they should just go in for the kill already, but I'm nothing like a military expert and I'll just have to believe that the commanders in the field know what they're doing.
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