"It Seemed Like Everyone In The City Who Had A Gun Was Out There"

Damn good coverage from the Washington Post of the Fallujah battle - which rather invalidates the last sentence of the last post. The US Marines have an institutional history of being rather better at political war than the Army, going back to their 19th century role in Latin America - as evidenced by this quote:

"One Marine officer described that attack as a piece of "well-organized street theater" that was designed to "whip up a mob mentality." He said local Muslim clerics had issued an order saying the mutilation of the corpses was an offense to Islam, but that a locally made videotape of the attack was already selling in many shops."

I think that was the point I was trying to make earlier. But it doesn't bode well that AC130 Spectre gunships were called in - even if they are trying to avoid using the "big guns", there are few more devastating forms of supporting firepower than one of these.