Update: Deal on Fallujah
This is interesting. A plan where an Iraqi “Fallujah Protection Army” would replace U.S. Marines “in an around the embattled city” has been agreed to after “three days of discussions between American commanders and four former Iraqi generals”, according to Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Fred Barbash of the Washington Post.
Hmmm… Saddam’s people will be asked to do what the US Marines could not? This would be a stark and surprising admission by the American commanders, who have seen 160 casualties amongst their own in Iraq this month and have found the urban warfare tough sledding.
But were US commanders bluffing when they dropped 500-pound bombs on Fallujah in recent days? Maybe. And the attack on Al Jazeera and other news outlets trying to report the effects of the American tactics? They now have been supplied with a softer story to tell the people of the region. And it is hard to believe that the Iraqi troops–about whom Chandrasekaran and Barbash report, “military officials said it was clear that the Iraqis did not have the skills to fight the insurgents on their own”–will be able to do the American bidding in any effective way. So there is reason to see suggestion of American withdrawal in a PR dimension, and cannot yet be taken at face value. Let’s see what happens with this….