U.S. officials are openly admitting that the ongoing assault on Fallujah will probably have little effect on the insurgency in Iraq.
U.S. officials have said Iraqi rebel leaders and foreigners, including al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, used the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad as a safe haven from which to direct a campaign of bombings, killings and kidnappings.
But U.S. commanders have acknowledged Zarqawi and other senior insurgents probably left Falluja before Monday's launch of the long-expected offensive to take control of the city.
"For Falluja to be a success from the U.S. perspective, we would have to achieve something pretty close to total victory -- not just retaking real estate but accomplishing real strategic objectives," said defense analyst Charles Pena of the Cato Institute
"That could be capturing al-Zarqawi or being able to say we've destroyed his network, and that the net result is a reduction in the violence in Iraq and an increase in security," Pena added.
"What do the bad guys have to do? They've got to not lose. And not lose just simply means surviving to fight another day. And that's exactly what they've done," Pena said.
And what is the cost of this little "Get Your Mind Off the Election and Whip Up Some Patriotic Fervor" adventure, besides the 18 U.S. soldiers killed so far?
In one case, a pregnant woman and her child died in a refugee camp west of the city after the mother unexpectedly aborted and no doctors were on hand, Firdoos al-Ubadi, an official from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, told Reuters.
In another case, a young boy died from a snake bite that would normally have been easily treatable, she said.
"From a humanitarian point of view it's a disaster, there's no other way to describe it. And if we don't do something about it soon, it's going to spread to other cities," she said.
