I wouldn't trust Howard Fine as far as I could throw him, but the excerpt you post indicates that Fineman knows the answer to the question before he asks it. "Bill Clinton flinched then. Will George Bush now?"

Therefore I surmise he's clearly taunting Clinton and not Bush.

Based on this breathless screed, Howard really should moonlight doing promo copy for network TV shows...

I hope it changes President Bush's policy to be a little less restrained. But what I expect is that there will, in fact, be no repurcussions for the perpetrators or the mob.

I suspect AOG is right. But hopefully, in attention to comprehensive sweeps for weapons, we'll do fun stuff like start circling gunships around the city 24/7. Not to do anything, of course, but just to make sure they never forget we're there.

Apparently the region is being handed back to the Marines from the Army. If we're really cruel, of course, we'd hand the policing over to the Shiites.

No, if we were really cruel, we'd give the area to Kuwait.

Fineman's piece is, shall we say, value-neutral.

You can tell the lib bias by his focus on polls that are healthy for GWB, if declining. and why wouldn't they, given that general media bias.

'But more pictures like the ones from Fallujah could change their minds.. (and we'll be here, printing 'em as fast as we can)'

During the war of movement in Korea we wouldn't allow a civilian within two miles of our battle lines, which often shifted. Any civilian therein would be turned over to the National Korean Police detachments attached to us unless we felt they were NK linecrossers and those we interrogated before processing for internment. Anyone in the zone under arms was considered the enemy and dealt with accordingly. We had little trouble with "activists" as they were dealt with quickly and severely.

It's past time that we should be cordoning off hot spots like Falujah, moving the civilians out temporarily into the hands of the Iraqi police and cleaning out the hot spots house by house by alley. Anyone under arms should be shot on sight.

Meanwhile, Brians idea for the c130 Gunships in those areas waiting their turn sounds good to me.

We fought the B'athists mostly on Shia territory until they dissolved into the Sunni triangle; they were never defeated ... and that's what is needed now. Defeat them on their own soil. The mission is not yet accomplished and should be before 06/30/04.

Thanks to the collaborators at Reuters and the AFP, who just happened to be passing by when all this happened, we've got lots of pictures of smiling, happy faces. If nothing else, we need to teach these people that the next time they hold one of these traditional Muslim celebrations why it is that they should be properly attired in the requisite ski-masks.

I look at the celebrations like in Fallujah and I no longer see Men.

I see Orcs. If they were once Men, the emphasis is on were once.

And the only solution that works with Orcs is The Final Solution.

The Mogadishu example, shows the flaws in the MSM
and even most of the center-right variant view. If
one read Bowden's account, and saw the movie, one
sees that the battle of the Black Sea, was a victory, against impossible odds, with 40-1 enemy
casualties, that was reported as a defeat, and policy makers acted accordingly. This action in Fallujah on the other hand, was so barbarous, that
it justifies extreme measures

Does he want Bush to flinch?

In early stages of guerilla warfare, there are two goals:

To reduce fear of the enemy by demonstrating he can be hurt.

To inspire retaliation that will radicalize more active rebels and cooperation with those already active.

The response to this needs to be very carefully measured.

What genecis said, although I'd prefer a slightly different approach: shut down the town, no food in, no nothing in. Anyone inside can petition to go out to a concentration camp. Meanwhile, the leadership inside, whoever that is, is told to turn over all the bad guys.

That would make 'em meditate.

However, we won't do it. We get more bluster, again, from Bremer, but so far never any follow through.

The crowing of the anti-Bushites was palpable. On NPR, it was stated -- as news -- that the attack "calls into question again" the Pentagon policy of contracting out various functions.

Why?

Harry:

Excellent plan. Follow it up with at house-house search combined with ground-penetrating radar to find and destroy all the weapons.

Then threaten to let Shiites run the place.