"Can even the looney Islamicists just want to keep feeding their limited human resources into the meat grinder?"

Ah, but that is the question: just how "limited" are those resources? From a Western perspective, it is hard to imagine even another 600 "martyrs" stepping forward, but these guys generally aren't Westerners.

Nope, don't need no infantry, nosirree.

Mr. Judd;

If Zarqawi has already evacuated his valuable personel, why not throw the cannon fodder at the Coalition to slow them down and generate a few more casualties? There's plenty more where they came from. Think of the mine clears of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Unlike that war, we're not killing enough to make a demographic impact.

According to this article, the cannon fodder is stacked high just beyond the border. We shall see.

"Yemeni tells how he left family to join fighting"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1348384,00.html

Harry:

You need a decoy to draw fire and then air power.

Tell that to the Marines.

You could, of course, level the city and everything in it. In fact, that's what I think we ought to have done, first invoking Allah's protections for his mosques and mullahs.

But we're afraid to be Jacksonian.

We are leveling the city. This is sent as a message more than anything else. "You keep harboring these guys and this is what happens." Ramadi will be the next example.

Not all of Z's upper echelon left. One was found execution-style. Seems some of the rats wanted off the ship and he didn't agree. Another 20 were also found EC, they might have wanted to leave but didn't.

Harry:

You could gather themm all in a state college lecture hall. Yet they're clearing a city of 300,000. We don't need more infantry.

AOG:

It's impacting his demographic. After Tet the Cong ceased to exist.

Another thing about demographics is that these are not the first casaulties of the Jihadist War. Jihadis have been dying in Afghanistan since the 1980's, Algeria since the early 1990's, Bosnia since the mid 1990's and Checknya since the late 1990's.

People said that Israel could not defeat the Second Intifada, yet even now the Palestinians are admitting defeat.

War comes down to logistics and morale. The jihadis already lack the resources. And their morale is being grinded down as well. They can't point to any victory since 9/11/04.

If you needed any more examples of Jihadist desperation, consider today's uprising in Mosul, right in the middle of Kurdistan. That's what I call sticking one's head in the mouth of a starving lion. I don't know that the Iraqi government even needs to rush any more troops up there, the Peshmergas may have killed off all the shaheeds by the time the National Guard gets there.

I hear the police -- 13,000 of them, enough to fill any lecture hall -- ran like rabbits.