Fallouja in the Rearview Mirror

On Nov. 8, U.S. and Iraqi forces, enjoying an element of surprise, swept into Fallouja, and seven days later the city was secured. Thirty-eight American and six Iraqi soldiers died in the initial operation, with estimates of insurgent dead at 1,500, the vast majority Iraqi.

Civilian casualties were believed light because most residents had left the city.

While the attack was underway, insurgent attacks, thought to be led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, erupted in other cities in the Sunni Triangle. Here’s what the experts and commentators expected:

“There will be no surrender.”

-- Wesley K. Clark, former NATO supreme allied commander

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“[The insurgents will] win if it’s bloody; we’ll win if we minimize civilian casualties.”

-- Col. Craig Tucker, Marine in charge of a regimental combat team

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“[American and Iraqi forces] will go in and kill as many civilians that will inevitably be killed and then not find Abu Musab Zarqawi.”

-- Abba Kadhim, lecturer on Islamic students and the Koran at UC Berkeley

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“The world’s only superpower will crush the resistance, destroying anything in its path and laying large swaths of [Fallouja] to waste.”

-- Mike Whitney, on Znet

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“An ‘iron fist’ policy is likely to shift the balance of power in the [Sunni] community toward the rejectionists [of elections in January].”

-- Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan

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“Success in Fallouja will deal a blow to the terrorists in the country and should move Iraq further away from a future of violence

-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

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“There aren’t going to be large numbers of civilians killed, and certainly not by U.S. forces.”

-- Rumsfeld

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“You really need to strike from a position of surprise. And we didn’t do that ... “

-- Col. Douglas MacGregor (Ret.), military historian and the author of “Transformation under Fire: The Revolutionizing of How America Fights”

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“Many of [the foreign fighters] have had no training or no experience at all. They’re coming in [to Fallouja] as a jihad thing to them.”

-- Col. Randle Gangle (Ret.), executive director of the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps’ combat development command

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“No matter how well things go, we’ll hear self-righteous gasps over the inevitable casualties.”

-- Ralph Peters, Op-Ed columnist for the New York Post

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“Fallouja is unlikely to play out as the ‘decisive’ victory the U.S. seeks. It may well be the biggest ‘nest,’ but armed insurgents are active across the Sunni Triangle.”

-- Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald editorial

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“[Fallouja is] a major safe haven for former regime elements and foreign fighters, in particular Zarqawi and his folks.”

-- Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

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“If there is an attack on the anti-Iraqi forces that inhabit [Fallouja], it will be done almost exclusively by Iraqis.”

-- Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, former deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff

-- Compiled byAlexa Bedell-Healy