November 10, 2004 - The American assault on Fallujah is in its third day. At least 11 Americans and 2 Iraqi troops are reported dead in the first day of fighting. The brute force of air strikes and artillery are making images of the city of a hundred mosques resemble those of Berlin in April 1945. US military spokesmen in Baghdad are estimating that the resistance has suffered up to 500 casualties – though they have long denied being in the “body count business”. I guess they aren’t counting – just guessing at their estimates. They are not estimating the collateral damage – guessing that fewer than 100,000 non-combatants were still in the city when the division size assault began.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the other leaders of the resistance guerrilla campaign apparently slipped out of Fallujah while the US and Prime Minister Allawi were talking to the Fallujah insurgents stalling the assault until after the US Elections to reduce the political consequences to President Bush. The Seventh Cavalry is in the fight riding to Fallujah’s center accompanied by a psy-war Humvee blaring the Ride of the Valkyries – as if we needed another reminder of Vietnam.

Stacy Lee won’t be marrying Brandon Ramey when he comes home to Belvidere , Illinois. He proposed to her in a telephone call Tuesday. She will be going to a funeral instead. The Marine reservist did not have to go when his unit was called up. He was a full time student. He went anyway. His classes are over. He is coming home. So is Joshua Palmer. He is the second graduate of La Harpe High in the farming community near Peoria, Illinois to die in Iraq. They are yet another installment in the cost of yet another miscalculated boondoggle in a war full of miscalculated boondoggles.

While the Valkyries ride their quarry has fled. The top resistance leaders pulled out of Fallujah along with the main body of their fighters in the weeks that US air power pounded the city. The fighters they left behind are firing and falling back, using the weapons they scavenged from unprotected ammo dumps to inflict as much damage as they can in a determined rear-guard defense.

There is no doubt that the US will eventually re-take Fallujah. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to fire a rocket propelled grenade to kill one or two US troops and then slip away while leaving Fallujah to burn. We can be sure that the US military machine will control Fallujah in time for the Iraqi elections in January and that what is left of the city will be secured enough to hold the vote. But who will be there to cast a ballot and who will own their hearts and minds.