The U.S. assault on Fallujah continues into its third day although news reports have had few verifiable facts to report. Most of the mainstream news reports are coming from reporters embedded with U.S. forces. Independent, verifiable reports are not readily available. The U.S. military's initial moves to take control of the hospitals, which it consideres to be sources of "propaganda", i.e. casualty figures, shows that the they are determined to control whatever information comes out of Fallujah. The total number of Iraqi civilians and insurgent fighters killed are as yet unknown. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims that there will not be large numbers of civilian casualties, as U.S. forces are using "precision attacks" against specific targets. This claim seems doubtful considering U.S. military reliance on helicopters, rockets, tank fire and air strikes. Al Jazeera is reporting that U.S. firepower has already destroyed almost half of the Mosques in Fallujah, a city with an estimated 120 such holy sites.
Regardless of the military result of the attack on Fallujah, it may have already failed in terms of it's political goal. While the attack was intended to eliminate resistance before the January election, this assault may actually undermine the possibility of polls on January 27. In response to the Fallujah assault, the Sunni body, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), has urged a boycott:
The clerics call on the ... people of Iraq to boycott the coming elections that they want to hold on the remains of the dead and the blood of the wounded from Iraqi cities like Fallujah and others.
It appears also that the newly created Iraqi National Army is suffering serious troop losses in Fallujah, primarily due to desertions. Prominent Iraqi clerics have condemned the Iraqi troops who are serving alongside Americans in Fallujah. The insurgent council that's controlled Fallujah for the past six months threatened to behead Iraqi troops who entered the city to "fight their own people." An estimated 200 Iraqi troops have resigned, with another 200 "on leave."
