You have to wonder who is running who ragged
Rebels return to 'cleared' areas
In Fallujah, US forces are going through 50,000 houses one by one. But Iraqi insurgents are coming back.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
…Iraqi civilians are not expected to be permitted to begin returning to the badly damaged city until mid-December, and extensive damage to virtually every house and building across Fallujah means that detailed US and Iraqi government plans for rebuilding will take months, at least, to realize.
But the original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.
The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier.
The ensuing fight revealed an enemy that has hardly given up and is making US forces learn the lesson of the warning taped up on the inside gate of the Marine fire station base: "Complacency kills."
"They are in survival mode, and they're just waiting until someone comes to them [to fight], rather than going out and initiating attacks," says Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, the deputy current operations officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in charge of western Iraq.
