Army Operations Drive Iraqis into Resistance

"What happened was that most of the fighters in [Fallujah] left even before the siege began--even the military admitted to that. So of the roughly 3,000 people killed, the vast majority were civilians.

"They have effectively spread the resistance further around the country. We have another sort of 'mini-Falluja' situation in Ramadi, where rather than sectioning off the entire city and doing what they did to Falluja, they're doing it neighborhood by neighborhood. In essence, any fighters who are there are moving to a different neighborhood when one is being hit, and then moving back when the military goes to another neighborhood.

They're going to have to employ the same strategy in Samarra, in Baquba, in Bayji, in Mosul and even in parts of Baghdad. It's a strategy that the U.S. military has been using since almost the beginning of the occupation--using very heavy-handed tactics to fight the resistance. But by doing so, they're just spreading the resistance to other areas around the city or the country, and essentially creating more resistance." -Dahr Jamail