This is going to be absolutely fascinating, and I hope it is covered as much as humanly possible. The application of state-of-the-art intelligence and technology in an extremely volatile, difficult and dangerous urban military application. Marine Commanders have had months to plan this; it will be most interesting to see how things now actually unfold on the battlefield. This Fallujah campaign will no doubt serve as a prototype (win or lose) for modern urban warfare for years to come.
As far as taking the hospital first, I understand it is "so that workers there could attend to casualties without facing intimidation by insurgents, and to end its use as a source of anti-U.S. propaganda, as well as prevent insurgent medical care" under the assertion that "...In the past, hospital officials had said U.S. airstrikes killed only innocent civilians, a claim that the U.S. military disputed." Makes sense.
Quote:
Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent, the top enlisted Marine in Iraq, told troops the coming battle of Fallujah would be "no different" than the historic fights at Inchon in Korea, the flag-raising victory at Iwo Jima, or the bloody assault to dislodge North Vietnamese from the ancient citadel of Hue they seized in the 1968 Tet Offensive.
"You're all in the process of making history," Kent told a crowd of some 2,500 Marines. "This is another Hue city in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done - kick some butt."
"We're going to start at one end of the city, and we're not going to stop until we get to the other," said Lt. Col. Pete Newell, a battalion commander from the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division. "If there's anybody left when that happens, we're going to turn around and we're going to go back and finish it."
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