How is it possible that EVERYONE is buying into the obvious illusion that it is really the Iraqi Interim Government that is running this show, and that 10,000 of America’s top fighting men and women are waiting in disciplined, ready-to-make-the-ultimate-sacrifice ranks for the “go-ahead” from some toady Iraqi hack with no formal military training or experience, who lives in fear of his own people and is continually surrounded by crack US special forces “bodyguards” and advisors?

Is it not clear to everyone that this regime was installed by, “governs” under the aegis of, and is banking on the continued support of the US to “win” the “elections” programmed for January? Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is at the beck and call of every whim of every US official from Gen. Ricardo Sanchez on up?

And most importantly, what happened to the repeated declaration by both candidates in the recently concluded electoral farce in the US that “Under my command, US forces will NEVER be ordered into battle by a foreign leader”? Of course, they were referring to the the United Nations not one of our own cleverly crafted hand puppets, but why isn’t the principle the same?

Meanwhile, the upcoming battle for Fallujah is shaping up as the most intense in Bush’s war up to this point, with booby traps, land mines, improvised explosive devices, blind alley deathtraps, provocative incidents designed to draw American troops into massacres, capture, death, mutilation and public display of American boys and girls’ dead bodies, hidden urban ambushes, random suicide bombers and sophisticated rocket attacks.

And that is just what THEY will be doing to US. In return you can bet your bottom greenback (better do so quick while they’re still worth something) that the US forces will strike back with every diabolical high-tech conventional weapon within the US arsenal, including aerial bombing, cluster bombs, bunker-busing bombs, laser guided bombs, air to ground rockets, fragmentation grenades, concussion grenades, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and a few new toys so secret that if we knew their details we would be required by the Homeland Security Act to kill ourself.

US Forces are currently softening up the battleground by flattening much of the city, creating a nice drivable tarmac for our mechanized divisions and landing pads for our helicopters, while the media is softening up the public by repeatedly reporting that “the majority of the civilian population have fled the city”.  That still leaves upward of 100,000 women, children and old people hunkered down in the ruins, making free military movement and robust action problematic and collateral damage inevitable. How’s that for a euphemistic appraisal. Undoubtedly, in some dim, electronics-encrusted room in the bowels of the Pentagon, faceless men in suits and uniforms are earnestly considering the nuclear option.