by kos
Thu Nov 11th, 2004 at 12:14:42 PST

The latest tally:

Eighteen U.S. troops have been killed and another 69 wounded in this week's offensive to take control of the rebel-held Iraqi city Falluja, a senior U.S. Marine Corps commander said on Thursday.

And to what end? The people we really want to capture or kill are long gone.

Not to mention that this senior U.S. Marine Corps commander is a liar. 69 wounded? From the same article:

A spokeswoman at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the usual destination for seriously wounded U.S. troops stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan, said 102 Americans arrived from Iraq in two plane loads on Thursday. They joined 125 wounded troops who arrived there from Monday to Wednesday.

That's 227 wounded so far. Some may not be from Falluja, but if we're suffering more wounded outside Falluja than in the city we're currently besieging, then Iraq is a bigger mess than anyone thinks.

Meanwhile, Mosul is spiraling out of control.

And while U.S.-led troops fought for the upper hand in Falluja, insurgents in the northern city of Mosul set police stations ablaze, stole weapons and brazenly roamed the streets.

Residents said Iraq's third largest city seemed to slide out of control as grenade blasts and gunfire rang through empty streets and smoke billowed from two burning police stations.

Rebels attacked Iraqi national guards controlling a bridge in the city center, killing five of them, witnesses said.

A cameraman for Reuters filmed gunmen raiding weapons and flak jackets from a police station before setting it on fire [...]

The U.S. military issued a statement admitting that local security forces had been overrun in several areas and said local authorities were doing what they could to restore order [...]

Violence has worsened in Mosul, a strongly nationalist city of three million people, over the past year, but residents said the chaos of the past two days had broken new ground.

So we'll have to attack Mosul (which is 10 times larger than Falluja), pushing all those insurgents back to Falluja. And Iraq's endless spiral of violence will continue unabated.