The New York Times details which weapons coali­tion forces are using in their bom­bard­ment of Falluja. The idea, it would appear, is to “pacify” the city as much as pos­si­ble before hand­ing counter-​​insurgency duties over to Iraqi troops.

In the past 48 hours, Air Force F-​​15E and F-​​16 war­planes, and carrier-​​based F-​​14 and F-​​18 fighter-​​bombers, have dropped about three dozen 500-​​pound laser-​​guided bombs in three dif­fer­ent sec­tions of Falluja, Air Force offi­cials said, destroy­ing more than 10 build­ings and 2 sniper nests iden­ti­fied by troops as sources of attack­ing fire, and other tar­gets.
By day, AH-​​1W Super Cobra heli­copters have hov­ered over the city, launch­ing Hellfire mis­siles at guer­ril­las who fire on the Marines. By night, lum­ber­ing AC-​​130 gun­ships have pounded trucks and cars fer­ry­ing fight­ers with the dis­tinc­tive thump-​​thump of 105-​​millimeter how­itzers. British Tornado ground-​​attack planes are also fly­ing mis­sions over Falluja, and remotely piloted Predator recon­nais­sance air­craft prowl the skies.

“A new Iraqi secu­rity force made up of for­mer Iraqi sol­diers and com­man­ders will replace the American troops now in Falluja and assume respon­si­bil­ity for the city’s secu­rity,” the New York Times reports.

The new force, known as the Falluja Protection Army, will include as many as 1,000 Iraqi sol­diers led by a for­mer gen­eral from the army of Saddam Hussein, American mil­i­tary offi­cials said. A Marine com­man­der, Col. Brennan Byrne, said the force will be a sub­or­di­nate com­mand of the American mil­i­tary…
Marines in Falluja and encir­cling the city were briefed today on the agree­ment to form a new Iraqi mil­i­tary divi­sion. The plan is sup­posed to take effect begin­ning on Friday. Some Marine units were already begin­ning to pack up today in prepa­ra­tion for the with­drawal, news ser­vices reported.
The new Iraqi force rep­re­sents an about-​​face for the American author­i­ties, who dis­banded the Iraqi army fol­low­ing the fall of Mr. Hussein. 

Quick ques­tion — three, actu­ally:
1) Have Iraqi forces shown any abil­ity what­so­ever to put down insur­gent forces? These for­mer Saddam-​​ites will prob­a­bly be more ruth­less than their pre­de­ces­sors. But will they be any more effec­tive?
2) Why have AC-​​130 gun­ships pound the hell out of the city one day, only to aban­don it the next?
3) Is the pull­back of U.S. troops from an area already known as the “Iraqi Alamo” going to be seen as a sen­si­ble, mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial set­tle­ment, or as a com­plete and total vic­tory for anti-​​American forces?
Chris Allbritton has much more on the withdrawal’s many mean­ings.
THERE’S MORE: Why use the big gun­ships right before pulling out? “It was to pro­vide incen­tive to come to agree­ment, and to root out easy tar­gets before a deal was struck,” says Defense Tech reader TM. The insur­gents most assuredly were using the ‘cease-​​fire’ time to dig in for the next assault… Bringing in the AC-​​130s was a low (mil­i­tary) lia­bil­ity, but highly effec­tive means of bear­ing a lot of pres­sure on insur­gents with­out expos­ing US GIs.”

G.I.s in Iraq may not be able to get armor for their Humvees. Their dogs, on the other hand, are well pro­tected.
U.S. forces are using K-​​9s, like the one in this New York Times photo to the left, for crowd con­trol and other duties. To keep Cujo and his furry friends safe from dog-​​hating insur­gents, the pooches have been out­fit­ted with new body armor — kevlar vests that are “man­u­fac­tured to the same stan­dards” as the ones peo­ple wear, accord­ing to the Marines.
The armor, weigh­ing seven pounds, pro­tects against small arms fire and stab wounds. And it costs about a thou­sand bucks a pop — chump change, the Corps argues in one of their offi­cial “news” sto­ries.
“We get attached to the dogs because they’re our part­ners, and we don’t want to lose them,” Marine dog han­dler Cpl. Daniel Hillery said.
“If you esti­mate the cost of rais­ing, feed­ing and train­ing a dog, it adds up to some­where around $60,000. Replacing a dog ends up being a lot more expen­sive and time con­sum­ing,” Hillery went on to explain.
Along with the finan­cial ben­e­fits, the new K-​​9 body armor is giv­ing the Marines behind the dogs more con­fi­dence to accom­plish their mis­sions no mat­ter what task is assigned to the unit.
“I think that it makes us feel more con­fi­dent with the dogs because we know that they’re going to be pro­tected, and we feel like we can do more with them,” Hillery explained.
THERE’S MORE: Iraqis will likely find the armored dog­gies “dou­bly insult­ing,” Defense Tech pal KK believes. “The Koran says they are filthy ani­mals. They are not kept as pets,” he notes.

The shift to a gunship-​​and-​​howitzer kind of fight in Iraq is good for American forces mil­i­tar­ily. The U.S. has the big­ger guns. And, unlike house-​​to-​​house, small-​​arms com­bat, G.I.s are kept some­what out of harm’s way. That’s why yesterday’s casu­alty fig­ures seem par­tic­u­larly lop­sided — only a sin­gle American sol­dier dead, com­pared to dozens and dozens of insur­gents.
But polit­i­cally, this shift could be bad news. The coali­tion assault ear­lier this month in Falluja has become a ral­ly­ing cry for those Iraqis dis­en­chanted with the American occu­pa­tion. This new round of strikes has the poten­tial to be much, much more bloody.
Traditionally, the ter­ror­ist men­tal­ity has been the pro­voke the most dra­con­ian response from the gov­ern­ment pos­si­ble. That forces the local pub­lic to take sides — often against those who rule. (It’s one of many rea­sons why Palestinian mil­i­tants have thrived under the Sharon gov­ern­ment in Israel.)
American forces can wipe out the Sunni insur­gents in Falluja. They can dec­i­mate the Sadrists in Najaf. But an all-​​out strike could, in the end, lose the entire country.

Raining hell on Falluja is a tac­tic burst­ing with polit­i­cal dan­ger. So why do it? The answer, accord­ing to Newhouse’s David Wood, is because thin-​​skinned American Humvees can’t han­dle an up-​​close fight.
“A short­age of armored com­bat vehi­cles in Iraq is press­ing U.S. forces into a cruel dilemma: either advance stealth­ily on foot, or hold up at a city’s out­skirts and use artillery, mor­tars and airstrikes,” Wood writes.

“Using bombs and AC-​​130s is a strate­gic defeat,” given the polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions, said Kenneth Brower, a weapons designer and con­sul­tant to the U.S. and Israeli mil­i­tary. “But we’ve had to use them.“
In con­trast, Israel has devel­oped spe­cial armored vehi­cles for urban com­bat in Gaza and the West Bank, senior Israeli offi­cers said, enabling them to drive up close to the enemy and use pin­point weapons. Soldiers ride into Palestinian neigh­bor­hoods in tanks with tur­rets replaced by armored boxes with bul­let­proof glass, which allow the vehi­cle com­man­ders to see 360 degrees with­out expos­ing them­selves to fire.
American tanks and infantry fight­ing vehi­cles, like the Bradley, have noto­ri­ously restricted vision when hatches are closed. In city streets, they must oper­ate with crew­men exposed in open hatches or be flanked by walk­ing infantry­men to pro­tect against side attack.
“We have a whole spec­trum of vehi­cles that enable you to see where you are going and who shoots at you, with­out being hit,” said a senior Israeli offi­cer who recently com­manded a brigade in Gaza.
“This enables you to advance inside the city and to get closer” to the enemy, said the offi­cer, who spoke on con­di­tion that he not be iden­ti­fied by name. “As far as I can recall we have never used indi­rect fire in 3 1/​2 years in the West Bank and Gaza.”

It’s all-​​out war. Again.
Almost a year to the day after President Bush del­cared an end to major com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq, American sol­diers and marines unleashed fero­cious assaults in Fallujah and out­side of Najaf. 64 mili­ti­a­men loyal to the rene­gade cleric Moqtada al-​​Sadr were killed in the holy city, accord­ing to the AP. The death toll for Fallujah is not yet known.
In that city’s Jolan quar­ter, a U.S. AC-​​130, “a pow­er­ful gun­ship that can unleash a del­uge of ord­nance, joined 105mm how­itzers in open­ing up on insur­gent tar­gets in the neigh­bor­hood. Gunfire and explo­sions rever­ber­ated for nearly two hours, and an eerie orange glow shone over the area while show­ers of sparks descended like fire­works,” the AP reports.
“U.S. air­craft dropped white leaflets over Fallujah before night­fall, call­ing on insur­gents to give up. ‘Surrender, you are sur­rounded,’ the leaflets said. ‘If you are a ter­ror­ist, beware, because your last day was yes­ter­day. In order to spare your life end your actions and sur­ren­der to coali­tion forces now. We are com­ing to arrest you.’”
In recent days, American forces had largely held their fire in Fallujah (where an extremely ten­u­ous cease-​​fire with Sunni rebels was in place) and in Najaf (which the U.S. was hes­is­tant to attack, because it is the equiv­a­lent of the Vatican to Iraq’s Shi’ite major­ity).
With the twin lulls ended, Slate’s Fred Kaplan notes, “no longer [can] U.S. offi­cials speak of con­duct­ing mere ‘secu­rity and sta­bi­liza­tion oper­a­tions’ the Marines’ declared mis­sion last month when they took over [Fallujah] from the Army’s 82nd air­borne divi­sion. SASO (the military’s acronym for such oper­a­tions) is essen­tially police work with heavy arma­ments in a war, or post­war, zone. It is not an accu­rate term for invad­ing a city of half a mil­lion peo­ple or straf­ing it with gun­ship fire.”