Word: ramadi
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Full-scale offensives like Fallujah inevitably exact a psychic toll. Yet the punishing strain of fighting a hydra-headed insurgency afflicts U.S. troops even on what passes for a normal day in Iraq. Sergeant Justin Harding of the Ramadi-based 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, can't get one of those October days out of his head. His squad, Reaper 2 of Whiskey Company, was heading back to base along one of Iraq's most dangerous roads. The squad's convoy, towing a vehicle disabled by a roadside bomb, was running at slow speed, making it vulnerable to ambush. Sure enough...
...brazenly confront U.S. and Iraqi government forces in broad daylight. Within a day of pronouncing Fallujah essentially over, U.S. forces were mounting a major offensive in Mosul, aimed at returning Iraqi policemen to police stations throughout the western half of the city that had fallen into insurgent hands. And Ramadi, Samarrah, Baquba, Tal Afar and Baghdad itself have all seen intensified rebel attacks over the past week...
...Rather than ending major combat operations against the insurgency, the victory at Fallujah will likely see their focus shift elsewhere - to Mosul, Ramadi and other new flashpoints. And while counterinsurgency operations will likely to continue for months ahead, both before and after January, the election date now makes the political battle for Sunni hearts and minds, rendered ever more challenging by the fact of ongoing combat, a race against the clock...
...privately concede that the U.S. is just muddling along. The unanticipated vicissitudes of the warfare have so far allowed for only short-term tactical decisions, and an endgame by definition is constantly evolving. Now the military is probing and testing fresh options for quelling violence: "Do we negotiate in Ramadi while bombing Fallujah," asks a senior official, "or vice versa...
DISPATCH: TIME's Phil Zabriskie follows U.S. counterinsurgency forces in Ramadi and Fallujah...