Missed opportunity or war defeat?

According to AlertNet, as much as 70% of the standing residential structures in the city of Falluja have been razed in Coalition attacks, displacing as many as 210,000 households.

Though the occupational authorities (because I feel like calling a spade a spade today) have set aside $100 million for the reimbursement of affected families, real relief has been slow coming:

Muhammad Abdul al-A'ani, deputy minister for industry, told IRIN that of the total number of houses damaged in the city, only 90 families had received compensation of around US $1,500 each so far[...]

According to Ahmed Salah, a senior officer from the public works ministry, two electricity substations, three water purification plants and two train stations were badly damaged, along with the sewage and surface water drainage subsystems throughout the city[...]

Sewage running in the streets, hundreds of thousands displaced, 90,000 still waiting to return to the city, this is beginning to smell of, dare I say it? Failure.

There's been little formal discussion of complete mission failure, as even the harsher critics of the war seem intent on playing "how do we make the best of it now that we're here" in the face of ever more certain defeat.

Cracks may be showing, however, as some early war proponents have begun to balk at the expense and conduct of the Mess O' Potamia. The premiere example of this burgeoning mutiny is the break from the party line of the Orange County Register in a recently-published editorial in which they called for a complete pullout of the Iraq conflict.

The kicker here, of course, is the Register's position as the editorial voice of the most Republican district in the United States. Could this be the start of trend? Hell if I know...

This post was an incomplete thought, but it's late and I'm tired, so goodnight.

Posted by Mordred at April 6, 2005 12:48 AM
Listed under Iraq .