Fallujah in pictures

This site is not for the weak of stomach.

It's a website/blog that contains photos taken by photojournalists in Fallujah, Iraq. I haven't read the whole site yet, but my initial impression is the blogger is opposed to the US presence in Iraq.

My own feelings are pretty complex, and not a little conflicted. When I read things like this, from the London Times, I can only conclude that it is not possible to win the war and the public relations battle at the same time. The story of the Marine shooting an apparently unarmed injured combatant in a mosque dominates the world press, but I've only read about the following on the London Times' site:

In the south of Fallujah yesterday, US Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the US Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.

The Marines have been ambushed by insurgents playing possum, they have been victims of booby-trapped corpses and surrenduring insurgents rigged with explosives, they've been targeted by snipers firing from within "holy" mosques. They have to work with an Iraqi "army" full of insurgent sympathizers and deserters. They are fighting an enemy that flouts the Geneva Convention's rules of engagements by targeting civilians, dressing as civilians, etc. The US military is being held to a standard that their opponents refuse to adhere to, and are being convicted in the court of world opinion for every transgression.

They have been put in an impossible situation.

No matter how I feel about how we came to be involved in this war, or how I feel about Dubya as a president or commander-in-chief, I have to give the men and women on the ground in Iraq a lot of leeway when it comes to fighting the war itself. I've never been in the military, although I've read plenty of war history. I've never been shot at. The fault for this mess does not lie with the men and women who serve as the tip of the spear. The fault lies with those crafting policy and strategy, and with us, the American public, for endorsing the Bush administration's interventionist approach. Even if just barely.