When they go home and see the ruins of their houses...
Quoted from the AP wire....
Senior military officials acknowledge that insurgents have found refuge among Fallujah's displaced residents.
But they say people are only going to be allowed to return in controlled numbers, and the Iraqi government is going to register each person with ID cards in order to weed out rebels.
They also say they are confident Fallujah's residents will cooperate with US and Iraqi forces and turn suspected rebels in.
"The people of Fallujah don't want them coming back. We hope they'll identify these bad people when they try to sneak back in with them," marine Major Jim West told a press conference last week.
But some marines in the city say politics are pushing some officers to make dangerously optimistic assessments of the situation in Fallujah.
Insurgents are likely to find allies among Fallujah's residents, some of whom are at best indifferent to the US presence, they say.
And the damage caused by the fighting and continuing security operations in the city -- marines are daily blasting homes with gunfire before storming them as they search for weapons and rebels who still ambush them from abandoned buildings -- has likely turned others against US and Iraqi forces.
"The hardest part of the this is you have fence-sitters, a lot of them support the insurgents and a lot of them aren't going to be too happy when they see what's happened to their homes," Tennant said.
Senior military officials acknowledge that insurgents have found refuge among Fallujah's displaced residents.
But they say people are only going to be allowed to return in controlled numbers, and the Iraqi government is going to register each person with ID cards in order to weed out rebels.
They also say they are confident Fallujah's residents will cooperate with US and Iraqi forces and turn suspected rebels in.
"The people of Fallujah don't want them coming back. We hope they'll identify these bad people when they try to sneak back in with them," marine Major Jim West told a press conference last week.
But some marines in the city say politics are pushing some officers to make dangerously optimistic assessments of the situation in Fallujah.
Insurgents are likely to find allies among Fallujah's residents, some of whom are at best indifferent to the US presence, they say.
And the damage caused by the fighting and continuing security operations in the city -- marines are daily blasting homes with gunfire before storming them as they search for weapons and rebels who still ambush them from abandoned buildings -- has likely turned others against US and Iraqi forces.
"The hardest part of the this is you have fence-sitters, a lot of them support the insurgents and a lot of them aren't going to be too happy when they see what's happened to their homes," Tennant said.
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Justin