Strangely, the media don't quite escape the effects of "spin;" as they try to be loyal to the "American cause", that is to say, the misguided and criminal policies of the Bush administration.

Concise and comprehensive American reports about civilian casualties in Fallujah are almost non-existent at the moment. Mr. Rumsfeld took pains to rule them out almost completely recently. While concrete facts seemingly evade the US military (or are strictly suppressed), US officers do not shy away from statements that describe any reference to "large numbers of civilian casualties" as "overblown."
So what in fact do they know? Or are they simply speaking without caring to know about the REAL effects of their bombs and shells? 
 

            Pictures Differ in Battle for Fallujah 

                      Wed Nov 10, 3:39 AM ET

                                                                 Middle East - AP
 
 

                      By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer 

                      BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fighting is fierce, or maybe it's not, in "Operation
                      Phantom Fury," or perhaps "Operation Al-Fajr," which was launched this
                      week to wrest control of Fallujah from Iraqi insurgents — or maybe
                      foreign terrorists. 

                                          Politics and military necessity have
                                          produced widely different pictures of the
                                          fighting in Fallujah, which began in earnest
                                          Monday night when about 6,500 U.S.
                                          soldiers and Marines and an estimated
                                          2,000 Iraqi troops stormed into the insurgent
                                          sanctuary. 

                                          Anxious to avoid a repeat of the failed siege
                                          of the city last April, the U.S. command has
                                          thrown about three times as many troops
                                          into the fight this time, along with an array of
                                          sophisticated weaponry to include tanks,
                                          artillery, AC-130 gunships, attack
                                          helicopters and jets. 

                                          The fighting in Fallujah, however, presents a
                                          major dilemma for the interim Iraqi
                                          government, anxious to win legitimacy
                                          among the country's nearly 26 million
                                          people and to prepare for elections by the
                                          end of January. 

                                          On the one hand, the government cannot
                                          tolerate a situation where a city of 300,000,
                                          which sits astride major land routes to
                                          Jordan and Syria, is in the hands of gunmen
                                          believed responsible for car bombings,
                                          kidnappings and beheadings. 

                      However, the Iraqi government does not want to appear as
                      "collaborators" with an American force bombarding a Sunni Arab city at
                      a time when the Sunni minority feels threatened by its longtime Shiite
                      rivals. Some, perhaps many, Iraqi Sunnis consider Fallujah the symbol
                      of Iraqi resistance to foreign domination. 

                      Hence, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite, has gone out of his way to
                      present the fight for Fallujah as a largely Iraqi operation — with the
                      Americans playing a supporting role. 

                      During an interview aired Wednesday by Al-Arabiya television, Allawi
                      referred repeatedly to operations of Iraqi forces in Fallujah but never
                      mentioned the Americans. 

                      The difference in spin between the Iraqis and the Americans goes
                      beyond national pride. 

                      During a press conference Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz,
                      commander of land forces in Iraq (news - web sites), predicted "several
                      more days of tough urban fighting" in Fallujah. 

                      "I hear some correspondents talking of fierce fighting," Allawi told
                      Al-Arabiya. "The information we have is not in this direction at all." 

                      Rather than talking about airstrikes and bombardments, Allawi said of
                      the insurgents that "we invited them to lay down their weapons and to
                      accept what has happened." 

                      Before the battle, American officers privately estimated there were up to
                      5,000 insurgents in Fallujah — 80 percent of them Iraqis and the rest
                      foreign fighters. Iraqi officials have portrayed the percentage as close to
                      the reverse, with masses of foreign fighters supported by Saddam
                      Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists and criminals. 

                      When the operation against Fallujah began, the U.S. military referred to
                      it as "Operation Phantom Fury." The Iraqis called it "Operation Al-Fajr,"
                      or Dawn, emblematic of a new day for Fallujah's people. 

                      U.S. commanders and staff officers running the operation said they'd
                      never heard of "Operation Al-Fajr" until the top U.S. commander here,
                      Gen. George Casey, picked up on the term. From then on, "Phantom
                      Fury" vanished. 

                      U.S. officials appear happy for Allawi to spin the fight any way he
                      pleases, as long as it bolsters his image and prevents a public backlash
                      similar to the one that arose during the April siege of Fallujah. 

                      Reports of large numbers of civilian causalities in Fallujah, which the
                      Americans insisted were overblown, led to threats by leading
                      U.S.-backed Sunni politicians to resign from the former Iraqi Governing
                      Council if the siege continued. 

                      Faced with a wave of public outrage, the Bush administration ordered
                      an end to the siege. The Marines handed over the city to a new Iraqi
                      security force, which quickly lost control to hardline Islamic clerics and
                      their armed mujahedeen followers. 

                      That transformed the city into an insurgent sanctuary where militants
                      planned and carried out suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings
                      of foreigners. 

                      To prevent a repeat of the April public relations disaster [not human 
                      disaster, to them, in terms of the death toll among civilians], Iraq's newly
                      trained security force has been given a key role this time, including
                      responsibility for searching mosques and other sensitive sites once the
                      Americans have cleared the area of fighters. 

                      When U.S. forces advanced into western Fallujah late Sunday, the
                      Americans stepped aside as Iraqi troops stormed the city hospital. 
 

This historical  document is preserved here for scientific reasons.