As usual, the best, most incisive, and educational coverage of what's really going on in Iraq comes from Strategypage.com.   Why the Mainstream Media doesn't simply pay Strategypage.com and syndicate their material I'll never know - but God knows they'd be better off if they did.   And why Strategypage doesn't do permalinks or source cites, I still don't know.   But, here's their summary of what's going down in Fallujah -

November 5, 2004: The Sunni Arab terror campaign against Iraqis and foreigners continues, with the government hesitating on going after Sunni strongholds like Fallujah. The roads into Fallujah, which lies astride the main highway to Jordan, have been now closed by U.S. and Iraqi forces. An attack seems imminent. Iraqi president Allawi knows that an attack on Fallujah, and other Sunni cities, would be seen as the start of a civil war between Iraqi Sunni Arabs, and the rest of the population (the 80 percent who are Shia Arabs, Sunni Kurds and Christians.) Allawi knows that the Sunni Arabs cannot regain power, not as long as United States troops are there to back the majority. But too many Sunni Arab factions are unwilling to accept the non-Sunni majority running the country.

...you only hear the "Sunnis are superior" line in Mosques, or coffee shops. The Arab media pushes the more palatable (to Western ears) line that the fighting in Iraq is from a spontaneous "Arab resistance" to the "foreign occupation." Most Iraqis consider this just another Sunni scam to steal Iraq's oil wealth for themselves, as they have done for the last few decades.

...Allawi knows that if he can get Sunni leaders to turn against the Sunni gunmen and terrorists, a civil war can be avoided. If the civil war cannot be avoided, the Sunnis will lose.

...Allawi is also under pressure from many Kurds and Shia Arabs to simply flatten Fallujah, and any other Sunni city that harbors terrorists, and give the Sunni's a taste of what they have been giving out for many decades. There is hardly a Kurdish or Shia Arab family that does not have a member who was killed, imprisoned or mutilated by a Sunni Arab thug working for Saddam, the Sunni Arabs in general.

WaPo, LAT, NYT - you suck.  Tell me that this stuff isn't more important than the latest front page coverage of the latest car bomb or random mortar shell.

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UPDATE - and while you're going there, check out their article on Arab Illusions & Modern Terrorism

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