Attack Fallujah? At What Cost?

From yesterday's NY Times, courtesy of David Sanger and Thom Shanker:

Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.

After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.

In Iraq on Saturday, a day of widespread violence, at least 14 Iraqis were killed in Baghdad when mortar bombs and rockets were fired into a crowded market in Sadr City, the poor neighborhood that is the stronghold of a rebel Shiite cleric who has declared solidarity with the Sunnis fighting Americans in Falluja.

A roadside bomb killed 14 Iraqis traveling in a bus south of Baghdad. At least seven American soldiers were killed in two attacks by insurgents. [Page 10.]

As Mr. Bush discusses strategy for Falluja, administration and senior military officials portray his choices as dismal.

"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."

No decision to begin military action has been made yet.

The chief of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, visited Falluja on Saturday with Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, to consult with frontline commanders. They appeared to be making a last-ditch effort for a negotiated settlement.

But in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed strong doubts that the Falluja political and business figures the Americans are talking to hold any sway over the insurgents.

On Saturday, as a blinding sandstorm swept across a sprawling former Iraqi Army base near Falluja, Marine commanders were getting assignments for potential targets, studying maps and planning lines of attack for a battle that they expect could come in the next few days. The Marines have encircled the city, awaiting Mr. Bush's decision....