At least some of the troops are forming a more realistic view of what they’re up against in Fallujah

At least some of the troops are forming a more realistic view of what they’re up against in Fallujah:

Marines at 1-3 Charlie Company’s small toe-hold in the city, an abandoned school surrounded by sprawling homes in the largely affluent neighborhood, say they have been frustrated by rebels who appear beaten one day, only to turn up again another.

But they also say with increasingly fewer marines — several units have already left the city following the November attack — there is virtually no way to keep rebels from taking up refuge in cleared buildings.

“If you want to keep this place secured, you need a whole lot of bodies,” said one marine corporal.

Radley Balko’s TCS article this weekend leaves a smoking crater where claims of “libertarian unseriousness” on foreign policy have been.

Radley Balko, “That Republicans don’t take libertarian ideas on foreign policy seriously could very well be a problem with the Republicans, not with libertarian foreign policy.”