Barbarians Target Children; Other Updates

It makes sense that the insurgents would target children for indiscriminate murder. This would be a big news story and would attempt to turn the Iraqi populace against the battle. I hope that most children have left Fallujah. In other news, this article has several interesting tidbits. I'll first note that the article states that the I MEF spokesman has indicated that I MEF is "preparing the battle space." I scooped Bloomberg on this myself over two days ago, on the 3rd. See my post from 3 November. Second, the story states that there are 35,000 troops outside Fallujah. I think that this most likely is the number of total troops in the Sunni triangle or Anbar province. I've stated earlier that I think 1st Marines will attack into Fallujah. I think this still makes sense. They can't take all the troops in the entire province and pour them into one city. it would lead to too much unrest in the rest of the province. Plus figure at least 40% of that 35,000 is support or aviation troops. Even if you include the Iraqis, I think our attacking force will be no more than 10,000. Another article notes that all of the embedded media positions in I MEF have been completely filled. It will be interesting to see how the coverage goes once it kicks off. I will try to follow that enough to offer some insight. I have done a detailed analysis of troop positions and have a theory of which infantry battalion will be the first to begin the ground assault. I am hesitant to publish this though. I also have an idea as to how the overall assault force will look. Hesitant to describe this too, but I will say this: I am changing an original prediction. A week ago I said that I thought the offensive throughout the Sunni triangle would begin at the same time and be coordinated. Not so sure about this now. I think we might see a rolling assault. Fallujah will be first, and then the assault forces will move to other cities. Without going into details about why I think this, I will instead do some more investigating over the next day or so to see if the rolling assault theory has legs. I'll stress again that my theories on this page are completely based on open-source info. I have no access to military planning documents or sites. A final note for now: If you want to speculate about when Phase Two, the ground assault, will begin, don't forget whose birthday is on November 10th. More later tonight . . . [Admin note: Thanks to all of you who have visited a sponsor today. I appreciate it.]