American Exit Increases Optimism In Falluja

The Old Bridge, freshly painted green, where the bodies of two Blackwater security guards were hung in 2004. Johan Spanner for The New York Times

From New York Times:

FALLUJA, Iraq — In Falluja, a town that rises abruptly out of the vast Syrian Desert an hour west of Baghdad, nearly every building left standing has some sort of hole in it.

Mosques are without their minarets. Apartment walls have been peeled away by artillery shells. A family’s kitchen is full of tiny holes made by a fragmentary grenade.

Of all the places fighting has raged since the American invasion nearly six years ago, Falluja — the site of two major battles and the town where American security contractors were killed and their bodies hung from a local bridge — stands out as one of the bloodiest and most intractable.

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