FALLUJAH EMBED REPORT

New York – Embedded with U.S. forces, TIME’s Michael Ware and photographer Yuri Kozyrev filed a gripping account of brutal combat for TIME’s cover story, “Street Fight: Inside the Battle for Fallujah” (on newsstands Mon., Nov. 15. The cover photo is of Corporal Eric Shelvy, with the Marines of 3rd Battalion 5th Regiment, India Company, in Fallujah).

Also in TIME this week, Bill Powell analyzes whether the siege will really help the U.S. defeat the insurgency. “A Pentagon official says that at most, 10% of the enemy in Iraq has been killed or captured in Fallujah,” writes Powell. “The siege of Fallujah could be a prelude to a series of nasty, urban street fights—precisely the sort of war the U.S. military desperately hoped to avoid when the invasion started in the Spring of 2003.”

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Ware Dispatch http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/cover/0,9171,1101041122-782070,00.html

Powell Story http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/cover/0,9171,1101041122-782069,00.html

The influential Association of Muslim Scholars has called for a total boycott of the election scheduled for January. Its leader, Harith al-Dhari, told TIME he was “very close to calling for jihad” against the Americans and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Senior U.S. officials tell TIME the coming months will be like playing a deadly game of “whack a mole” across the country, attacking insurgents wherever they rise up. Ordinary citizens have no confidence Iraqi police and national guard forces will be able to perform security tasks required to begin delivery of reconstruction aid, writes Powell.

From Ware’s dispatch, with Alpha Company’s 3rd Platoon, part of Task Force 2-2: “We’re not going to die,” barks Staff Sgt. David Bellavia as his rattled platoon of soldiers takes cover from a hail of machine-gun fire in the streets of Fallujah. The platoon has been ordered to hunt down and kill a group of insurgents hiding somewhere in a block of 12 darkened houses. It is 1:45 a.m., and the soldiers have been running from firefight to firefight for 48 hours straight with no sleep…

“When they trudged into the 10th house, though, hell broke loose: the insurgents lured them in, then opened fire, forcing Bellavia’s men to scramble out of the house as shards of glass peppered them and bullets richocheted off the gates of the courtyard. Bellavia radioed for a Bradley armored fighting vehicle to get “up here NOW.” The Bradley drew along the gate and poured torrents of 25 mm. cannon and .50 cal fire into the house, blasting a rain of concrete chips and luminescent sparks….

“When it’s over four insurgents are dead; another has escaped, badly wounded. To Bellavia, Fitts (Colin Fitts, the platoon’s other staff sergeant) says, “That’s a good job dude, you’re a better man than me.” Bellavia shakes his head. “No, no, no,” he mutters.”

Of roughly 400 men and women from Task Force 2-2, four were killed in action. All told, the battle’s first days left at least 24 service members dead and more than 200 wounded. “It was a stunning success militarily, but in human terms each loss was deeply felt, etched into the faces and being of every soldier,” reports Ware, who is now in Fallujah, and is TIME’s Baghdad bureau chief.

“The rebels haven’t been beaten,” Ware writes. “It seems clear the nationalist and jihadist leadership, by and large, had already left the city, along with much of their ranks, leaving behind, in classic guerrilla style, a rearguard detail to harass and interdict U.S. forces. The Americans in Fallujah got a taste of what they could confront across Iraq’s restive Sunni Triangle as the military command attempts to root out the insurgents from their sanctuaries.”

TIME contact: Diana_Pearson@timeinc.com, 212-522-0833