Rebels return to 'cleared' areas

The embers in the house were still hot from the fire of battle when Cpl. Joshua Richard went in to view the remains of the insurgents who killed a fellow US marine.

At the base of the stairs - the same dark place where Lance Cpl. Blake Magaoay of Pearl City, Hawaii, had fallen in a burst of rifle fire - Corporal Richard harangued the burnt Iraqi corpse."You got what you wanted, didn't you?" he sneered, referring to the Marine casualties.

The corporal's anger is not unusual among marines who for three weeks have been taking casulties among comrades, as they continue to face an up-close battle in Fallujah. The Pentagon now says US forces will see their tour of duty extended until after the Jan. 30 elections. While their fight is no longer a front-page story, the physical and mental toll is growing, as the marines here continue to hunt an enemy that rarely seeks them out. Instead, pockets of insurgents lie waiting until teams - like that led by Corporal Magaoay - come crashing through their door.

Magaoay's death brings the US fatality toll in November to at least 134, one short of the toll of the most lethal month to date for Americans in Iraq. Seventy-one US troops died retaking the rebel-held city, according to Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the top Marine commander in Iraq. An additional 623 American troops were wounded in the most intense urban conflict for US forces since the Vietnam War.

Iraqi civilians are not expected to be permitted to begin returning to the badly damaged city until mid-December, and extensive damage to virtually every house and building across Fallujah means that detailed US and Iraqi government plans for rebuilding will take months, at least, to realize.

But the original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.

The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier.

The ensuing fight revealed an enemy that has hardly given up and is making US forces learn the lesson of the warning taped up on the inside gate of the Marine fire station base: "Complacency kills."

"They are in survival mode, and they're just waiting until someone comes to them [to fight], rather than going out and initiating attacks," says Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, the deputy current operations officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in charge of western Iraq.

"We have to go through close to 50,000 structures in the town of Fallujah," Colonel Wilson says, "to make sure that when someone comes home [an insurgent] doesn't jump out from a hidden wall or a spider hole, kills them, and continues to operate from that house."

Marines are pursuing insurgent cells, and have picked up cell leaders who are "making mistakes" because they are "on the run," adds Wilson.

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