One of our leftist congresswomen (former first anchorwoman of the most important news tv channel and now elected with the left) was on tv last night and said that 73 % of buildings in Fallujah were destroyed. Now some buddies and I are trying to see whether it's true.
I mean just a few German cities were leveled up to 80 % of buildings destroyed after months and months of heavy bombings. I don't think it is possible that 73 % of buildings in Fallujah were destroyed without that heavy bombing campaign and in just 10 days.
The following picture is Fallujah after the battle, taken on November 14, 2004.

http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/fallujah_111404_full.jpg

Does it look to you like a 73%-destroyed city?
One more thing, the anchorwoman/politician said the city is "blackened". Looking at the picture, the only thing that comes to my mind is that the clouds actually "blacken" the neighborhood.
What are your opinions? I'd like to gather data from the battle (possibly from official sources) or your comments based on personal experience. Thank you guys.

Fallujah neighborhoods are hit in very small areas. The different dark colored land is farm land and desert along with a large river. There was no buildings in those areas. The insurgents were in small areas and you can see them as grey blast areas. The city is maybe 20% to 30% damaged. A lot less thanks to smart bombs.

Italian Guy.........That is some photo to load up onto the web, looking carefully at the photo I find that much of those patches are from a passing cloud.. Going carefully over the photo as I have no desire to down load it to blow it a bit bigger, I would say between 1/2 per cent of the building have destroyed or badly damaged and most of those seem to be on the out skirts of the town were people were no doubt taking pot shots at the troops and in the finish the building has been destroyed or badly damaged. Now due to the building methods and materials used many of the building will never look all that much to start with. Also with out before photo you can't tell just how much damaged was done by the aerial bombardment before the Allied troops arrived at this place, and what was done during that big fire fight there that Marines had. To compare the damage with what happened to Germany during WW2 is a joke. If look at any of the aerial photos of Berlin you can see the skeletons of the buildings standing out starkly for any angle, but can you see that on this photo. I don't think so.

Excellent points, thank you very much guys. Now some official data about the number of buildings destroyed would be welcome.

The war has reportedly damaged 60% of the cities buildings, with 20% totally destroyed including 60 of the city's mosques.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah

Yeah, but you know Wiki can be little reliable, at times. That's why I was looking for some Pentagon or official source.

Very true. Almost every hit I get on Fallujah is some bleeding heart blog griping about the poor insurgents that were murdered there.

Now if you try and look at the roofs of the buildings and see the level of damage. there are many large factory type roofs that appear to be intact. Okay you can see some patches on the road which looks like where cars have been burnt out, also you can see some burnt out buildings, but mud and breeze blocks do not burn very well.

Yes that's right. Sir, your English is so British

nice photo italian guy