Battle of Fallujah, I need help from all of you guys.

Italian Guy

Milforum Hitman
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.
 
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. :evil:
 
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.
 
First off, let me state that I am in no way a photo intelligence interpeter.
But I have to agree with many of the points made by LeEnfield and Missileer.
I do not believe that the damage to the buildings is more than 20%.
It is, however, difficult to make any such judgement without the benefit of a "before" photo, as LeEnfield has pointed out.
Getting any statistics from the Pentagon is likely to be very difficult.
 
IG, here is CENTCOM's home page you can look through and do searches about who did what to the city. It seems a lot of the damage was done by earthmoving equipment when the insurgents were building fortifications. There were numerous weapons caches all over the city that were hit and caused a lot of damage. Plus neglect of the city utilities since the `50s all added up to the fact that the place wasn't in the greatest shape to begin with.

http://www.centcom.mil/
 
CENTCOM, why didn't I think about THAT? Thank you Missileer.
And thank you Tomtom, much appreciated.
I'll get back to you guys when/if I find anything.
 
Yeah, it looks nothing like German cities after Anglo-American bombing runs.

But you know those politicians: If it serves their cause, they WILL lie, any way they can.
 
Italian Guy said:
CENTCOM, why didn't I think about THAT? Thank you Missileer.
Just keep in mind that if she's that far to the left, she's going to say that CENTCOM's site is skewed to present only the facts that the Bush administration wants you to see...
 
Which is why you then back it up with fairly trivial points from a leftist source. If......say "the American Journal of Pinco's" says that "not all of Fallujah was destroyed," then it can serve your purpose just as well; after all, your getting two sources which agree, and that's golden.
 
I Think the point is being missed here. The percentage of buildings hit is really irrelevant. So are soldiers now expected to only destroy a certain percentage of buildings?
OK sorry men we have destroyed exactly 28% of buildings in the city and command is limiting how many buildings we can damage or destroy so we can’t damage any more buildings. Since were over are quota of buildings for today your going to have to enter the building nicely with out damaging it and kill the enemy inside nicely with out grenades that might cause damage never mind there waiting for you its a ambush and were going to lose several soldiers doing it.

The real point is that ENEMY Combatants used the city of faluja as a shelter.
War is inherently violent the military is a means of are government to bring violence of action to the face of are enemies. When you send a army to fight a war people are going to die. And the liberals are worried about a few buildings that got between us and the people who are the sworn enemy of my country. I am reminded of some buildings that were ounce part of the New York skyline that got destroyed in this war. We didn’t start this war.
 
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