With the passage of time and the contentiousness of the Iraq conflict fading, it should be possible to make a more objective assessment of the rationale leading to that war. The overwhelming public perception is that the Iraq War was a misguided attempt to track down and stop Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. However, while the WMD rationale was raised by the Bush administration itself and certainly influenced the decision to engage in hostilities, it was not the tipping point.

Fallujah has taken on tremendous significance because of what happened there from April to December of 2004. It has become one of the touchstone battles of the Marine Corps involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom because of the intensity of the fighting and the number of Marines and Sailors killed or wounded.

During joint operations or theater campaigns, any joint force commander (JFC), from joint task force to combatant commander, must deal with the enormous amount of energy the combined force needs for subsistence and operations.