Falluja's just a tragedy waiting to happen

Picture this: in some parallel universe, the US government sends in the Marines and US Army to take out a band of militant religious fanatics who have fortified a town in Utah with the support of the local population and religious leaders.

The Government allows the armed forces to use tanks, helicopter gunships, air-to-ground bombs and bomblets, missles, depleted-uranium shells, and psyops. They have no meaningful way to distinguish combatant from non-combatant and generally choose not to discriminate. Humanitarian aid and independent media are blocked from entry. Hospitals and medical centres become the first targets of bombing and mortar fire missions. No ceasefires are allowed for evacuation of non-combatants, women, children and wounded, or for the burial of the dead.

It would never happen, would it? How come it can be allowed to happen in Shatillah and now in Fallujah? Is everything justifiable in the US's holy war against Islam?

And yet despite the brutality, we're supposed to believe that we're the agents of freedom and tolerance, and they're supposed to be the religious fanatics?

Stop the war, I'm on the wrong side...