WASHINGTON (AP) - With each new battle in Iraq, two things are tallied: The enemy killed and the enemy created.
That observation by retired CIA operations officer Milt Bearden highlights one of the U.S. military's worst dilemmas: as it fights street by street to crush an insurgency, it is causing resentment among the very Iraqis whose hearts and minds it hopes to win.
This week's siege on the city of Fallujah to capture suspects in the deaths and mutilations of civilian U.S. contractors brought condemnation even from one of the most pro-American members of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council.
"These operations were a mass punishment for the people of Fallujah," Adnan Pachachi told Al-Arabiya TV. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."
And the U.S. bombing near a Fallujah mosque compound can only inflame more Iraqis, analysts said. The U.S. military says that insurgents fired on troops from the compound, making the holy site a legitimate military target. But many Iraqis care little about that argument.
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