Putting out the fire with gasoline<$NoAd$>.

From the AP ...

The people of Fallujah carried their dead to the city's soccer stadium and buried them under the field on Friday, unable to get to cemeteries because of a U.S. siege of the city.

As the struggle for Fallujah entered a fifth day, hundreds of women, children and the elderly streamed out of the city. Marines ordered Iraqi men of ''military age'' to stay behind, sometimes turning back entire families if they refused to be separated.

''A lot of the women were crying,'' said Lance Cpl. Robert Harriot, 22, of Eldred, N.Y. ''There was one car with two women and a man. I told them that he couldn't leave. They tried to plead with me. But I told them no, so they turned around.''

What does this sound more like to you? Southern Lebanon in the early 1980s or the West Bank in 2002?

Nice choice, isn't it?

Our troops have been placed in an impossible situation by a blundering leadership that laughed off the warning signs and friendly advice for a year until the situation blew up in their face.

Awful. Unforgivable.