Don't know if this is playing any part in the thinking, but the military brass might have decided that Easter fighting between a "Christian" Army and a soft coalition of Shia - Sunni Muslims wouldn't be helpful. Also, they might be giving Sistani time to reassert himself more forcefully.

Really haven't thought either of these through -- no coffee yet -- but there you go. Just tossing it out there.

Quite possible. Don't forget, too, the masses of Shia who are on pilgrimage this weekend in Iraq.

Best to let that diffuse and take the time both to rearm and to let Iraqi governing council members attempt negotiations. None of this is a military issue - we could end this quickly if we were willing to cause a lot of damage and civilian injuries / deaths. The trick is to defend what the attackers are trying to destroy, namely the basis for a stable, secular government with a functioning economy. That will be a lot harder.

Wow, now THAT is a link color. :)

Jeff & Robin,

Good points, and you're probably correct. I confess I'm just a little antsy when I see this going on day after day, because I'm not sure what that does to how the Iraqis see us. As I said the other day, though, I think we'll really just have to wait and see what happens. And, to quote Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting."

Stacy,

Yeah, we're still experimenting here. :)

I must confess that Fallujah has me more worried than al-Sadr for the moment. I can see that we are waiting until after the pilgrammage to go after Sadr. Fallujah is more worrying, but it is still early to speculate. Everything I have read says it is going well in Fallujah, so it is possible that we have another reason for asking for ceasefires. But who the heck knows?

"Everything I have read says it is going well in Fallujah, so it is possible that we have another reason for asking for ceasefires."

I'd pay more attention to the reports of things going on than to the statements of press officers, Enrak.

And if everything were "going well" we'd have made more progress with fewer casualties, downed copters, and the like. This doesn't sound so great to me.

Nor does this:

"Any pause in the battle on our part gives a chance for them to refit themselves and come back a little harder," said Sgt. Daryl Hill, 38, whose company has spent four days and nights positioned along the front line between a deserted industrial area where the Marines are based and a residential district from which snipers shoot at them.

Hill said his company, which lost a popular lieutenant and staff sergeant to enemy fire in the same incident Thursday, had since gotten help from night gunship raids. "The gunships relieved some of the stress on us, but now it's time to get moving," he said. "They took some comrades from us, but we can't sit back and grieve over our loss. It's payback time." Maybe it was just bad luck to lose the lieutenant and sergeant in the same incident, but there seems to be an awful lot of bad luck going around.

They felt the need to bring in another entire battalion. They're massing tanks 20 strong; they're talking carrier strikes, along with more AC-130s; that's not light and easy fighting, or "everything going well," it seems to me.

Should have previewed; sorry. That paragraph should be formatted so:

Hill said his company, which lost a popular lieutenant and staff sergeant to enemy fire in the same incident Thursday, had since gotten help from night gunship raids. "The gunships relieved some of the stress on us, but now it's time to get moving," he said. "They took some comrades from us, but we can't sit back and grieve over our loss. It's payback time."

Maybe it was just bad luck to lose the lieutenant and sergeant in the same incident, but there seems to be an awful lot of bad luck going around.

Well, as I said, everything I had read at the time I posted said that things were going well. There is not a whole lot of information available, and I did not find the information that you posted here.

It looks like Andy's original post is closer to the mark than I thought.

I saw on the cover of the Boston Globe this morning a burning M1A1 (at least I think that's what it was) in Fallujah. That is a bad sign. Hard to kill an M1A1 with an RPG.

That was an M1. I can't tell from the angle if it's an A1 or an A2. Hopefully an A1--they're cheaper. But it will be interesting to see how the Army rebuilds after this, since we haven't built an M1 in 5-10 years, if memory serves.

Definitely not going well. :-(

While this kinds of diaries are very valuable, I'm not sure you can really use one of them to extrapolate to an assessment of the campaign as a whole. The odds are pretty good that the writer is in no position to comment on whether her experiences are typical or unusual.