Fifteen thousand U.S. and coalition troops have sealed of the Sunni Triangle city of Fallujah and have been moving in throughout the day. The Iraqi Prime Minister says the citizens of Fallujah are “pleading” for help. The U.S. Secretary of Defense says the battle in Fallujah is critical in the creation of a free Iraq.

The U.S. military says it is employing the same strategy it employed in Samarra just 40 days ago. Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra are three Sunni Triangle cities the U.S. says must be purged of insurgents for the sake of stability in Iraq before elections set for next January.

Hear a conversation on the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, and the Sunni city’s future in Iraq.

Guests:

Anne Barnard, reporter for the Boston Globe, embedded with the Army 1st Infantry Division in Fallujah

Steven Metz, chairman of the regional planning and strategy department in the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, author of “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq”;

Col. Thomas Hammes, Marine Senior Military Fellow at the Pentagon think-tank Institute for National Strategic Studies, author of The Stone and the Sling: War in the 21st Century;

Gen. (Ret.) Bernard Trainor, Marine Corps three-star general, author of The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Persian Gulf War.