The US seems to be "softening up" a certain city in Iraq:
US forces pound Falluja
Witnesses said AC-130s - cargo aircraft equipped with cannon and machineguns - were in action for at least half an hour late on Wednesday while tanks shelled the town on the ground.
The bombardment was said to be the heaviest on the town for several weeks.
Here's some of that compassionate conservatism, or freedom, or whatever, being delivered to Iraqi people:
Earlier in the day, attacks by US warplanes sent up plumes of black smoke from the eastern edge of Falluja.
A woman was seriously wounded and a teenage girl lost her right leg in the strikes, hospital official Issam Muhammad said.
The last sentence of this article says it all: "
Residents of the town say the daily bombardments cause heavy civilian casualties and increase resentment against the United States."
So much for the hearts and minds.
Meanwhile the election might lead to some real democracy, but not in the way that the Bushistas envisioned. See, the action in Falluja doesn't sit well with the people, notably, the influential clerics:
Sunni clerics urge Iraq election boycott
Iraq's largest group of Sunni Muslim clerics on Wednesday ordered followers to boycott January's parliamentary elections if US forces don't break off their military campaign in the flash-point city of Fallujah.
The city is now ringed by US Marines and besieged by daily aerial bombardment.