US occupation of Iraq: the last act?

The director of the main hospital in Fallujah is reporting that 450 Iraqis have been killed there during this week’s fighting, and more than 1,000 wounded. If this is anywhere close to an accurate tally, then one way or another this marks the beginning of the endgame for the US occupation of Iraq.
Even if the US forces stopped operations in Fallujah and nationwide right now, these kinds of losses inflicted on the indigenous population mean that the US has lost all its credibility as the governing force in Iraq, as well as much of its ability to dictate the timing and other modalities of its by-now inevitable exit from the country.
How many people in the Bush administration have even heard of the Amritsar massacre?
The circumstances of that April 1919 atrocity, in which British forces mowed down 400 unarmed Indian protesters on a single day were, I admit, very different. But just as the Amritsar Massacre signaled the beginning of the end of the Brits’ “thousand-year Raj” in India, so too does the Fallujah Massacre of April 2004 signal the beginning of the precipitous crumbling of the US occupation of Iraq.
History moves a lot faster nowadays than it did in the early 20th century. It took the Brits a further 28 years after Amritsar to bring their colonial rule over India to an end, though after that fateful day the writing was very evidently on the wall for them.
At the rate the US military is currently going, I doubt that its presence in Iraq will last even a further 28 weeks. One way or another, the Fallujah Massacre will certainly be in every history book in every Muslim country from here on out.

I just went over to Riverbend’s blog and found this on her very anguished, most recent post:

Over 300 are dead in Falloojeh and they have taken to burying the dead in the town football field because they aren’t allowed near the cemetery. The bodies are decomposing in the heat and the people are struggling to bury them as quickly as they arrive. The football field that once supported running, youthful feet and cheering fans has turned into a mass grave holding men, women and children.
The people in Falloojeh have been trying to get the women and children out of the town for the last 48 hours but all the roads out of the city are closed by the Americans and refugees are being shot at and bombed on a regular basis? we’re watching the television and crying. The hospital is overflowing with victims? those who have lost arms and legs? those who have lost loved ones. There isn’t enough medicine or bandages? what are the Americans doing?! This is collective punishment ? is this the solution to the chaos we’re living in? Is this the ‘hearts and minds’ part of the campaign?

Riverbend, for those of you haven’t been reading her blog, is a highly articulate 24-or-so-yr-old Iraqi woman with an idiomatic command of English and a wonderful way of expressing herself. Until the US invasion of her country she worked as a systems analyst at a private company but afterwards they terminated her employment because they had no work–plus, she was a woman.
So since then, she’s been giving the rest of us the gift of her firsthand observations of the situation.
River, you were watching TV and crying. I was reading your post and crying. I wish I could help you. I wish I could help the people of Fallujah! All we can do is work actively here inside the US to stop this madness!