From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

For months, the news in Iraq had been of bombings and beheadings, ambushes, and assassinations.

A guerrilla war defined by the guerrillas.

But suddenly last week, it was war once again, war American style,

and certainly American media style.

Threatened for months, brewing for weeks, imminent for days.

Now it is underway.

The Pentagon calls it Phantom Fury, a shock and awe, Army, Marine, U.S. and Iraqi campaign

to retake Fallujah.

The first objective for the Marines that we're embedded with is to take this apartment

complex behind me.

They're sweeping it for potential insurgents to clear out civilians, and they're also

looking for improvised explosive devices.

The first objective of the first wave of Marines, however, was not an apartment complex.

It was a hospital, which American officials complained was controlled by insurgents for use

primarily as a propaganda mill.

In April, the first attempt to retake Fallujah was aborted after the hospital's reports of

widespread civilian casualties inflamed international outrage. It's not clear that those numbers were

inflated because in Iraq, it seems nobody agrees on anything, neither the enemies nor the allies.

This was Army General George W. Casey on Monday,

briefing reporters on the latest developments in Operation Phantom Fury. I mean, not Operation Phantom Fury.

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