@Goat Jam

Is it possible to have it more backwards? I tend to doubt it. The US tends to win set-piece battles, by traditional measures (achievement of assigned objectives, casualty ratio, and the like) even when the war itself is a lost cause, from at least the end of the Korean war. The only "exceptions" that come readily to mind are the Desert 1 fiasco (where the mission was aborted before contact with the enemy) and Lebanon (where a suicide bomber, at the time a novel tactic, blew up a Marine barracks).

In Vietnam, the US Army never had an equivalent of Dien Bien Phu. From Ia Drang, to Tet and Khe Sanh and beyond, the army would always win "victories" but the overall effect was a Pyrrhic one in that support for the war ebbed to the extent it was a lost cause. Grenada and Panama were victories but could hardly have been expected to be otherwise, given the asymmetries.

In the first Gulf War, it is hard to imagine how an army could win a more lopsided victory than the one that the US and its coalition partners (UK included) collectively won. In Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down) the Pyrrhic victory pattern returned and Army forces were badly bloodied, but gave worse than they got, and accomplished their mission, but again at a cost which convinced the political authorities to pull out of Somalia. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were easily chased from the country (perhaps deceptively easily) by the Northern Alliance and their US special forces allies.

This brings us to the subject of the story, the battle of Fallujah, where the US were able to clear the insurgent forces from the town. In this case the victory was a costly one (http://www.secinfreg.org/news/fallujah.htm) but this time does not appear to warrant quotation marks since it does not appear (for the moment) to have been in vain.

So, of the past half century (which is only about as long as the US has had a big standing Army) the US Army has won some Pyrrhic "victories", some victories where they took heavy casualties, and some walk-over victories. What's missing from this picture is any hint of them "losing all the battles", whether winning the War or losing it.

@The exceedingly informed AC

In general, I'm suggesting that when there are obvious gaps in a story, one 'fill in the blanks' before going off on a rant. Course, if you're just going to add meaning/intent where none exist then I'll concur - why bother? Put another way: where tf in my post did I complain about USA bashing?? My response was to the responses to Matt. Methinks I'm not the oversensitive one in this case.