All totalitarian systems tend to select their population for subservience and passivity. I don't know the details of the police station attacks. I do know that other police stations over the course of this war have fought until they ran out of ammo. It may be that we need to rethink how police should be armed and fortified.

The war in the Sunni Triangle is going to be like any other campaign--driving them out of towns one by one, going back and cleaning up stragglers, and picking off the infrastructure and leadership. Weeks, if not months. As I said before, only an idiot would assume this ends in Fallujah. It was established weeks ago that many of these towns have an insurgent presence, just not as blatant as Fallujah's was.

I fully expect that an American presence may be in Iraq for years to pick up some slack and offer high-tech support. We have similar permanent bases all over the world in sovereign nations, and nobody seems to object.

Until then, most of the commentary seems to be along the lines of the trooper in the movie "Aliens" who kept moaning, "Game over, man!" at every setback or crisis.