U.S. troops intensify fighting

The troop surge struggles forward in a manner reminiscent of clearing Nazis out of Paris and chasing the Viet Cong through tunnels while destroying whole villages.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/23/2007: "Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, assistant commander for operations with the 25th Infantry Division, estimated that several hundred low-level al-Qaeda fighters remained in the city.

'They're clearly in hiding, no question about it. But they're a hard-line group of fighters who have no intention of leaving, and they want to kill as many coalition and Iraqi security forces as they possibly can,' Bednarek said yesterday.

'It's 24-7 for us here, and it's probably the same for our adversary as well,' he said. 'It's house to house, block to block, street to street, sewer to sewer - and it's also cars, vans - we're searching every one of them.'"