Ramadi

The NYTimes has an article up tonight on the conditions in Ramadi. The living conditions sound very similar to the BBC report out of Haditha I linked a couple weeks ago, and the fighting is described as unrelenting. There's also this:

In three years here the Marine Corps and the Army have tried nearly everything to bring this provincial capital of 400,000 under control. Nothing has worked.

Now American commanders are trying something new.

Instead of continuing to fight for the downtown, or rebuild it, they are going to get rid of it, or at least a very large part of it.

They say they are planning to bulldoze about three blocks in the middle of the city, part of which has been reduced to ruins by the fighting, and convert them into a Green Zone, a version of the fortified and largely stable area that houses the Iraqi and American leadership in Baghdad.