Yet, as Stalingrad was the turning point of the war and Bull Run meant Lincoln must fight a long war or let the Confederacy go, Fallujah may prove a decisive battle in Bush's war, and presidency.

For after the killing of the contractors and the desecration of their bodies, we were told punishment was certain and coming. And should Fallujah refuse to give up the killers, it would be taken. When a superpower gives an ultimatum, it must make good on it.

Yet when the insurgents defied the Marines, and the Marines prepared to fight their way in and finish off the 1,500 fighters, U.S. commanders ordered them to withdraw. Last week, a Republican Guard general was sent in to Fallujah to work things out.

The insurgents had mocked a truce offer by sending out a small truckload of worthless weapons. They had mounted nightly assaults on the Marines. And after the Marines pulled out, photos of their jubilant enemies were flashed across the Middle East. Message to the Islamic world: The superpower can be defied.

Fallujah belongs to the insurgents. The enemy has established a sanctuary, a base camp in U.S.-occupied territory in a war zone, as has radical Shiite Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf.

The message from Fallujah is that either the Americans are afraid to take casualties or they are afraid to inflict heavy casualties in an urban battleground for fear that pictures of smashed mosques and dead women and children could convert any tactical Marine victory into a strategic U.S. defeat in the battle for hearts and minds.