>>5958840>>5959969>Falluja is in a "peninsula" area, effectively surrounded by the Euphrates river, meaning any attackers would either have to tread through river or cross over the few bridge/highways to effectively attack, which means we only have to heavily reinforce certain locations, as the natural terrain can be easily leveraged in our defenses and we can bottleneck themfallujah is only protected by the euphrates(?) river from the west, and most, if not all, of the forces that might attack there (from Baghdad/Taji) are likely already in the land between the rivers. If a battle occurs and goes badly, the river could prevent ISIL forces from evacuating
>A lot of pre-existing infrastructure exists in Falluja as the "City of Mosques" which can be incorporated into our defenses, along with three hospitals that we're definitely going to try to co-occupy so if the enemies want to bomb us, they'll create international outrage by the fact that they're bombing hospitals, and outrage in the local Iraqi population by them bombing mosquesusing hospitals as a defense against strikes creates international outrage against ISIL for doing so, and possibly degrades said hospitals if attacks occur despite that. This also introduces the potential for Sunni opposition to break with ISIL for deliberately inviting damage to the city's infrastructure, which effects the residents as much as ISIL.
