Question 1: Does the conquest of Falluja mean that that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is now over? Apparently not, because it seems that as U.S. officials were slowly preparing to flatten and “pacify” the city, most of the thousands of insurgents in Falluja hightailed it out of there in order to continue their guerrilla attacks elsewhere, much to the chagrin of U.S. military officials, who had hoped to finally kill, once and for all, all the “bad guys” in Iraq.

Question 2: Will the ranks of the insurgents now be reduced by 600, the number of “insurgents” killed in Falluja? Not necessarily because each of those 600 dead people probably had brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, parents, nephews, and nieces, all of whom now have reason to join the insurgency to avenge the death of their friend or loved one, to oust an illegal invader and occupier from their country, and to overthrow its unelected dictatorial puppet regime.

Question 3: Isn’t Allawi’s attack on Falluja somewhat similar to what the Allawi regime is accusing Saddam Hussein of having done — killing his own people for resisting his regime? What will Allawi and U.S. officials say when Saddam says at his trial (assuming he lives long enough to be tried), “Hey, wait a minute! How can you complain about my putting down a resistance when you’ve done and are doing the same thing I did? What’s wrong with killing, flattening, and ‘pacifying’ people who are opposing our respective dictatorial regimes?” (Actually, Saddam would claim that his regime was more legitimate than that of Allawi, given that Allawi is an unelected stooge of a foreign power illegally occupying the country while Saddam was reelected in the 2002 Iraqi presidential election by supposedly receiving 100 percent of the 11,445,638 votes cast.)

Question 4: Why did U.S. forces obey Allawi’s orders to flatten and “pacify” Falluja? Well, certainly not to liberate the Fallujans from the clutches of Saddam Hussein because, remember, he was taken into custody long ago. And not because the Fallujans were threatening America with weapons of mass destruction because, remember, those were destroyed long ago. And not because the Fallujans had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks because they didn’t.

The crime for which the Fallujans were punished was their refusal to submit to the authority of an unelected CIA-designated dictator, Iyad Allawi, and to obey the orders of his all-powerful police force (the U.S. military), a police force that is significantly more powerful than the one that Saddam Hussein used to put down insurrections against his regime. The message sent to Iraqis at Falluja is very simple and, in fact, is no different in principle from the message sent to the Iraqi people from Abu Ghraib prison: “Resist us or disobey us — or countenance those who do resist us or disobey us — and we will punish you.”

Interestingly, it was the same type of message that U.S. officials, including those in the military, sent the American people when they flattened and “pacified” the Branch Davidian compound at Waco several years ago.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.