Not to split hairs, but I wouldn't even call Fallujah "real combat experience" since that consisted of collectively punishing an entire city just because 4 Blackwater bozos got their skulls bashed in by the locals. It was basically large scale revenge carried out against a civilian population by the US military on behalf of some fucking private contractors. Whatever pretenses there were of fighting an insurgency were secondary to that. They treated every "combat aged male" as an insurgent and kidnapped all the women and children, doing mass family separation.
Not to split hairs, but I wouldn't even call Fallujah "real combat experience" since that consisted of collectively punishing an entire city just because 4 Blackwater bozos got their skulls bashed in by the locals. It was basically large scale revenge carried out against a civilian population by the US military on behalf of some fucking private contractors. Whatever pretenses there were of fighting an insurgency were secondary to that. They treated every "combat aged male" as an insurgent and kidnapped all the women and children, doing mass family separation.