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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (280537)	3/16/2006 7:51:00 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576893

Do these guys know which side they are attacking? Which side is Steve's "cockroaches"? Who is the "bad guy"? US launches air assault in Iraq By Michael Georgy Thu Mar 16, 4:37 PM ET The U.S. military said on Thursday it launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to root out insurgents near a town where recent violence raised fears of civil war. Announced with media fanfare just hours after Iraq's parliament held a brief first meeting that did nothing to end a political stalemate over forming a government, the U.S. military said 50 aircraft were taking part in the raids north of Baghdad. The U.S. military released to the media photographs of troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopters lined up in a row for the offensive. There were no pictures of warplanes. A defense official at the Pentagon, who asked not to be named said it was a relatively large, but sought to downplay the scale of the operation. "It's not precision bombs and things like that," the official said. Another official said it was "predominantly" a helicopter operation that involved UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and other aircraft and the insertion of ground forces. A military statement said "Operation Swarmer" involved more than 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops and 200 armored vehicles targeting insurgents active near Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad. A defense official in Washington said 600-700 of the troops involved were Iraqi government forces. The rest were Americans. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said the offensive showed Iraqi forces, some facing accusations of cooperating with the rebels, are increasingly capable of securing the country. PREVIOUS ASSAULTS The U.S. military has launched several major offensives against Sunni Arab insurgents since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, including one involving several thousand soldiers that captured the former rebel stronghold of Falluja. There were also a series of assaults in the rebel heartland in western Iraq's Anbar province which failed to hurt the insurgency and infuriated Iraqis who dug their loved ones out of the rubble after U.S. air strikes. Security crackdowns were also carried out near Samarra, the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shi'ite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war. The military statement said the offensive was launched on Thursday morning and is "expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted." "Initial reports from the objective area indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-(bomb) making materials, and military uniforms," said the statement. The U.S. military has issued frequent statements about the capture of arms, but Iraq is still awash with weapons. As it has done in the past, the U.S. military made a point of saying both American and Iraqi forces were taking part in the operation in an apparent bid to show that rebuilding of Iraqi forces was making progress. The United States has 130,000 troops in Iraq. Washington has said it will begin withdrawing troops as U.S.-trained Iraqi forces take over security. But U.S. military officials have said few units were capable of fighting insurgents on their own, let alone protecting people from suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings. (Additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington)