U.S. Launches Operation Scimitar in Iraq

[leftchick]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5129305,00.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - About 600 U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers have launched a fourth counterinsurgency operation in less than a month in a volatile western province in Iraq, this time near Fallujah, the military said Saturday.

Operation Scimitar started Thursday with targeted raids in the village of Zaidan, 20 miles southeast of Fallujah. So far, 22 suspected insurgents had been detained. Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was a major insurgent bastion until U.S. forces overran the city in November.

The military said it did not announce the offensive earlier because commanders did not want to tip off insurgents that a major operation had begun. The campaign - named after a curved Asian sword - includes 500 Marines from the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, Regimental Combat Team-8, stationed in Okinawa, Japan, the military said.

About 100 Iraqi soldiers were supporting the operation, which is designed to disrupt insurgent activity in the Anbar province.

[damnthetorpedoes]

1. oooooh operation scimitar!

these are boys playing real life video games, with their ever more colorful phallic operation names. they sound so scary! ooooh. i'm sure the insurgents (who use real scimitars) are really scared now. gee, operation "mine is bigger than yours" didn't work. neither did "operation viagra" or "operation screaming eagles of death."

good luck boys. how about "operation common sense?" it involves withdrawing from iraq.


DRAFT THE AMISH FIRST - SUPPORT THE WAR, AND LOSE YOUR CO STATUS

[SpiralHawk]

2. Wait a minute..."Mission Accomplished." - George W. Bush

Dosen't anyone pay attention to the commander-in-chief* ?



* AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970's; AWOL on 9/11 when the nation needed him to do something -- anything -- other than sitting in a classroom with a vacant expression reading "My Pet Goat" for half an hour after his 2nd notice that the nation was under attack.,

[Botany]

3. And if this colorfuly named operation is a success when ....

..... can we declare victory and go home?

This is getting more and more like Vietnam every day. Win the
battles and control the land but the minute we move on the other
side gets the land back. The only thing that will stay are the dead.

F you GWB!

[MaineDem]

4. Bad choice of name, no?

Why not call it "Operation Crusdade"?

I don't think the name of this is in really good taste. I'm uncomfortable with it. Which isn't to say I'm comfortable with being there in the first place, of course.

[leftchick]

5. I think all of the names are in really poor taste

This one in particular does stick out though doesn't it?

[Zodiak]

7. perhaps because the scimitar is an Ottoman weapon

They named it "scimitar" to highlight that they have 100 Iraqi turncoats with them to lend legitimacy to this illegal war. Look for Operation: Falchion next.

[Zodiak]

6. newsflash for the reporter writing this

Fallujah is not Western Iraq. It is central Iraq, not far from Baghdad. I would hold anything that this writer puts to paper suspect if he doesn't even know where the location he is writing about is. What's more, I love how he also put that Fallujah really was a bastion of insurgents before the US over-ran it, making it sound oh so surgical and clean.

Over-ran it?

How 'bout bombed the hell out of it with napalm and cluster bombs, destroyed its infrastructure, forced the people to leave the city, put all refugess wishing to reenter the city under martial law and impressed them to dig mass graves, and otherwise turned it into the Warsaw ghetto.

That's what this clueless jerk meant to say when he wrote "over-ran".

I'm so tired of stenography and lack of research passing for journalism nowadays. This is a WH press release with a reporter's name on it.

[The_Casual_Observer]

8. The real author of this "piece" is someplace in the pentagon

They are out to "complete the job" however, they don't even know what the "job" is.

[SpiralHawk]

9. Thanks for the Fallujah reminder

Another story the press failed on.

[mbperrin]

10. Scimitar as power?

"if I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away. "