Editor's Note: Last week TO published wire service reports of what was at the time called "The Largest US Air Operation Since the Invasion of Iraq." The operation dubbed by the Pentagon "Operation Swarmer" was supposed to be a massive air and ground operation launched by joint US and "Iraqi" forces. The reports below paint a starkly different picture and raise new questions what Americans and the world have a right to know - about what the US military is really doing. -- ma/TO

Also see below:     
US, Iraqi Troops Press Sweep in Operation Swarmer    [
Operation Overblown    [

    On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled
    By Brian Bennett and Al Jallam
    Time Magazine

    Friday 17 March 2006

Not a shot was fired, or a leader nabbed, in a major offensive that failed to live up to its advance billing.

    Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven.

    The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and US Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and US troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

    But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no air strikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What's more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the US and Iraqi commanders.

    The operation, which doubled the population of the flat farmland in one single airlift, was initiated by intelligence from Iraq security forces, says Lt Col Skip Johnson commander of the 187 Battalion, 3rd Combat Brigade of the 101st Airborne. "They have the lead," he said to reporters at the second stop of the tour. But by Friday afternoon, the major targets seemed to have slipped through their fingers. Iraqi Army General Abdul Jabar says that Samarra-based insurgent leader Hamad el Taki of Mohammad's Army was thought to be in the area, and Iraqi intelligence officers were still working to compare known voice recordings and photographs with the prisoners in custody.

    With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

    Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman's freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they'd found all day.

    Go to Original

    US, Iraqi Troops Press Sweep in Operation Swarmer
    By Charles J. Hanley
    The Associated Press

    Friday 17 March 2006

    Baghdad - US and Iraqi troops pressed their sweep through a 100-square-mile swath of central Iraq on Friday in a bid to break up a center of insurgent resistance, the US military said. No resistance or casualties were reported.

    "We believe we achieved tactical surprise," Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, said of the day-old Operation Swarmer. He said about 40 suspects were detained, 10 of whom were later released.

    The military described the operation, in which a combined Iraq-US fighting force was delivered in 50 helicopters, as the "biggest air assault" in three years. It was more of an airlift than an attack, however, as the military reported no bombing or firing from the air in the offensive northeast of Samarra, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad.

    Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of Multi-National Corps in Iraq, stressed the operation was "primarily" conducted by Iraqi forces, saying such an extensive joint mission wouldn't have been possible 11 months ago.

    "It was a large operation, consisting of Iraqis and US forces," he said at a Pentagon briefing. "Had we tried to accomplish a mission like this 11 months ago it would have been primarily US forces, but in this case I think you've all seen the numbers as we have primarily Iraqi forces supported by US and Coalition forces."

    In the tense capital, meanwhile, drive-by gunmen targeting streams of Shiite Muslim pilgrims killed three people and wounded five in Sunni areas of the city, police reported.

    Devout Shiites headed south to the holy city of Karbala for a religious holiday, a pilgrimage that authorities feared would present "soft" targets in the continuing Sunni-Shiite violence roiling Iraq.

    At least seven people were reported killed in scattered violence in and near Baghdad.

    A standoff between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority underlies the political impasse blocking formation of a new government of national unity here. An all-party meeting was scheduled for later Friday to try to move those negotiations forward.

    Iraq's new Parliament held its first session on Thursday, as the first permanent elected legislature since the US invasion, which began three years ago this coming Monday. But the lawmakers adjourned after taking their oaths of office as efforts to name a prime minister and Cabinet have been paralyzed.

    US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has played a leading role in forcing Iraqi politicians to find a compromise, said in an interview with The Associated Press that talks were under way about when he would meet Iranian officials to discuss Iraq. He said the talks should be held in Baghdad.

    The joint US-Iraqi air assault Thursday focused on a 10-by-10-mile area northeast of Samarra, where an insurgent bombing on Feb. 22 badly damaged a major Shiite shrine, an attack that ignited days of sectarian bloodshed across Iraq in which more than 500 people died.

    Fifty US transport and attack helicopters ferried in and gave cover to some 1,500 US and Iraqi troops taking part in Operation Swarmer - units of the 101st Airborne Division and the Iraqi 4th Division. There were 850 Iraqis and 700 American forces involved.

    On Friday morning, Loomis said, the forces "continue to move" through the area. "Approximately 40 suspected insurgents were detained without resistance," he said. "Tactical interviews began immediately, and 10 detainees have been released."

    The sweep also uncovered six weapons caches, the US military spokesman said.

    The operation was aimed at disrupting "terrorist activity in and around Samarra, Adwar and Salahuddin province," he said, an area that was a stronghold of Sunni support for Saddam Hussein's ousted Baathist party regime.

    Saddam's former No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim, who was deputy chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, was from the city of Adwar and is still at large - at times thought to remain in that area.

    The deputy governor of Salahuddin province, Abdullah Hussein, told reporters Friday that 48 alleged insurgents had been detained, men accused of bombings and kidnappings.

    He said intelligence indicated about 200 insurgents were in the area, including people linked to the Baathist group Jaish Muhammad - Muhammad's Army - and to the al-Qaida in Iraq terror group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

    The sweep was aimed particularly at capturing two local leaders of the al-Zarqawi group, said a police official. He said they had not yet been located.

    Iraqi officials said Salahuddin province became more important as an insurgent center after the US offensive that seized the resistance stronghold of Fallujah in late 2004, and subsequent US-Iraqi offensives in other western areas close to the Syrian border.

    In Baghdad Friday, the bloodshed began as groups of Shiite faithful, many parents with children in tow, trekked down city streets in the morning, headed for the southbound highway and Karbala, a shrine city 50 miles south of here.

    At about 7:30 a.m., a BMW sedan driving alongside pilgrims in the western district of Adil opened fire, killing three and wounding two, said police Lt. Thair Mahmoud. Police later reported a second incident, also in western Baghdad, in which armed men riding in a car fired on pilgrims near Um al-Tuboul Square, wounding three.

    Such attacks were feared this pilgrimage weekend as Sunni-Shiite tensions heighten across the strife-torn country. To help guard against violence in Shiite holy cities, the US military dispatched a fresh battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, about 700 troops, to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security.

    Tens of thousands of devout Shiites are converging on Karbala for Monday's celebration of Arbaeen, marking the end of the 40-day mourning period after the date of the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, killed in Karbala in 680 A.D.

    In other violence, according to police:

• A bomb left on a minibus exploded Friday, killing two passengers and wounding four in a Shiite district of Baghdad.
  
  
• Police in a Shiite area of east Baghdad late Thursday found the bodies of four Sunni men who had been seized from a taxi by masked gunmen the day before in western Baghdad.
  
  
• Six mortar rounds landed on six houses Friday in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of Khan Bani Saad, 10 miles north of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three.

    Go to Original

    Operation Overblown
    By Christopher Allbritton
    Back to Baghdad

    Saturday 18 March 2006

    Baghdad - Operation Swarmer is turning out to be much less than meets the eye, or the television camera, for that matter.

    Iraqi and Coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom's largest air assault operation in southern Salah Ad Din province March 16. Named Operation Swarmer, the joint operation's mission was to clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra.

    Operation Swarmer included more than 1,500 troops from the Iraqi Army's 4th Division, the US 101st Airborne Division and 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. The Soldiers isolated the objective area in a combined air and ground assault.

    More than 50 Attack and assault aircraft and 200 tactical vehicles participated in the operation. Troops from the Iraqi Army's 4th Division, the "Rakkasans" from the 187th Infantry Regiment and the "Hunters" from the 9th Cavalry Regiment assaulted multiple objectives. Forces from the Iraqi 2nd Commando Brigade then completed a ground infiltration to secure numerous structures in the area.

    Initial reports indicate a number of weapons caches were captured, containing artillery shells, IED-making materials and military uniforms. Iraqi and Coalition troops also detained 41 suspected insurgents.

    That sounds exciting! But according to a colleague of mine from TIME who traveled up there today on a US embassy-sponsored trip, there are no insurgents, no fighting and 17 of the 41 prisoners taken have already been released after just one day. The "number of weapons caches" equals six, which isn't unusual when you travel around Iraq. They're literally everywhere.

    (Digression: Just to clear some things up, "air assault" does not equal air strikes. There are no JDAMs being dropped, and there are no fixed-wing aircraft involved at all, except maybe for surveillance. An air assault is the 101st Airborne's way of inserting troops into a battle space. There is so far no evidence of bombardment of any kind. Also, it's a telling example of how "well" things are going in Iraq that after three years, the US is still leading the fight and conducting sweeps in an area that has been swept/contained/pacified/cleared five or six times since 2004. How long before the US has to come back again?)

    As noted, about 1,500 troops were involved, 700 American and 800 Iraqi. But get this: in the area they're scouring there are only about 1,500 residents. According to my colleague and other reporters who were there, not a single shot has been fired.

    "Operation Swarmer" is really a media show. It was designed to show off the new Iraqi Army - although there was no enemy for them to fight. Every American official I've heard has emphasized the role of the Iraqi forces just days before the third anniversary of the start of the war. That said, one Iraqi role the military will start highlighting in the next few days, I imagine, is that of Iraqi intelligence. It was intel from the Iraqi military intelligence and interior ministry that the US says prompted this Potemkin operation. And it will be the Iraqi intel that provides the cover for American military commanders to throw up their hands and say, "well, we thought bad guys were there."

    It's hard to blame the military, however. Stations like Fox and CNN have really taken this and ran with it, with fancy graphics and theme music, thanks to a relatively slow news day. The generals here also are under tremendous pressure to show off some functioning Iraqi troops before the third anniversary, and I won't fault them for going into a region loaded for bear. After all, the Iraqi intelligence might have been right.

    But Operation Overblown should raise serious questions about how good Iraqi intelligence is. I can't tell you how many times I've been told by earnest lieutenants that the Iraqis are valiant and necessary partners, "because they know the area, the people and the customs." But when I spoke to grunts and NCOs, however, they usually gave me blunter - and more colorful - reasons why the Iraqi intelligence was often, shall we say, useless. Tribal rivalries and personal feuds are still a major why Iraqis drop a dime on their neighbors.

    So I guess it's fitting that on the eve of the third anniversary of a war launched on - oh, let's be generous - "faulty" intelligence, a major operation is hyped and then turns out to be less than what it appeared because of ... faulty intelligence.