Posted on 06/21/2007 9:56:22 AM PDT by Abathar
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Thursday it was setting a trap to "eliminate" militants near Baghdad where 12 U.S. soldiers have died in the past two days.
Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are pushing on with simultaneous operations in Baghdad and to the north, south and west of the capital under Operation Phantom Thunder, a new plan aimed at rooting out al Qaeda fighters and other militants.
The latest offensives, which began in the past week, follow the build-up of U.S. military forces in Iraq to 156,000 soldiers and aim to deny militants sanctuary in the farmlands and towns surrounding Baghdad.
"If you've got it properly cordoned then they're going to flee into somebody's arms. It's a trap," U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox said.
"To the extent that you can eliminate them, we will." Hard fighting was expected in the next 45-60 days, he said.
Military commanders have said they anticipate greater casualties as their forces press on with a four-month-old Baghdad security crackdown and other operations around the city.
In the worst incident for the military in the past 48 hours, five soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle during combat operations in northeastern Baghdad on Thursday. Three Iraqi civilians and an Iraqi interpreter also died.
Another roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in west Baghdad on Wednesday. Roadside bombs are by far the biggest killers of U.S. forces in Iraq. Two others died on Tuesday.
A total of 3,545 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the start of the war in March 2003.
On Baghdad's southern flank, the military said 60 suspected insurgents were detained, 17 boats used to transport bomb parts in the capital were destroyed, and weapons caches were seized.
To the north, some 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops assaulted al Qaeda hideouts in an operation focused on Baquba, the volatile capital of Diyala province, that has killed 41 militants over the past three days, the U.S. military said.
Fox said it was too early to call Operation Phantom Thunder a turning point in the war but said the military was stepping up the pressure on al Qaeda.
"This is a military operation with clear objectives ... to set the conditions for the political and economic progress that the government of Iraq needs to demonstrate," Fox said.
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
U.S. President George W. Bush has sent 28,000 extra soldiers to help curb sectarian bloodshed and buy Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki time to reach a political accommodation with disaffected minority Sunni Arabs, who are locked in a withering cycle of violence with majority Shi'ite Muslims.
The key element of political goals set by Washington, a revenue-sharing oil law, advanced on Thursday after Kurdish officials from autonomous Kurdistan said they had reached a deal with the central government on sharing oil revenues.
Under the agreement, the Kurdistan region will take 17 percent of all oil revenue from Iraq's oil fields, the world's third largest. But there is still a dispute over who will control the fields.
A suicide bomber killed 16 people by ramming his truck into a government building in a town near the northern city of Kirkuk.
The bomber struck a compound housing the municipal headquarters and local town council in Sulaiman Bek. The blast also reduced nearby houses to rubble.
Police and hospital sources said 16 people, including two children, were killed and 76 wounded. At least 10 city council members, including the mayor and the police chief, were among the wounded.
"I heard a huge roar. Then I didn't hear or see anything anymore. There were many people wounded," said Kareem Mohammed Nassif, a retired civil servant who was among the wounded.
Al-Reuters just had to publish the headline that way to keep in good graces with its allies on the other side...
Where is it and what does it look like?
Now why the hell should this be public knowledge?
You got me...
It’s really nice of the media to annouce a trap in advance, gives the bad guys a chance to get away, can’t have the “militants” getting all shot up now can we. /SAR
I read the headline twice just to make sure I read it correctly the first time, my jaw hit the keyboard.
“Where is it and what does it look like?”
Maybe we want the story out there?
Any news organization which reports only half the score demonstrates their bias, which disqualifies them as a legitimate news source.
You would not waste your time reading or listening to sports reporters reporting only the scores generated by one team.
Somebody needs a stiff letter placed in their folder to derail their promotion schedule!
/sarc /incred /amazed /wtf
“It’s really nice of the media to annouce a trap in advance, gives the bad guys a chance to get away,”
Even nicer for somebody in the know to spill the beans in the first place.
What I like is when it's good news, the headlines read "Military says they captured 10,000 terrorists" but when it's bad news the headline is "U.S. Marines kill 7 innocent civilians" instead of "Terrorists Say US Marines..."
... and in more more News it’s the Cincinnati Reds 6...
The fact that a “trap” was announced by a US military source indicates the announcement is PART of said trap:)
WTF?
That may be your take on it, mine is that the MSM is up to their old tricks of revealing secrets they should keep their mouths shut about, JMO.
Word that the cordon operation was in place was released last weekend on Michael Yon’s blog. He’s embedded, and had embargoed the story for over a week until the military gave him the go ahead. This may be one of those rare events where the media’s actually publishing news the military wants out.
What Reuters and the rest of the media hasn’t figured out yet is that this is a major operation that will ultimately turn out to be the second largest combat operation of the war. They’re all seeing little gray pieces at the moment, nobody’s figured out it’s an elephant yet.
The Mil is advertising parts of this operation including that we are not giving them anywhere to run.
How much of the reporting is OPDEC and how much is OPSEC violations is very much in air ATT.
Of note on the OPSEC side:
- The 3-2 SBCT disengaged from Rasheed Dist (Baghdad), moved north and went hot in Baqubah on monday with no leaks until they were fully operational. Damn fine OPSEC.
- In the south, the first hint that the 4-25 BCT had shifted north and was part of Marne Torch was a day after they went hot. Nice.
The OPSEC and OPDEC on Phantom Thunder is very smooth compared to previous...
This is about the most dis-jointed and most poorly written article I’ve ever seen.
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