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ames Eades of Augusta is charged with obstruction of a police officer, stemming from an incident during Operation Thunder, but he says there is much more to the story than that. Eades says that he and a friend were driving down Alexander Drive early Friday morning when they came to an Operation Thunder Checkpoint on River Watch Parkway. What happened during that stop lead to Eades getting arrested... and he says it's all because he didn't roll down his window all the way "We saw what appeared to be an accident scene. A couple of police cars with blue lights,...

(Speculation alert)  Operation Thunder was supposed to be the code-name of a security sweep by 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen in the Baghdad area. The existence of a parallel or separate operation, codenamed Operation Lightning has been announced to the public in connection with the arrest of one Saddam's intelligence generals, now believed to be a mastermind in the insurgency.  In their biggest coup of Operation Lightning, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers arrested a former general in Saddam Hussein's intelligence service who was also a member of his Fedayeen secret police during a raid in western Baghdad, the scene of some...

The government has announced Operation Thunder, a major military operation to take place starting on Monday, the 30th. It seems strange that Coalition and Iraqi commanders have announced that next week they're going to begin a major cordon and search operation in Baghdad involving 40,000 troops and security personnel. Announcing such an operation in advance can only alert the enemy. Perhaps something else is afoot? Could the Iraqi and Coalition commanders be running an psychological warfare operation on the terrorists? Knowing that they're about to be the target of such a massive operation, may prompt the terrorists to break cover...

Iraq's government will pour tens of thousands of Iraqi troops into Baghdad in an unprecedented operation to seal off the city and hunt insurgents who have launched a fresh wave of violence, ministers said on Thursday. Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said 40,000 Iraqi troops would be deployed in Baghdad for Operation Thunder, the biggest Iraqi military operation since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Backed by the 10,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad, they will set up hundreds of checkpoints and block roads into the capital. The dramatic rise in suicide bombings and ambushes by mostly Sunni Arab guerrillas has killed more...