Big Military Operation Now Going On In Iraq
Joe Gandelman
A major push is underway by Iraqi forces to hunt and weed out insurgents:
Iraqi forces launched their biggest security crackdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the start of Operation Lightning on Sunday, a sweep by 40,000 Iraqi troops who will seal off Baghdad and hunt for insurgents.
Backed by the 10,000 U.S. troops in the capital, Iraqi soldiers will block major routes into Baghdad and search the city district by district, looking for foreign Arab fighters and Iraqi guerrillas, Iraqi officials say.
This kind of operation is usually successful because it can help decrease the enemy's ranks plus wind up getting good leads to info for future arests. More:
The operation comes after a sharp increase in suicide bombings and ambushes by insurgents who have killed around 700 people in the past month since a new Shi'ite Islamist-led government was announced.
At least 70 U.S. troops have been killed in the same period, the highest monthly American death toll since January when insurgents were trying to derail the Jan. 30 elections.
"The operation began today. The troops will block all entrances of Baghdad to prevent terrorists from conducting activities in the capital. It's a crackdown on the terrorism infrastructure," a Defense Ministry official told Reuters. A brilliant move? Not exactly: The operation was announced on Thursday — potentially giving insurgents the chance to flee Baghdad before it began.
Iraq's government has come under pressure from Washington to launch a decisive response to insurgent attacks, to try to restore public confidence sapped by relentless violence and the long delay in forming a cabinet after the elections.
So the Iraqi government did the right thing. Except it gave its targets a chance to get a headstart out of town...
