US launches mass weapons sweep in Iraq

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s998085.htm

Some 2,000 United States troops have launched a massive sweep south of Baghdad, looking for bombs and ground-to-air missiles as part of a two-week-old counter-insurgency operation, officers said.

Two brigades from the US 82nd Airborne Division were involved in the sweep along the road towards the central Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Najaf, said Sergeant Brent Williams, public affairs officer with the division's Second Brigade.

Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles from the US 1st Armoured Division and three companies of the new Iraqi Civil Defence Corps also took part in the operation.

It was aimed at finding munitions including surface-to-air missiles and charges used in making the sort of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) favoured by anti-coalition insurgents.

"We are searching Highway 8 from Checkpoint 7, two kilometres north of here about 15 kilometres down to the south," Sergeant Williams said.

"We are working 1000 metres on either side of the road - we are looking for IED-making material, areas that the enemy might use as a foothold to conduct operations or attacks against coalition forces," he said, as his troops waded through the knee-deep mud churned up in the desert by winter rains.

Sergeant Williams said the operation was not organised in response to a missile strike on a DHL civilian cargo jet launched by insurgents from scrubland south of the capital last week.
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[xchrom]

1. what they take

will be replaced.
so bizarre -- tactics like these are such a waste. and only make the local people less friendly to the ''foreign occupation''.
sorry ma'am for turning your house upside down -- just looking for weapons.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. I'm afraid that for every weapon they find, they'll create another

Iraqi that wants to fight American occupation.

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Hmmm - that's being conservative I think - and more to the point - -

. . . I think that every HOUSE that they turn inside out will create DOZENS of anti-Murikkkan Iraqis,

specially when they DON'T find anything in that particular house

- and that will be the majority I think

"winning the hearts and minds"

RIGHT !!!

(sigh)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. Dammit, Bro! You are dead on. n/t

[KansDem]

4. Bush went from looking for "weapons of mass destruction"...

...to looking for "mass weapons."

Wake me when it's over. :boring:

[TheLastMohican]

6. Useless tactics.

Law abiding Iraqis have Ak's in their households. If such a sweep goes through their homes, they will hand them in.
But insurgents don't keep the weapons under the bed, I bet most of the weapons are still where they used to be - in Saddam's military hardware depots.
I have a friend's friend who has just returned from ukrainian peace-keeping force in Al Kut. He says there are many depots being simply unguarded by anyone at night. Ukrainian forces caught several groups just coming over to the depot in trucks and picking up as many weapons as their trucks can haul.
He says their force is too small to protect all the warehouses round the clock, there are some 1600 ukrainians over there, which is not enough for the task. They also guard the airport which is about 25 hectares in square, and they have their perimeter breached every night by different groups from simple scavengers to those who mean war business aka insurgents.
The shit he told me is not anywhere near of what is being told in the press. And this is a relatively peaceful place in the south.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Have they found any WMDs during these sweeps?

Isn't that the reason we went into Iraq in the first place?

Iraq is America's Gaza and West Bank. We deserve whatever we get!

[Barrett808]

8. "Call me naive, but I think we are winning."

I'd call Captain Leo Coddington "delusional" instead of "naive".