Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Time: Jumping to Delusions

From Time Magazine - On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. 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.

This huge troop movement began on Thursday and within only one day Time has decided that it "fizzled"? Was that because "there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance"? Thirty-one suspected "insurgents" who remained under detention wasn't enough?

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.

Over half of the 1500 troops were Iraqi (about 800 Iraqi, 700 U.S.). They found weapons and other equipment and, according to the L.A. Times, they captured "a leader of the group responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque".

It makes me wonder what it would take for Time to consider this a success. (Other than a complete change of editors and writers.)