From a training standpoint, this is the third (of four previous AAslts) that elements of the 1st Brigade/4th Iraqi Division participated in.

Put that together with the delivery of the last of the 16 UH-1s from Jordan and 24 MI-17s from Poland over the last month.

Who do you think has been nominated for Air mobile "Fire Brigade" of the Iraqi Army.

Posted by: dj elliott at March 18, 2006 08:21 PM

ES: that's a very interesting possibility. If it was largely Iraqi units involved, they would get experience in participating in a big operation with heavy US air support, the sort of operation the Pentagon is on record as saying they want to transition to. They wouldn't want them to work out their problems against a hard target, so they chose a soft one. You don't have your shakedown cruise in a hurricane. It would certainly explain a lot.

Posted by: James at March 18, 2006 05:31 PM

perhaps theres no main stream media presance because the main stream media leans to the left and is generally very anti war? My god i can picture some jumped up reporter from the BBC like John Simpson of 'magnificent taliban' and the 'misguided criminals' fame, yeah i think we'd get a real biased anti war report with the famous lines 'its getting worse every day' (been hearing that for 3 years rofl) and 'civil war is here' which also has been being said for 3 years! Sheesh and people wonder why mainstream media isnt welcome - besides there probably all to pussy to be quite frank and sat in that bloody hotel - or maybe even on its rooftop if your lucky. Not saying your guys from defense tech were to pussy to go out as i know thats simply not true but honestly these so called journalists these days who work for the main stream media are a miserable excuse for journalists.

Posted by: ShepUK at March 18, 2006 09:06 AM

Info on Fox is that it was an Iraqi operation -- they picked up tips on the Samarra merecenaries, planned the mission, and called in coalition for resources. If so, then that would be the true story, not the early headlines and "Breaking News!" alerts.

Police uniforms and ID were found among the weapons too -- we still don't know who was killed, by whom, and why, after the attack on the mosque of the final imams. Reporters should be doing a better job.

Posted by: a reader at March 17, 2006 11:39 PM

I think this is a dry run. I was there all last year in aviation and we would sometimes take units out on missions with no planned enemy. In the US we 'certify' our units by sending them to training centers before we deploy them to combat. This is the Iraqi equivalent.

Posted by: Edward Smith at March 17, 2006 09:15 PM

1. Look at the latest Battle Space Assumption map.
2. Plot where Samara is.
3. Plot where the clearing ops by Iraqi/USMC are.
- Do you notice that Samara is between three zones that the Iraqis own? And adjacent to I MEF zone.
- Do you think we turned those areas over without making sure the threat was managable first?
- Where do you think the terrs moved to under that presure?
- And what chunk of realestate do you think we plan to turn over next? "75% of Iraq turned over by end of summer."

Samara will be turned over to Iraqi Army control within next 3 months (probably sooner).

We are doing the house cleaning prior to hand over and introducing the new tennants (Iraqi Army and MOI's Special Police Commandos) to the local residents.

Posted by: dj elliott at March 17, 2006 03:55 PM

1. This is the 4th joint US-Iraqi AAslt op in the last 6mo.
2. AAslt is what the 101 does. This is normal ops.
3. Original press releases from Centcom and subordinates was no different in details or amount than previous reports.
4. My best guess is that it was a slow news day and the MSM needed a lead. So they hyped an operation after having ignored the previous ones. And now that it is becoming apparent that they are overhyping it, they will start the blame game.

Posted by: dj elliott at March 17, 2006 03:14 PM

Good Morning Folks,

This seems to be one of the dumber things that Central Command has done in a while. No Civilian Media means for suce that this operation (Samarra) will be looked at and scrutinized very closly by the Media.

It makes me wonder if the DoD sometimes creates there own problems knowingly, maybe we have a cover up of a cover up in the making here. It's time for my conspiracy oriented pals to come to the surface.

The question being here, what are the Bushies trying to hid with the "Samarra Assault"?

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

Posted by: Byron Skinner at March 17, 2006 02:07 PM

I just can't see where we ever needed civilian photographers on the battlefield. I have nothing against them, but so many of them over sensationalize their stories to get noteriety and end up hurting the mission at hand. I really don't think it does anyone any good to have them there. Good luck on the mission men.

Posted by: Darin Bain at March 17, 2006 12:02 PM

I've noticed that only DoD-released images seem to be available and was wondering about press. I guess this explains it.

I'm trying to accumulate Swarmer images over at my site, and have quite a few already. Unfortunately, so far it's just more of the same.

I'm adding to the collection as I come across more, and if anyone finds medium-res or better pics of Swarmer, drop me a line. (I've put the link to my Swarmer collection in my URL on this comment.)

Posted by: Murdoc at March 17, 2006 11:21 AM