Ok, I'm watching a tivoed Lou Dobbs tonight, and Joe Klein just said that the cablenews stations overhyped Operation Swarmer - apparently they were as usual a direct conduit for the administration trying to put on a fresh face on the Iraq war just as the three year anniversary of the war is fast approaching.
Well, it turns out this theory might be right.
From
TIME:
Not a shot was fired, or a leader nabbed, in a major offensive that failed to live up to its advance billing.
Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven.
But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What's more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.
Read the whole thing.