BAGHDAD, IRAQ: As Operation Steel Curtain on the Syrian border comes to a close, the Coalition continues to press operations in hot areas. Ramadi, which has been the focus of numerous small scale operations over the past months, most recently Panthers and Bruins, is the focus of Operation Lions. The operation is aimed at southern Ramadi and is made up of approximately 200 Iraqi Army Soldiers and 250 Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (2-BCT).
A “terrorist hideout” on Bayji Island, which lies on the Tigris river north of Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, a “previously untouched area” , is the subject of an air assault operation called Old Baldy. The mission was conducted by members of the 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 4th Iraqi Army Division and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. Thirty terrorists and an assortment of weapons and cash were discovered. Iraqi forces took over control of the Forward Operation Base in Tikrit just yesterday.
The Christian Science Monitor discovers that there is a plan to defeat the insurgency, in what it describes as a “New Iraq strategy: Stay in hot spots” . Its close, but it is anything but new; it is a plan we reported a long time ago in The Anbar Campaign. Right now, we are in Phase 2, the process of clearing out the insurgency and al Qaeda from their western bases and slowly introducing Iraqi troops to assume responsibility for security.
