Gung Ho One More Time

Those volatile Samarrans are to be re-democratised again. The town, which is sixty miles north of Baghdad, was captured by insurgents in 2004, no doubt against the wishes of its inhabitants. US troops then re-took it and, for reasons unknown, "the area has again become unstable". Accordingly, Iraqi forces, backed up by their obedient US allies, are mounting "the biggest air offensive launched by the Americans in Iraq since the 2003 invasion". It is possible that bigger air offensives have been launched by other powers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, but I doubt it. The re-freedomising process, going this time by the insectile monicker of Operation Swarmer, is expected to last several days and involves "more than 50 US warplanes" with "some 1,500 Iraqi and US troops and 200 tactical vehicles", according to the US military, which presumably relayed the message from the sovereign, independent Iraqi government for the benefit of the English-speaking peoples. By the end of the first day, according to the US military, speaking for the sovereign, independent Iraqi government, "a number of enemy weapons caches had been captured", including "artillery shells, explosives, [improvised explosive devices] IED-making materials, and military uniforms". I thought the insurgents tended to wear civilian uniforms, but apparently the fiends cannot even be relied on to do that. The insurgents in Samarra, of course, are a very special breed. Samarra is "a key city in the Salahuddin province, which is a major part of the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents have been active since shortly after the US-led invasion three years ago", the rest of the country being as quiet as anyone could wish. The reason for Salahuddin's intransigence is not hard to find: "Saddam Hussein was captured in the province, not far from its capital, Tikrit". Last month, the fiends even "stoked sectarian tensions ... by destroying a major Shia shrine, the Golden Mosque". It must have been the insurgents who did it, because obviously anyone else, particularly the occupation forces, would have claimed responsibility by now. In any case, no doubt the province will soon be re-pacificated by those US warplanes, US troops, US tactical vehicles, US troops and their independent, sovereign Iraqi co-democratisers-in-arms, using just the same tactics which have been working so well up to now.