U.S. Forces Launch Operation Iron Hammer

U.S. Forces Launch Operation Iron Hammer

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. forces in Iraq on Wednesday launched a planned and coordinated operation codenamed Iron Hammer that targeted pro-Saddam loyalists, a senior military source told Fox News.

Based on intelligence collected on the ground, U.S. infantry set a number of traps all over Baghdad. Several of those traps — monitored from the air and known as NAIs or Named Areas of Interest — were activated almost simultaneously Wednesday night.

In the most dramatic action, about a dozen Bradley armored vehicles used 25mm cannons to destroy a warehouse used by anti-U.S. forces in southern Baghdad. A special forces AC-130 Spectre gunship also took part from the air, targeting the warehouse with precise fire.

"The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure," the Pentagon (search) said in a statement from Washington.

"The destruction of this structure will deny enemy forces any use of it in the future."

SNIP

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102904,00.html

So many "operations," so little time. Of course, the most important operation is "Operation Imperialist Domination."

Does the name of this operation sound a little too Nazish for anyone else's taste?

Gee, what a choice to be compared to, Hitler or Stalin. Good work Georgie.

the hammers marching in Pink Floyd The Wall movie...

Is US army turning into "Workers and Peasants Red Army" or RKKA shortly?

A deep penetration of the Suni Triangle by US forces.

Victory is at hand!

sorry, bad joke, couldn't resist
:evilgrin:

I like the acronym better.

we've got an occupied population surrounded, and we're using tanks, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, and air gunships to fire upon them.

The next thing we know Bush and Co. will be building a "security fence" around Baghdad and Tikrit.

oh, ... but we're there to "liberate them" and "bring them democracy." (sarcasm)

Remember last week they built a barbed wire fence around Saddam's home village.

As if that Isrealian methode has worked..... Killing more people in Iraq is only going to create and breed more violence. look for a wall soon

Democracy is such a wonderful thing we need to use an Iron Hammer to convince them.

Trying to clean up the stench of Bush's foolhardy endeavor.

strait face tell me that America will prevail in Iraq.

Not a snowballs chance in hell will the USA prevail in Iraq.

This is what you can take to the bank Americans will die in ever increasing numbers in Iraq until the oil is gone or the corrupt administration that sent them there to secure it is gone.

It's below pre-war levels. Fix the pipelines and the Iraqis blow them up again. Not that I can find a way to blame them.

A true clusterfuck of historic and epic proportions.

This has done and will do more to completely destabilize the M.E. than anything since the Shah of Iran was deposed.

I think a combination of the two perhaps.

And why did they have to waste an expensive warplane for a demolition job? Couldn't they have just bulldozed it down?

Operation Iron Hammer was a Luftwaffe operation to knock out Russian infra structure especially electrical power generation and the Russian armaments industry during WWII. Are the BFEE a bit nostalgic for their nazi past ?

I was thinking along remotely similar lines..."Iron Hammer" sounds a little too close to "Iron Cross" for me to really be comfortable with it.

Sorry, I KKKouldn't resist!

Excellent point!

"These victories and those in following days did little to change the inevitable outcome of the war."

Thanks for the link!

"Iron Hammer was resurrected in February 1945, with several new twists. The Soviets had overrun all the advance bases included in earlier planning, so the attack would have to be launched from bases near Berlin and on the Baltic. Mistels would now be the primary weapon. Furthermore, Iron Hammer had become a part of a master strategy to regain the initiative in the East."

Didn't work for Hitler, won't work for *.

incredible!

Bush and his "crusade"

I can't even remember the name of the "Operation" that he intially called the attack and making of war on Iraq. Wasn't it "Operation Just Cause"?? Was it switched to "Operation Endiruing Freedom"?

And, now "Operation Iron Hammer" -- the name of a Nazi attack on the Soviet Union.

Just Incredible.

thanks to those who pointed it out and for the link.

As in...

The LORD JAY-SUS and his INFINITE JUSTICE will SMITE the EVIL DOERS!

:puke: :puke:

The Busheviks are either evil or stupid.

Either way we are in a whole lot of trouble!

never bother to google them. If they don't, they are unbelievably stupid, and to have done it AGAIN??? If they do google them and go ahead, they must be so f***ing arrogant, knowing they can rub peoples noses in their true beliefs and then get away with it. :grr:

<>

I remember because it spelled OIL which seemed to truthful so they changed it. Maybe more than once...

Which reminds me to hate the government of the time even more for involving my father in the deaths of 3000 innocent people as part of the invasion force.

:mad:

I am sure CENTCOM has a small staff of people dreaming up new names for new pacification efforts. They better hire more people!

For the Invasion of Iran.

...Iraqis we've made homeless.

"Operation Bloody Thumb"

The Empire Lives! All Hail Palpatine!

Cue Star Wars Empire music...Da da da dun de da dun de da...

and see my post above - #7

Not even thinly veiled...

Bush is not a Nazi, so stop saying that!!

Oh...right. He is a Nazi.

go here for the flash film that over half a million people have downloaded:

http://www.takebackthemedia.com/bushnonazi.html

and turn up those speakers..

the germans love this one!

Enough of that wussy "Iraqi Liberation" shit, it was all bullshit anyway.

And, yes, the Darth vader song would be a much more appropriate national anthem for Imperial Amerika.

launched against Yugoslavia. In the Spring of 1941, Yugoslavs overthrew their government and tore up the pact it had made with the Nazis. Hitler responded by bombing the hell out of them and commencing a merciless occupation.

The Yugoslav partisans, however, had the final, bitter laugh. Their guerilla campaign tied down hundreds of thousands of troops which could have been put to use fighting the Soviet Union.

We have seen that Iraq never intended to make WMD and are no longer a threat to anyone. Let them have their Islamic rule and work out the details among themselves. Pack our stuff up and just leave.

Kinda like smash and grab? Make a mess and let others clean it up. Ooops! So sorry, here's your country back. Sorry about the 50,000 dead and totalled infrastructure, disease outbreaks, shattered lives. We promise we won't do it again...Really...We mean it this time...Why are you still trying to kill me?

I don't want to keep reading about our boys and girls getting killed. Why not pull them out?

Poor you, having to be exposed to the fact that Bush is a fuck up who is responsible for the meaningless deaths of hundreds of our troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi's.

I do not want our troops killed. However, pulling them out could be even worse in the long run, although that's probably what's going to happen. The admin. is more than likely going to cut and run and leave the country in shambles. You know what's going to happen then? It's going to detoriate into a bloody chaotic mess.

I honestly don't know what the best option is at this point. Though I suspect it would entail something like telling the UN we are going to COMPLETELY hand control over to them and stage a structured, ordered retreat from the region. But that would mean actually giving up the natural resources and any input in, (read money from) the rebuilding. Do you think these assholes in the admin. are ready to do that? It would mean completely admitting they were wrong and Iraq was a total fuck up from the beginning.

Let the UN or whoever have it. We have suffered enough.

If only it were that easy. Though I do suspect that just that sort of irresponsible thing is going to happen. And even worse, it's going to be done without making any arrangements w/ the UN or even putting anything resembling a functioning gov't in place. Yes, it's horrible and wrong that our soldiers and their families are suffering (are you a soldier or a family member of one? You say "we" have suffered enough as if you personally are suffering; are you?), but the Iraqi's are suffering FAR worse, or don't they enter into your equations? Don't you think they are OWED some sort of recompense and protection or should we just say "fuck them, they can all got to hell!"?

Look at the kids dancing on the dead bodies and broken tools of war when our people get shot down. They want us dead or gone is the message I'm getting.

And who can blame them. But there's a right way to leave and a wrong way to leave. There's responsible behavior and irresponsible behavior. There's taking responsibility for your actions and living up to the consequences and results of those actions and there's passing the buck. How do you live your life? Do you want your country to act responsibly or irresponsibly?

Did your mother or anyone in authority ever teach you about "leaving it the way you found it?" or "you brok it, you bought it?"

With the "Though I do suspect that just that sort of irresponsible thing is going to happen. And even worse, it's going to be done without making any arrangements w/ the UN or even putting anything resembling a functioning gov't in place" part.

Conservative assholes kept us in Vietnam for 18 years, and no one's opinion -- not even the VIETNAMESE people's opinion -- made a difference. Nor did the million dead and the billions spent...

We'll be lucky if "getting out of Iraq" doesn't mean "invading Syria and Iran."

I'm seeing all the signs of declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq and cutting and running though. Bush has emphatically declared that we will do no such thing, which of course means, that's most probably what we ARE going to do.

Yes, of course, that would free our troops up for another invasion, which I'm sure is in the cards. No argument there.

Was Johnson unable to pull us out due to a conservative majority or was he in it with them? My memory is telling me we had the majorty in congress around that timeframe. Why did we wait for Nixon to pull the plug?

That the two parties, and politicians in general, were not neccessaily locked into a two lane idealogy like they are now.

It's also my understanding that the liberal Johnson was literally killed by his decision to stay in, even escalate, the war in Vietnam -- and that he was never really given much of a choice, anyway.

I spent a couple of hours over the weekend reading this. It's most interesting:

The History Place presents The Vietnam War
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index.html

Shared with me by another DUer, of course (KoKo).

Eloriel

They are going to have to escalate the war, even though it isn't the best thing to do.

I don't want to read about it either, but it is fact and we must. I think the poster you reference here agrees in principle.

But I agree with you that we can't cut and run. The next administration has a big cleanup job on its hands that will take more than new carpet in the Oval Office and replacing W's on keyboards.

Peace,
Steve

It turned out to be harder than a Harvard Biz School midterm, so they're cutting and running. Shrub said they wouldn't, so of course they are. Millions of rational people implored him not to, but he got a little boost for the 2002 elections, so it was certainly worth 170 billion in taxpayer dollars, don't you think?

People killed? Iraqis are people? Shrub doesn't think so. That's why he doesn't count them when we kill them.

The longer we stay, the more the resistance attacks us and kills MORE innocent civilians in the crossfire. Any progress we make training a new police force, they blow up the police stations. We rebuild their oil and water pumping stations, they blow it up. The longer US troops are there, the longer it will be before Iraq can truly rebuild itself. We made a major mistake going in, but it's an even greater mistake to stay.

so long as the US regards Iraq as a "prize."

Bremer, stay home, for God's sake. Start the pull out now, and forget about the sweetheart deals. Just watch: countries will fall over each other to send legitimate peacekeepers to monitor a speedy transition to true self rule. It's not so hard, once you eliminate Washington's profit motive.

And welcome to DU, by the way. :hi:

"The destruction of this structure will deny enemy forces any use of it in the future."

Since they can no longer meet in the supposed terrorist warehouse I guess they'll go back to their day jobs.

Paul Bremer is quoted as saying Operation Sissors is in the works.

Why do they try to romanticize the war with these stupid names. They only set themselves up for ridicule and make it sound like the war is being run by a bunch of Jr. High School kids.

Operation Iron Hammer? I'm still reeling over the bomb named MOAB! Please feel free to wake me. I want outta this dream...

"'The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure,' the Pentagon (search) said in a statement from Washington."

I mean, I could be mistaken, but I thought the premise was that these "belligerent elements" needed to be captured. If the bad guys were meeting and planning their attacks in this place, doesn't it make more sense to put it under (spy satellite/human) surveillance so we can nab 'em? I mean, when you want to carry out a drug bust, do you demolish the crack house or put undercover agents in place to identify and arrest the dealers?

If the bad guys are still on the loose and can find another meeting place, how does destroying real estate make us or our troops any safer?

And then lit the fuse and got away.

It cites four "attacks" as part of Operation Iron Lung... uh, Hammer. Two "terrorists" killed and five captured in another location. No kills or captures reported in this warehouse demolition. And it looks like it's being justified solely on the grounds that it deprives the "insurgents" of a meeting/storage place.

And did you note that in one of these "Hammer" attacks, the Iraqis escaped "in traffic," although our troops were firing on them from a Bradley armored vehicle? Not a very pretty picture. I'd hate to have been in that traffic, wouldn't you?

I suspect any large kills are kept under wraps unless those killed are members of the top ten or whatever. Body counts are so Vietnam you know.

One of the on-going complaints from Iraq is that we don't have a good intelligence operation there. We haven't been able to predict attacks or catch those responsible. IMHO this is a 'for home consumption' show so that the sheeple know the macho 'commander in chief' is taking action. You are right, Pashall, if we knew where the bad guys were we'd be listening and catching as many as we could. Nah, this hammer is just for show. Interesting it came out just as ABC was airing the story of Vietnam and the killing of civilians. Remember its all political with bush and crew.

The Iraqis have the anvil, though. And you beat a hammer on an anvil long enough, it breaks. I don't predict that this will be an overwhelmingly successful operation.

...but I have a bad feeling that the knuckle-heads who planned this war really might NOT know what they are doing...

So much for the "cake walk" lie that Bush/media promised those poor youngsters over there...

This time it is Iron Hammer. But the result will be zilch just like all previous operations like Sidewinder, Crawling Scorpion or Shitting Iraqi bull. Looks like all those generals are just longing to be part of Hollywood film production with all those catchy names of their operations.
I bet the soldiers are laughing their butts off when implementing another operation "enduring imbecile".

Yeah! Yeah! Iron hammer 'em all!

:nuke:

Turn the whole country to glass!

I'm so proud to be a 'Murikan.

stays up nights thining up these macho, macho, stupid "titles" for every move the US makes (I'm surpised they are not naming bowel movements to boot)! Did they notice that several months ago, the Iraqis initiated "Operation Up Yours"???????????????

A Bush adviser, Richard Perle, explained. "(There will be) no stages," he said.

"This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there . . . If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

from http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/ColderWar.html (reprint of John Pilger article from Daily Mirror)

Operation Greed and Ego