They certainly launched Operation Swarmer yesterday with the kind of fanfare with which battles used to be resumed each morning in the days of yore. There were swarms of trumpets, orchestrated no doubt by our “wartime public opinion” people.

So why is everyone involved in the fanfare of trumpets looking busy doing something else today?

The US military said the assault, dubbed Operation Swarmer, was intended to “clear a suspected insurgent operating area” north-east of Samarra.

They describe it as the biggest airborne operation in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 troops.

The BBC’s Andrew North in Baghdad says the Pentagon has been keen to publicise it, releasing video footage to the media not long after the assault began.

But it is now clear this was nothing like the air strikes of 2003, and the US military has confirmed no bombs were dropped or missiles fired, our correspondent says.
[…]
US and Iraqi troops surrounded a group of villages and are carrying out raids, but a security official said insurgent leaders had left before they arrived.

The operation near the town of Samarra is not as huge as has been suggested, correspondents say.

Local people say there has been little if any combat.

The troops carrying out the operation are said to have detained about 40 suspects but 17 of these were later released.

The joint US and Iraqi force said it had captured a number of weapons caches, containing shells, explosives and military uniforms.

The Iraqi foreign minister said the aim was to stop insurgents from turning the town into a stronghold.

But a senior Sunni Arab politician criticised the operation, which came a day after the new Iraqi parliament met for its inaugural session.

“[The US forces] are surprising us with meaningless acts at the time Iraqis are looking forward to the first session of the parliament, preferring the political solution, not the military one,” Saleh al-Mutleq told Reuters news agency.

Operation Swarmer was named after the largest peacetime airborne war games exercise in history (conducted in the 1950s). It’s certainly looking like it isn’t much more than a war games exercise itself (and for this, I had to pay 20c per gallon more for gas yesterday?):

…according to a colleague of mine from TIME who traveled up there today on a U.S. embassy-sponsored trip, there are no insurgents, no fighting and 17 of the 41 prisoners taken have already been released after just one day. The “number of weapons caches” equals six, which isn’t unusual when you travel around Iraq. They’re literally everywhere.
[...]
…about 1,500 troops were involved, 700 American and 800 Iraqi. But get this: in the area they’re scouring there are only about 1,500 residents. According to my colleague and other reporters who were there, not a single shot has been fired.

“Operation Swarmer” is really a media show. It was designed to show off the new Iraqi Army — although there was no enemy for them to fight. Every American official I’ve heard has emphasized the role of the Iraqi forces just days before the third anniversary of the start of the war. That said, one Iraqi role the military will start highlighting in the next few days, I imagine, is that of Iraqi intelligence. It was intel from the Iraqi military intelligence and interior ministry that the U.S. says prompted this Potemkin operation.
[...]
So I guess it’s fitting that on the eve of the third anniversary of a war launched on — oh, let’s be generous — “faulty” intelligence, a major operation is hyped and then turns out to be less than what it appeared because of … faulty intelligence.

I guess they threw a major operation, and nobody came!

***UPDATE (2:50 pm)
Just like that second quote from back-to-iraq.com said, the U.S. military has started to hype the Iraqi role in this made-for-tv operation. Reuters has just put out a story headlined “US says raid shows Iraqi army taking control“:

The U.S. military said on Friday a highly publicized joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive marked a change in the fight against guerillas, showing Iraq’s army was becoming more effective and taking greater control.
[...]
“(The operation) really marks a change and it marks an evolution,” said a top U.S. commander, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli…
[...]
“Had we tried to accomplish a mission like this 11 months ago, it would have been primarily U.S. forces. But in this case … we had primarily Iraqi forces,” he said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces pressed on with “Operation Swarmer”…

Just what we need in the continuing battle to win more Americans over to the “approve” column when it comes to the Iraq war—generals who can stick to the script even when events don’t. Way to establish credibility, guys! A-R-M-Y, ARMY!