From Kat's link that the TIME Online had Headlined as "How Operation Swarmer Fizzled" the reader can extract the following:

- The operation was the largest air assault since 2003.

- The article explains that the media, like most on this forum judging from the earlier posts to this thread do not know the difference in terminology between "Air Strike" and "Air Assault"

- The results of the operation "netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released" - Now that is one way of putting it, another is to say that the operation netted 48, of which 31 have been detained - that is roughly 65% of those found in the six farms targetted.

- The article implies that as there were no shots fired, no resistance and no casualties that the operation was a flop. Even MGOH seems to be of that opinion. Here are a couple of Kevinesque quotes:

"If there's really "no resistance" that would rather suggest that the US has targetted the wrong farms, ones where there in fact are no enemy fighters"

"If this time they have actually identified the right target, "no resistance" would very likely imply that word of the attack was leaked in advance by friends of the insurgents in the Iraq military."

In both cases Kevin it indicates the complete and utter opposite of that which you contend.

In actual fact the operation seems to have been highly successful exactly for reasons that there were - No casualties - No resistance - Nobody hurt - 31 suspected terrorists detained - The operation was mounted at the instigation of the Iraqi Security Forces acting on information received from the Iraqi civilians living in the area - The "wrong farms" were not targeted, the forces conducting the operation found weapons, explosives timing devices, detonators, none of which can now harm innocent Iraqi citizens - According to the article, the airlift (1500 personnel) doubled the population of the remote area, 300 personal weapons seized means that one in five were armed, of the 1500 people living in the area we can roughly estimate that 500 would be children, 500 would be women and 500 would be men (I know these are very rough assumptions but I take it that you get the drift of where this is leading). 300 personal weapons is one hell of a percentage of what could be described as "likely" terrorist material in an area so sparsely populated.

Sorry TIME Online, I do not believe for one minute that Operation Swarmer Fizzled, resounding success more like, now like CNN, why don't you, TIME Online, just report it as such?

I sincerely hope the Journalists enjoyed their freshly baked bread, I also hope that they paid for it.