The first day of fighting, from Michael Yon:

...our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.

A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals.

I guess they don't think so much of Michael Moore's "Minute Men."

Pulling weeds is easy. Keeping them from growing back is hard. And no, these bad guys do appear to be al Qaeda and NOT the local talent insurgents we have fought elsewhere in Iraq.

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And I think it was Michael Yon who pointed out that oil pipeline sabotage is often done by the drivers of tanker trucks who were fully employed during the sanctions regime but lost their jobs when we invaded and re-opened the pipelines.

Those "insurgents" are more like Minutemen, guys who just want their jobs back rather than Islamicist fanatics fighting for the caliphate.

Blowing up an oil pipeline, while reprehensible, is in a completely different category (in terms of terrorism) than blowing up a marketplace. Or a mosque.

To clarify, initial reports confirm that this is looking like a win for us, but more in the nature of a 1st inning grand slam.

There will be many, many innings to play before the Iraq war is "won" since pulling weeds is necessary but not sufficient for victory.

Blowing up an oil pipeline, while reprehensible, is in a completely different category (in terms of terrorism) than blowing up a marketplace. Or a mosque.

True. But unless we stop both, we cannot declare victory.

And while there are genuine Islamic jihadi nut-jobs in Iraq, who should be killed, our enemies also include local people who believe they are defending their homeland.

It is a highly multi-faceted problem without a single solution, except more and more American tax money and probably more US soldiers before this is over.

Rand the Michael Moore "Minute Men" link leads to the main page, just saying in case it isn't intentional.

No, it was a typo in HTML. Thanks for the heads up.

But...but...he's so PARTISAN! "Our guys"; "we're winning". Where, oh where, is his Journalistic Objectivity? His equal empathy for the enemy, er, other guys? His equal pleasure at the deaths of US and AQ combatants?

Shocking. He must be pandering to Bush or Cheney or something.