BAGHDAD — So this is what all the booms were today (From a U.S. mil­i­tary press release):

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2006 — In a joint effort, Coali­tion Forces con­ducted a pre­ci­sion air strike, using four U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles, against a known ter­ror­ist facil­ity at approx­i­mately 4:30 p.m. Feb. 15 in south­ern Bagh­dad.
Ter­ror­ists were using a for­mer Iraqi regime muni­tions stor­age bunker, located in a large, unin­hab­ited weapons-storage com­plex in the Babil province, to acquire and trans­port bomb-making muni­tions to be used in attacks against the Iraqi peo­ple and Coali­tion Forces.
Coali­tion Forces par­tic­i­pat­ing in the mis­sion took all avail­able pre­cau­tions to ensure no civil­ians were present dur­ing the strike. The air­craft con­ducted a clear­ing pass while Multi-National Divi­sion — Bagh­dad heli­copters scanned for any civil­ians in the area in a delib­er­ate effort to ensure no col­lat­eral dam­age.
The sor­ties made mul­ti­ple passes to ensure the com­plete and method­i­cal destruc­tion of the bunker.

The area they’re talk­ing about is prob­a­bly al-Saha, on the other side of the neigh­bor­hood of Dora, where a major refin­ery is located.
I’m not sure, but I don’t recall air strikes in or near Iraq’s cap­i­tal city for a long time. In fact, I can’t remem­ber any since I got here in May 2004, although these things tend to blend together after a while. But if the war’s going so well, and the Iraqis are tak­ing the fight to the ter­ror­ists, blah blah, why are the Amer­i­cans resort­ing to air strikes here? That’s, like, _so_ 2003.