BAGHDAD — “Oper­a­tion Swarmer”:http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Daily/Mar/060317.htm is turn­ing out to be much less than meets the eye, or the tele­vi­sion cam­era, for that matter.

Iraqi and Coali­tion forces launched Oper­a­tion Iraqi Freedom’s largest air assault oper­a­tion in south­ern Salah Ad Din province March 16. Named Oper­a­tion Swarmer, the joint operation’s mis­sion was to clear a sus­pected insur­gent oper­at­ing area north­east of Samarra.
Oper­a­tion Swarmer included more than 1,500 troops from the Iraqi Army’s 4^th Divi­sion, the U.S. 101^st Air­borne Divi­sion and 101^st Com­bat Avi­a­tion Brigade. The Sol­diers iso­lated the objec­tive area in a com­bined air and ground assault.
More than 50 Attack and assault air­craft and 200 tac­ti­cal vehi­cles par­tic­i­pated in the oper­a­tion. Troops from the Iraqi Army’s 4^th Divi­sion, the “Rakkasans” from the 187^th Infantry Reg­i­ment and the “Hunters” from the 9^th Cav­alry Reg­i­ment assaulted mul­ti­ple objec­tives. Forces from the Iraqi 2^nd Com­mando Brigade then com­pleted a ground infil­tra­tion to secure numer­ous struc­tures in the area.
Ini­tial reports indi­cate a num­ber of weapons caches were cap­tured, con­tain­ing artillery shells, IED-making mate­ri­als and mil­i­tary uni­forms. Iraqi and Coali­tion troops also detained 41 sus­pected insurgents.

That sounds excit­ing! But 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.
(Digres­sion: Just to clear some things up, “air assault” does not equal air strikes. There are no JDAMs being dropped, and there are no fixed-wing air­craft involved at all, except maybe for sur­veil­lance. An air assault is the 101^st Airborne’s way of insert­ing troops into a bat­tle­space. There is so far no evi­dence of bom­bard­ment of any kind. Also, it’s a telling exam­ple of how “well” things are going in Iraq that after three years, the U.S. is still lead­ing the fight and con­duct­ing sweeps in an area that has been swept/contained/pacfied/cleared five or six times since 2004. How long before the U.S. has to come back again?)
As noted, 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. And it will be the Iraqi intel that pro­vides the cover for Amer­i­can mil­i­tary com­man­ders to throw up their hands and say, “well, we _thought_ bad guys were there.“
It’s hard to blame the mil­i­tary, how­ever. Sta­tions like Fox and CNN have really taken this and ran with it, with fancy graph­ics and theme music, thanks to a rel­a­tively slow news day. The gen­er­als here also are under tremen­dous pres­sure to show off some func­tion­ing Iraqi troops before the third anniver­sary, and I won’t fault them for going into a region loaded for bear. After all, the Iraqi intel­li­gence might have been right.
But Oper­a­tion Overblown should raise seri­ous ques­tions about how good Iraqi intel­li­gence is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by earnest lieu­tenants that the Iraqis are valiant and nec­es­sary part­ners, “because they know the area, the peo­ple and the cus­toms.” But when I spoke to grunts and NCOs, how­ever, they usu­ally gave me blunter — and more col­or­ful — rea­sons why the Iraqi intel­li­gence was often, shall we say, use­less. Tribal rival­ries and per­sonal feuds are still a major rea­son why Iraqis drop a dime on their neigh­bors.
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.
*UPDATE 2400 GMT +0300:* Time​.com has posted the magazine’s “offi­cial version”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174448,00.html by Brian Ben­nett, my col­league who was on the oper­a­tion today.