This morning the NY Times tell us that Operation Arrorhead Ripper has limited effect as all the Al Qaeda leaders fled before the surge, the fact is that we we kicking some pretty good ass.

Of course the reason they fled was because all they had to do was turn on the TV to see that we were coming:

“Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baquba,‚Äù General Odierno said in a teleconference briefing with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. ‚ÄúThey watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baquba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come sooner or later.‚Äù

Still, he implied American commanders may have played a part by flagging the offensive in advance. ‚ÄúI think they were tipped off by us talking about the surge, the fact that we have a problem in Diyala Province,‚Äù he said.”

Thanks CNN.

In any case the operation has secured success in disrupting the insurgents operation command structure and captured a large amount of their weapondry.

“So far, within Baquba,‚Äù General Odierno said, ‚Äúthere have been many successes: four weapons caches have been found and cleared; three truck and car bombs have been captured and destroyed; over 25 deep-buried I.E.D.‚Äôs have been found and cleared, many of them pointed out by the local populace; and 10 house-bound I.E.D.‚Äôs have been destroyed ‚Äî those are 10 houses that have been rigged with thousands of pounds of explosives to try and kill us as we enter.‚Äù I.E.D., or improvised explosive device, is military jargon for a homemade bomb”

A lot more “rooting out” has to be done, but unknown or rather unreported by the media, we undoubtedly have special units on the ground beating down more than a few doors. The mission there would be to “remove” key command subjects and so thrown even more chaos into their already weakened communication structure.

The best way to win a war is hit the enemy with everything you got in as many places as you can. So in spite of the “advance warning”, we are doing exactly that.