Wretchard vindicated -- Operation "Quick Strike" announced

Wretchard over at the Belmont Club explained the recent deaths of Marines in Iraq within the context of an ongoing military operation to secure the western border, unannounced and therefore absent from MSM reports, but extensive in scope. [here, followup here]. Well, now the operation has been announced -- it's called "Quick Strike", and now the MSM can report it.

Here's the AP report:

About 1,000 U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces launched attacks in western Iraq in an operation aimed at disrupting insurgents and foreign fighters in the Euphrates River valley, the U.S. military said Friday.

The operation, dubbed Quick Strike, began Wednesday with Iraqi soldiers and Marines positioning their units, said a military statement. They focused on an area centered around the cities of Haditha, Haqlaniyah, and Parwana, about 130 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Read the whole thing here.

This puts the recent deaths in a very different light from what was originally reported. Then it seemed that the jihadists were on the offensive while the US forces were engaged in little more than a holding action, awaiting eventual withdrawal, and that certainly was the way the MSM cast the situation. But now it appears that the Marines were on the offense, attempting to disrupt the Jihadi network in advance of this fall's political events [a referendum on the new constitution in October, and general elections in December].

It is important to understand that US forces are not just "occupying" Iraq: they are active participants in the process of creating a Iraqi state.

We should also note, as Wretchard does, that the brunt of the fighting is being carried by Iraqi, rather than US troops.