Today’s NY Times:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq — Capt. Eric Nylander passed the word down the line of soldiers in the darkened Chinook helicopter: “Ice,” meaning the landing area was free of enemy fighters.

The helicopter touched down, and the troops, night vision devices fixed to their helmets, scrambled over the canals and through a boggy field to the farmhouses in the distance.

The mission was to detain as many of the 31 militants on the soldiers’ target list as they could find, uncover arms caches and generally develop intelligence on an area where substantial numbers of American troops had not been for months.

The raid, involving 310 soldiers flown to multiple landing zones northeast of Iskandariya on July 16, was the largest air assault since the Third Combat Aviation Brigade of the Third Infantry Division arrived more than a month earlier.

As American forces hunt for insurgents in the Sunni-dominated belts surrounding Baghdad, air assaults have become an increasingly important tactic.

I think I’ve seen this film before. GIs CA in and either find nothing significant or end up in an area where Charles and Nguyen Achmed and Mohammed don’t want us to be, in which case they turn on the buzzsaw. There may be an advantage in this generation’s remake of the film: Achmed and Mohammed haven’t created mazes of bunkers that are almost impossible to see until you’re right on top of them. One disadvantage is that Charles and Nguyen didn‘t have the potential access to SAMs and MANPADS that these guys do.

One other great advantage GIs have in this version of the story is aerial observation and intelligence. The unmanned drones are just about the best tools available for occupying an unwilling country because they fly high and slow, their engines giving almost no sound that can be heard on the ground. Equipped with state-of-the-art lenses and heat-sensing equipment they can spot someone trying to evade the searchers.

Apache attack helicopters would use their night vision system to look for “squirters,” militants who try to run away, so a quick-reaction force on two Black Hawks could be whisked in to nab them. An unmanned aerial vehicle was kept on station.

None were found on this raid; in fact very few men were found at all.

One of the people who the Americans were looking for was suspected of arranging the travel of foreign fighters into the area. First Lt. Caleb Curlin spied the man’s photo, proudly displayed on the wall of one home.

But neither he nor any other Iraqi men were to be found. The homes were filled with anxious women and children who slept through the episode in the steamy heat on mats on the floor. The women insisted that the men in the area had left months ago or had been detained by the Americans. Lieutenant Curlin was not convinced.

Efforts to elicit cooperation were no more successful. The lieutenant asked the women if they felt safer with American troops nearby; they said that they did. The lieutenant offered money for help in finding arms caches. The women said they would be happy to volunteer such information without pay, but knew of none.

The lieutenant was unhappy that he did not have a mixed group of men and women to question. When men are present, he said, it was possible to question them separately and then check their accounts against those provided by women.

If you‘re looking for someone and that man‘s photo is on the wall of a house that house requires special attention. Any occupants of that house must be immediately detained, held separately, and questioned separately. Of course the women don’t know anything about arms caches, and of course they’d be happy to show the tall, heavily-armed infidel occupiers where the arms were.

I have seen this film before.