Swarmer Continues, Brings Backlash

(CBS/AP)  American and Iraqi forces pushing through a desolate area of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland rounded up dozens more suspected insurgents, including alleged killers of a television journalist, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Saturday.

The three-day-old sweep through villages 60 miles north of Baghdad – named Operation Swarmer – was prompting growing unease among leading Sunnis. One called it a needless "escalation" at a time of difficult negotiations over Iraq's future government.

U.S. officials have said Swarmer is a sign of how much progress has been made in Iraq because of the participation of the Iraqi army.

Lt. Gen. Pete Chiarelli told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, "Had we tried to accomplish a mission like this 11 months ago, it would have been primarily U.S. forces."

The Iraqi forces are getting stronger, not only in numbers, but in skills, reports CBS News correspondent Lara Logan.

Captain Jonathan Weikel said that the biggest change he noticed when he returned to Iraq on his second tour was how much the Iraqi security forces had improved.

"I would like them to be farther along than they are, that would be great to feel that way, but it's been good to see the improvement."

Iraqi troops and units of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division detained about 80 suspected insurgents as of Saturday, and released 17 of them after questioning, said Lt. Col. Edward S. Loomis, a 101st Airborne spokesman.

Among those detained were six people, not further identified, allegedly responsible for the killing on March 11 of Amjad Hameed, a journalist for the television network al-Iraqiya, and his driver, the interim Iraqi government said.

In a belated report, the U.S. military said two 101st Airborne Division soldiers were killed on Thursday by indirect fire — usually meaning mortars — at the U.S. Speicher operating base farther north up the Tigris. The deaths, which Loomis said were not directly related to the sweep, were the second and third of division soldiers on the day Operation Swarmer began.

At least 2,314 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war on March 20, 2003.

In other recent developments:

The U.S. military's goal is to have Iraqi security forces in control of 75 percent of the country's territory by this summer, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Baghdad said Friday. In an interview, CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer the President's National Security advisor, Stephen Hadley said that the military may not reach that goal by the summer, but is making progress toward that goal.

A dozen more bodies were found in Baghdad as a shadowy war of Shiite-Sunni reprisals continues.

Shiite Muslim pilgrims again came under attack on the southbound route from the capital, as a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five heading toward religious celebrations in the holy city of Karbala.

A car bomb exploded near a U.S. base in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq. The suicide driver was the only casualty.

The Marines have begun a criminal investigation into the killing of 15 Iraqi civilians during a firefight when a Marine foot patrol was ambushed by insurgents in November 2005, reports Martin. A human rights group tipped off a reporter from Time magazine that the civilians may not have been killed by a roadside bomb as reported by the Marines at the time.

Iraq's new parliament was sworn in Thursday, with parties still deadlocked over the next government. The long-expected first session lasted just over 30 minutes and was adjourned indefinitely because the legislature still has no speaker.

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