Operation
On 5 November, Marines from 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines and 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines began their assault on insurgent-held Karabilah, and had cleared the city four days later. Then on 5 November the coalition forces began to attack the city of Husaybah and pursue any insurgents who fled Karabilah. After four more days of fighting in Husaybah, the coalition troops launched another phase of the operation into the city of Ubaydi, an insurgent haven and site of the earlier Operation Matador. The fortified city fell to coalition forces after seven days of fighting, bringing a conclusion to Operation Steel Curtain. The assault on Sadah and a small portion of Karabilah was known as "Operation: Iron Fist". The assault of Husaybah and Karabilah was "Operation: Steel Curtain". So named because the resident leader of anti-coalition forces, al-Zarqawi, said they would hold onto Husaybah with an "iron fist". Named by Coalition Commanders, "Operation Steel Curtain", was a hardened sweep and clear mission hence "steel curtain" because American and New Iraqi Army flooded the two cities, and closed and secured the objective like a curtain made of steel.
Read more about this topic: Operation Steel Curtain
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)