Operation Matador, Hammer And Anvil

New York Post:

Terrorism revealed its soul: merciless, vindictive and in love with death itself. There's no strategic plan behind the slaughter of Iraqi workers in a marketplace in Tikrit or the butchering of other Sunni Arabs in Hawija. Suicide bombings in a Baghdad bazaar don't have cunning goals.

The terror attacks are no longer about changing Iraq. They're about punishment.

Embittered and on the run, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi realizes that the tide has turned decisively against him. He and his international gang of terrorists couldn't dislodge the United States military or the Coalition, but only chipped at its edges. Their violence couldn't stop Iraq's elections. They couldn't prevent the formation of a new government.

Now they have to watch as their former allies, Iraq's Sunni Arabs, defect to the elected regime and turn in the foreign terrorists in their neighborhoods.
[...]
Our Marines — who always do a splendid job — are wrapping up Operation Matador in Iraq's wild west, cutting smuggling routes on the Syrian border. Instead of full-scale combat in teeming cities, the Marines are cleaning out villages and hamlets. The fighting is still tough and deadly, but the reduced scale is an incontestable measure of progress.

A year ago, the Iraqi house was on fire. Today, the blaze has been smothered and we're dealing with termites. The terrorists and dwindling bands of insurgents can still create brief, local havoc. But they've lost Iraq.

And they know it. So they're determined to make the Iraqi people suffer.
[...]

Not reported on the MSM, but alluded to in the article above, is Operation Matador. This has been more or less live-blogged at The Adventures of Chester. While the MSM attempts to defeat the US in Iraq (because it thinks it can), the US quietly mops up along the border with Syria.

I believe the US military has the attention of the Syrian regime.