The military operations aren't limited to Iraq. This reminds me of Patton's dictate to "hold them by the nose while we kick them in the ass."

U.S. attack helicopters and about 1,000 U.S. troops stormed villages in southern Afghanistan on Thursday in raids aimed at tracking down remnants al-Qaida and the Taliban.



Operation "Valiant Strike" began in the early morning in Kandahar province, with soldiers combing rough mountain terrain where radio transmissions had been detected coming from caves.

The raids came minutes after U.S. forces opened a broad military action in Iraq (news - web sites), but military spokesman Col. Roger King said the timing was coincidence.

"Operations in Afghanistan are conducted completely independent of any operations in other sectors," King told reporters at Bagram Air Base. "We have done a series of major operations; this is one more in a continuing series."

The attack Thursday was focused in the Maruf district of Kandahar province where the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has tribal links, according to Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government. The U.S. forces and their Afghan allies were looking at least three different villages in the mountainous region.