The Muthanna Complex & Zarqawi

Bill Roggio has an excellent roundup of recent events in Iraq. The last two paragraphs of Roggio's post are particularly interesting:

Conventional U.S. and Iraqi forces struck at an insurgent training camp in the Jazeera desert region during Operation Iron Triangle and dismantled an insurgent cell in Muqdadiyah. A company of U.S. soldiers from 101st Airborne Division and and a company of Iraqi soldiers from the 4th Division conducted an air assault on the Muthanna State Establishment, a chemical weapons production facility under Saddam Hussien's regime.

The Muthanna complex was identified as an insurgent training and staging facility. Over 200 suspected insurgents were detained, including ten members of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad terrorist organization. The Lake Thar Thar region when Muthanna camp is located in a region where Baathists have settled, and numerous weapons caches were prepositioned in anticipation of the current insurgency. This is an ideal location as it is strategically located near Baghdad, Samarra, Balad, Ramadi and Fallujah. The Jazeera desert region has been the focus of numerous Coalition and Iraqi Army operations over the past half year, and the Iraqi Army has begun to conduct independent operations in this area.