addendum to my last post i add that via Seymour Hersh sources, the U.S. has been bombing regularly in Iraq, but do not report it.
The big PR around the air support attack using Iraq ground troops at Samarra was because this was to launch what the Big Boys thought was going to be the new strategy that would win the war.
They have gone silent since, as the attack turned out to be a "keystone cops" chaos, and failure.