TAJI, Iraq — In the past two days, two separate patrols from the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment seized large weapons caches and detained 10 suspected insurgents.

Over the same two days, several other patrols turned up nothing.

It’s part of the day-to-day dichotomy of the U.S. military presence in Iraq: Days can go by without incident, and dozens of searches and patrols amount only to a show of force and deterrence. Other times, targeted raids and search operations end with illegal weapons piled on tables and suspects on their way to detention facilities.

Monday was an example of the latter. Members of the Black Sheep — soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment attached to the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry, both National Guard units — rolled back into Camp Cooke with four detainees and weapons they seized from a farmhouse near Taji.

The cache included several machine guns, a sniper rifle, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, pistols, several full ammunition magazines, mortar sights and other materials. Curiously, the weapons were buried in empty missile tubes marked as coming from Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense. Soldiers assume the tubes — and possibly the missiles that were once inside — were looted from Kuwait during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of that country.

On Tuesday, Company A, 1st of the 69th, made a similar find, taking in six suspects.

At the same time those detainees were being processed, a platoon of Black Sheep soldiers was patrolling in farmland near Taji. Rolling out in Bradley fighting vehicles, the first stop was a small farm compound they’d visited twice before.

The first time was after a roadside bomb detonated along a canal about 100 yards away. The second time, soldiers found parts of a mortar system and confiscated a rifle.

This time, the search turned up nothing but a few spent shotgun shells, which the owner said were from hunting parties who had stopped at his house. Staff Sgt. Joshua Garrett, 25, of Houma, La., ran through a list of questions about weapons, availability of power and fuel and the upcoming elections.

“We are ready to vote, we want that very much,” the landowner said, through a translator working with the troops. “We want the elections today, before tomorrow.”

But as Garrett asked more questions, it was apparent more work needed to be done.

“Do you know where your polling place is?” Garrett asked?

The man shrugged, “No.” The local sheiks, he said, haven’t passed on that information.

As the conversation was taking place, Spc. Jonathon Boudreaux, 21, of Raceland, La., and Spc. Jesse LeBlanc, 23, also of Houma, searched the remaining rooms. In two rooms, they found sleeping children, but nothing illegal.

Even the patrols that don’t turn up weapons serve another purpose, the soldiers said. When they first arrived at Camp Cooke, the base took mortar or rocket fire nearly every day, they said. Since stepping up patrols and “denying the enemy terrain,” they haven’t had a round land inside the wire in weeks.