Independent: Soldiers reveal horror of Afghan campaign

[Greeby]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1523144.ece

Soldiers deployed in Helmand province five years on from the US-led invasion, and six months after the deployment of a large British force, have told The Independent that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley, and privations faced by the troops, are far worse than generally known.

"We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border," one said. "We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for.

"We have also got problems with the Afghan forces. The army, on the whole, is pretty good, although they are often not paid properly. But many of the police will not fight the Taliban, either because they are scared or they are sympathisers."

British officers in Helmand acknowledge that the next few months will be crucial in this conflict, which they insist can still be won with an additional thousand extra fighting troops.-snip-

Holy Jeebus

[Webster Green]

1. Wow cool weapons!....If only they had read their history books...

...they would know that they will still lose.

Idiots!

[TomInTib]

2. Bombs won't kill a man who has a shovel

The 52's used to go in to 'soften' the target and they would shoot us from still-smoking craters.

I still dream about that.

[sarge43]

5. Afghanstan has destroyed more armies than

STD, typhoid and booze combined.

[ninkasi]

7. Yes

That was something Kipling warned about in his poem, "The Young British Soldier".

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

The Soviet Union found out, too. Didn't it bankrupt them? Bush should never have diverted sources to Iran, which was no threat, and left Afghanistan to be retaken by the Taliban.

Edited to make sure I was making sense. I very often don't

[GeorgeGist]

8. And thee Reaganites can't forget...

that he bankrupted the Soviet Union single-handedly. How is it again that people living in caves can defeat a SUPERDUPERPOWER?

[sarge43]

10. A stone ax can kill you just as dead as a nuke

Takes longer; it's messier and more personal, but you're still dead.

[Auntie Bush]

3. Now that's scary! I thought bush said that if the military asks for

anything they will get it. Bullshit coming right out of the horses mouth.

[Kagemusha]

4. ...He meant the US military. ...Not NATO.

It's the US' allies that are getting beaten up there. The UK, Canada, etc.

[Drum]

6. naturally...more brilliant planning

and a PR dream for the Bushies?

[kurtyboy]

9. Helcopters are what the Taliban hopes for

Low-flying slow aircraft to target with RPGs and small SAMs. They're trying to suck NATO and the US back into the same quagmire that the Soviets faced--and I fear we'll fall for it. W. is just to stubborn about his no-retreat policy.