UK may send more troops to Afghanistan -army chief

[laststeamtrain]

Source: Reuters

UK may send more troops to Afghanistan -army chief
27 Mar 2009 08:39:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Britain is ready to send more troops to Afghanistan to support an expected increase in U.S. troop numbers to weaken the Taliban insurgency, the head of the British army told the Times newspaper.

General Sir Richard Dannatt said members of 12 Mechanised Brigade, who were trained for deployment to Iraq but were later stood down, have been "earmarked for Afghanistan".

He said there were no plans to send the whole brigade of around 4,000 but the number of British troops serving in the country could rise to "somewhere in between" the current level of 8,300 and 12,000.

The ministry of defence said no final decision on numbers had been taken.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LR143978.htm

[EFerrari]

1. Madness. Is this how they plan to fix the economy?

[ShortnFiery]

2. War! War! War! I wonder what the British PEOPLE think about this? n/t

[saigon68]

3. They forgot the last lesson these Nit Wits learned there

Rudyard Kipling


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.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!

In the context of this poem, it is a bit sobering to reflect on the British
experience in Afghanistan, which they conquered three times but never held,
despite vast improvements in British equipment and use of successively
larger forces. This is worth telling in some detail.

Britain had a fairly easy time taking Kabul during the first Afghan war of
1838, but by the end only a single man returned alive. Their invasion force
consisted of 9,500 men of the East India Company and 6,000 men of Shah
Shajan's army, an individual who was deeply unpopular in Afghanistan, but
whom the British were trying to install on the Afghan throne. This mixed
force was referred to as the Army of the Indus.

More

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1146.html

[Jeep789]

4. Someone please send President Obama a history

book regarding Afghanistan. Perhaps then he will understand why Bin Laden chose this exact method to ruin us.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Lunacy

x(