October the bloodiest month for US troops since Afghan war began
By Bill Van Auken
28 October 2009The deaths of eight more soldiers in two separate bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan Tuesday have made October the bloodiest month for US occupation forces since the war began in 2001.
With the month still not over, 55 US military personnel have been killed, more than a third of them in a 48-hour period. On Sunday, two soldiers died in a bomb attack. This was followed Monday with the crash of three helicopters—two in a midair collision and the third, a Chinook troop carrier, the result, according to the Taliban, of hostile fire. Eleven US soldiers and three agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration were killed in the crashes.
Tuesday’s casualties were attributed by US military spokesmen to “multiple, complex” bomb attacks. Seven American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province when a large bomb struck their armored Stryker vehicle and they were hit with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The eighth soldier died in a separate roadside bomb attack in neighboring Zabul province.
The second biggest monthly death toll for US occupation forces came last August, when troops were deployed to provide security for Afghanistan’s presidential election and 51 were killed.
Given plans to hold a November 7 runoff vote—in an attempt to erase the massive fraud in August’s first-round election—it can be anticipated that next month will also see a heavy death toll.
The spike in US casualties comes as the Obama administration continues its month-long deliberations on the proposal submitted by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, to send at least 40,000 more US troops to the war.
The White House confirmed that Obama has invited the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to the White House Friday to discuss the proposal and the impact that different levels of escalation will have on the military as a whole. It is not clear that the Pentagon has at its immediate disposal the additional 40,000 troops requested by McChrystal, and elements within the US military command have voiced concerns that this level of deployment, combined with the continued US occupation of Iraq, can strain the US all-volunteer armed forces to the breaking point.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/afgh-o28.shtml