Posted on 06/09/2009 9:08:29 AM PDT by kellynla
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan -- Teams of builders worked through dust storms Monday to expand a base for a brigade of U.S. Marines now fanning out across southern Afghanistan to change the course of a war claiming American lives faster than ever before.
Some 10,000 Marines have poured into Afghanistan in the last six weeks, the military said Monday, transforming this once small base in the heart of the country's most violent province, Helmand, into a desert fortress.
The statement to embedded journalists, including a team from The Associated Press, was the first confirmation that the military has fully deployed the first wave of 21,000 additional troops President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan this year to help stanch an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.
The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, normally based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., will battle the Taliban as well as train and fight alongside Afghan security forces.
"This is where the fight is, in Afghanistan," said 1st Sgt. Christopher Watson, who like many of the troops was most recently deployed in Iraq. "We are here to get the job done."
The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 because the country's extremist Taliban leaders were sheltering Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, the Islamic terrorist group behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
The forces quickly defeated the Taliban, pushing the militants out of Kabul and their southern base in Kandahar. But a guerrilla war, which turned dangerously violent in 2006, has bedeviled the international coalition and Afghan government.
While the insurgency is active across much of the country, its stronghold remains in Helmand. The province is home to the world's largest opium-poppy growing region and borders Pakistan, where commanders say the Taliban leadership supplies money and recruits.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
May one ask how long it will be before the MSM, the nation’s campuses, the “peace groups” and Cindy Sheehan erupt in protest about our President putting American servicemen in harms way is a war that is “none of our business” in a country far away and of no importance to the security of the USA.
How many will camp with Cindy outside the White House?
Do I hear or read the word “QUAGMIRE?” NOPE
Americans being killed faster and faster.
Nah...must be Bushes fault. Heaven help us.
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