Posted on 09/08/2009 8:26:52 PM PDT by Saije
We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.
"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.
Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.
U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren't near the village.
"We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We've lost today," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter's repeated demands for helicopters.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
An Army 10th Mountain unit had the artillery and maybe the helicopters, but you are right no one knows what the story is, by the way the army had men in the operation as well.
When he reads the assessment of battle damage he won’t give a flying damn.
Can we say Viet Nam all over again with this Resident in the WH?
WTF!!??
Bring them home, there's a Regime that needs changin' back here. We'll have their back 24/7.
I have to disagree with you, this was a big and ambush, we lost 13 guys from our side, it has to be reported because it is a big story.
That is Not what I said.
You are hell bent on your anti war shit gathering up the
anti war third party loons and those who don’t understand
anything about the military.
Move on over to DU with the other anti war trash
Exactly the same.
Ganjgal should be levelled in an airstrike that surrounding inhabitants will recount to their grand children and great grandchildren for decades to come as the day a huge fire claimed the village.
The villagers and elders were complicit in this ambush.
That said, Afghanistan is a tribal hellhole, mired in 700 AD with IEDs and automatic weapons.
It is not worth the life of ONE American, let alone 4 Marines.
I am seeing Vietnam all over again, writ large.
“Pacifying” a village here, a village there, does not work.
Muslims and Afghans will only respond to overwhelming force and the impossibility of victory without the total annihaltion of their culture and families. That is the deciding point for them.
That is what worked with the Japanese. Only when they were faced with total annihilation and the knowledge that they had an enemy willing to incinerate their cities did they surrender, and even then they almost did not.
Day after day, our soldiers are being maimed by crude IEDs, killed in ambushes, suffering in extreme heat and cold, being put in impossible situations trying to find and kill an enemy that wears no uniforms and is willing to hide behind women and children, as well as willing to use them as human bombs.
After eight years, we have not ever found Bin Laden or Al Zawahiri, we haven’t won the country, and we have given our forces suicidal rules of engagement.
And we are worried what the Afghans might think of us?
F’em and the camel they rode in on. Our people are worth more than theirs, period.
Kill the enemy and get the hell out. We won a World War on two fronts in half the time we have been in Afghanistan.
Enough already.
Prayers for their families. This is such a sad story.
Indeed. Prayers for our troops and support even when they don’t get it when they deserve and need it.
Political correctness caused these horrible losses.
While there is still the element of the press against this war, you still will not see anywhere near the intensity if this happened under W. Look for a slow drip. Furthermore, you can bet your bottom dollar that any coverage of this will be buried until after Fauxbama’s ‘big’ speech on hc.
America voted for another Somalia.
If I misunderstood your point then sorry but thought you were trashing this article as some kind of anti-war propaganda and I don’t see that. Seems like the reporter wrote it straight up. 4 Marines and several others from “our” side died and it sounds like that didn’t need to happen, for a lot of different reasons.
What’s DU?
your out of your mind!
Having relatives there right now I don’t take this lightly.
Any misjudgement is terrible but is learned from.
I don’t know how much I would believe of the leftwing author of any twisting of the story.
This went on by the thousands all the time in WWII
only they didn’t have an opposition media tailing them with a 24/7 news.
The differance, then enemy is also here, and can also hit us again within mins. or hrs.
Obama has no intention of winning this war. We can't succeed with an anti-American traitor in the White House. We need an real, patriotic American with American goals to fill the slot of Commander in Chief - not a Kenyan fraud who was raised at the knee of the Communist, Franklin Marshall Davis.
We can't win with a closet Communist with Muslim sympathies who wants to tear this country apart and take it down.
Bring the troops home. The enemy at home is now more dangerous than the one abroad.
Beyond sad...only God can save us. In Jesus’ Holy Name I pray this prayer and plea. Amen.
None of us take this lightly and a lot of us have relatives in lots of places in life.
I don’t understand where you are getting the left wing angle from, what is left wing about this reporting from the reporter that was in the ambush?
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