Posted on 08/06/2011 2:31:09 PM PDT by truthandlife
Twenty-five U.S. special forces killed early Saturday in Afghanistan were on a mission to rescue another team of military personnel pinned down by insurgents, a U.S. military official told CNN.
The helicopter that went down in eastern Afghanistan carried 30 U.S. military members, including 22 Navy SEALs and three other special forces. They were part of a "quick reaction force" sent in to pick up others engaged in a fierce firefight, the official said.
In the single deadliest incident since the start of the decade-long Afghan war, the Army Chinook carrying a team of U.S. special forces and U.S. and Afghan soldiers went down in Wardak province.
Insurgents are believed to have shot down the helicopter, a military official said.
The majority of the Navy SEALs who died belonged to the same covert unit that conducted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, though they were not the same men, the official said.
"It's a big loss" for the SEALs, one of the officials said. "The numbers are high."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Shakes head:
Snip:
The Taliban claimed its fighters had ambushed Western troops after being tipped off to an imminent night raid in the district. The crash site is located in Wardak’s Tangi valley, where the insurgents are extremely active.
The Wardak police chief, Gen. Abdul Qayuum Baqizoi, said the American strike was aimed at a meeting of insurgent figures in the district, which is considered a perilous one. “This area isn’t even safe for security forces to travel in,” he said.
The Taliban statement, from spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, was unusually specific in some of its details, and confirmed the “martyrdom” of eight Taliban fighters in what was described as fierce combat prior to the shooting down of the helicopter.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-afghan-chopper-20110807,0,7157351.story
It wasn’t the first story we heard. We heard they were headed to take out some important Taliban leaders.
My wife’s friend’s son was part of SEAL Team 6. We were praying all day that he may have not been involved. His parents were notified this afternoon that he was on the chopper.
My family now has a link to this F’d up war in Afghanistan.
I’m so sorry, hattend. Please send our condolences to your wife’s friend. Prayers for all involved.
Nothing happens by accident....not something this handy and timely. Only an idiot would think something like this was just unlucky.
I don’t listen to radio but it sounds like Alex Jones understands Machiavelli and politics then, and understands the evil we have in DC and the infiltration into our military. May God bless our troops.
I concur. The mission as described does not seem appropraite for special forces soldiers of the level of Seal Team 6. I smell rotting fish on this one.
Maybe it’s time to stop traveling in helos in that God forsaken land?? Armored trucks will work...
The people who made those comments are disgusting. Note that some appear to not be Americans. It’s past time to open a serious can of whoop-ass in Afghanistan.
Most of those religious fanatics are not even from Afghanistan but rather from Pakistan and other neighboring (and not so neigboring) countries. They are "insurgents", and what we need to do is destroy anybody who is providing them their weapons.
These guys are perfectly happy to live in caves, bang goats and fight to the death over real estate that isn't fit for using as a landfill. Sounds dumb, right?
It is. The only thing dumber than that is to spend ten years and a trillion dollars on people like this trying to 'teach them a lesson.'
Most of the “Afghan people” have no concept of Afghanistan as a “nation”. They are essentially illiterate stone-age farmers and villagers who know only the approximate boundaries of their own villages and could care less about this thing other people call “Afghanistan”.
Nation? What nation?
The place is home to the world’s heroin supply (and there are also fields of marijuana as far as the eye can see, by the way). It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.
I couldn’t argue with what you’re saying by any means. Though I would have to add ‘Power” along with the money. Which equals control.
This plays our throughout the world between nation leaders, families, work...and it’s within all small community governments as well. But with Afghanistan you have the additional issue of abuse....toward woman and children, and each other.... Physical, Sexual and Mental Abuse. So you are dealing with an entire mentally and emotianlly damaged society. Which we know can often produce mentally unstable people as adults.
I couldn’t argue with what you’re saying by any means. Though I would have to add ‘Power” along with the money. Which equals control.
This plays our throughout the world between nation leaders, families, work...and it’s within all small community governments as well. But with Afghanistan you have the additional issue of abuse....toward woman and children, and each other.... Physical, Sexual and Mental Abuse. So you are dealing with an entire mentally and emotianlly damaged society. Which we know can often produce mentally unstable people as adults.
Yes they were... as stated in the army times article (which they really need to take down).
After this, I am beginning to wonder why we bother at all; the natives don’t trust us, the Taliban/terrorists are better equipped to fight and we aren’t, so frankly lets just possibly remove the troops and ensure the security of our own country. We killed Bin Laden, we can kill Zawahiri, and our stupid politicians sent in our troops with no specific training on how to deal with this sort of thing, despite our past in Vietnam.
Very informative. And it certainly does add more questions.
I am so sorry to hear that. We need to get out of Afghanistan.
Makes me cry. My heart breaks for the families.
Exactly my thoughts...the Chinook is a flying coffin and it should only transport large number of troops around safe areas or behind enemy lines, for a mission like this they should’ve been transported in smaller units. Someone dropped the ball on this.
Hat, could you give their family my condolences.
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