From Reuters:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan and U.S. troops backed by warplanes blasted Taliban hideouts for a second day on Wednesday, killing scores of militants in some of the bloodiest fighting in years, officials said.Kandahar's deputy police chief, General Salim Khan, leading about 400 police troops, said by satellite telephone from the scene that at least 64 Taliban fighters had been killed since Tuesday and 30 captured.
Two Afghan soldiers died and six U.S. soldiers were wounded in the operation where Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces meet, aimed at checking a surge in violence ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, Afghan and U.S. officials said.
"This is the heaviest bombing and fighting I have seen since the fall of the Taliban," Khan said, referring to the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces.
Hundreds of people have died in a surge in militant violence in recent months, raising concerns about the elections, the next big step in Afghanistan's difficult path to stability...
"This is the heaviest bombing and fighting I have seen since the fall of the Taliban," Khan said....
All this "heavy" fighting has resulted in: killing over 100 insurgents in this southwestern region in the past week.
(yawn)
The big question of course is why aren't we doing this on a daily basis?
You know, I hear reports about low morale, low recruitment, a spike in officer resignations due to a policy that hampers our fighting forces with crippling rules of engagement and navel-gazing half-measures and pussy-footing from the folks in Washington.
There's no question that our Military has the will and the ability to demolish the enemy. Good on them! Unfortunately it's the spineless politicians that get in the way.
You want start a tidal wave of recruitment? You want morale to skyrocket?
Give us a major victory, for f*cks sake!
So we can't find bin laden or mullah omar. Fine. Go after their minions. They are legion, and they're everywhere--in Pakistan, Syria, etc. Do it, and raise the jihadist body count 100 fold and at the same time, give the public some proof with footage of rotten muslim carcasses stretched out on and stinking up the streets, even put their heads on pikes if only to piss off the euroweenies and fifth-column leftists. I'm all for it.
Oh, btw, f*ck geneva conventions! Just kill them.
"May God have mercy on my enemies, because I certainly won't." -- General George Patton
Either eliminating the Taliban is important or it is not. It's been now 4 years since the 9/11 attack and about that time since we attacked Afghanistan. In WWII, we fought the Germans and the Japanese together and beat them in five years, yet four years on, we're still fighting the Tabliban, and with weaponry orders of magnitude superior to what our troops used in WWII. What is wrong with this picture? Are we not really interested in destroying the Taliban? Are we permitting other countries (read: Pakistan) to harbor them and give them aid? Didn't President Bush say we would eliminate OBL and didn't he say that we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who give them safe harbor? What am I missing in all of this?
Seymour:
you're not comparing apples to apples. There were a lot more nations wholeheartedly committed to defeating the fascist alliance of Germany and Japan than there are trying to defeat the Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Germany and Japan didn't have petrodollars to help with the war effort.