Kunar Province is in eastern Afghanistan, right on the border with Pakistan (map). That about says it all.
"Official: 9 US troops killed in Afghanistan," by Jason Straziuso for the Associated Press, July 13:
KABUL, Afghanistan - A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American soldiers Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion, a Western official said.
Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the northeastern province of Kunar, a mountainous region that borders Pakistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
The attack on the relatively new outpost began at 4:30 a.m. Sunday and lasted throughout the day.
Nine U.S. troops were killed in the attack, a Western official said on condition of anonymity because the deaths had not yet been officially announced.
Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, the top U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, said she could not comment because the battle was ongoing. She referred calls to NATO headquarters in Kabul.
NATO said in a statement that there have been casualties on both sides but accurate numbers could not be confirmed because the fighting was ongoing.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 American troops died were killed — also in Kunar province — when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade....
l would like published the names of the military elites who voted down killing taliban fighters attending one of their own at a funeral. we need to allow our troops to fight on their terms and not stupid clinton appointed general. May God take care of those who have fallen on our behalf.
"Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.."
--- from the article above
And what else does Pakistan supply them with? And what else is the Pakistani military requesting or demanding that the Americans supply them, the Pakistanis, with, so as to "give them the tools to do the job themselves"?
Is there an end to this?
No, there is no end to this.
what is shocking is no notice that there was multiple aerial bombardments of the village to wipe out those waging war on our American troops....
when will our PC government realize what has been known through out history in waging and winning wars....
YOU WIN BY KILLING THE ENEMY AND ALL THAT SUPPORT THE ENEMY.... YOU DESTROY ALL OF THE ENEMY'S CAPABILITIES TO WAGE WAR AND THE ENEMY WILL EITHER DIE OR SURRENDER.....
Israel, Iran will destroy you if you do not destroy Iran....
Lets get the real war started....
WW3 is coming and it can not be stopped...
are you prepared ready and armed....
Soon.
Texican.. sometime between November and January.. election and inauguration.
"War rages on in Afghanistan...."
-- from the article above
And it will rage on, and on, and on. Sometimes a little less intense, sometimes more. Sometimes this tribe or ethnic group -- Tadjiks and Uzbeks in the north, Pashtuns in the south, the Hazara toward Jalalabad in the center-west -- will be more aggressive, sometimes that. The Shi'a Hazara may or may not be able to defend themselves, or to attack in turn, Sunnis, whether ur-Sunnis of the Taliban variety (who before they were so rudely interrupted by the Americans, were trying to wipe the Hazara out).
Sometimes they will do it with mere rifles of World War I or World War II vintage, or home-made affairs, or sometimes with stuff left behind by the Red Army, or stuff given by the Americans --what happened to all those Stinger missiles? Are any still operational? -- to fight the Red Army, or given yesterday, or today, or tomorrow, to fight, supposedly, the "resurgent" Taliban.
And if, save in the most limited of ways, the Infidels were to get out of the way, and let the Muslims fight each other -- and suppling some intelligence from spy satellites and drones, and now and again resupplies of weaponry to the side or tribe or warlord who happens, at that point, in promoting its or his own interests, to be furthering as well the interests of Infidels -- then all manner of things would be, if not well, at least a good deal better. And we Infidels, spending less, and letting Pakistan's military have to worry about "implosion" in Afghanistan, can turn our attention, as it ought to be turned, to Western Europe, and to the main instruments of Jihad in the Lands of the Infidels: the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest.
For in Afghanistan, there is no end to this.
The Taliban may be wiped out, or not. It hardly matters. Another Taliban will come along, for the ideology of the Taliban, the ideology of Islam that remains intact and unchallenged and not undermined -- for the Americans do not dare to hint that there is anything wrong with Islam, do not dare to try to undercut the hold of Islam on the minds of men -- and won't be, until the conditions are created, the conditions not of prosperity but of self-generated misery (as in the Islamic Republic today), with no Infidels in sight, that will cause some to start making the connections between the nature of Islam and the failures, political and economic, social and moral and intellectual, of Muslim polities, and Muslim peoples.
That is the best way: to exploit the pre-existing fissures within Islam, by doing not more but less, and by educating Infidels, or giving them the means to educate themselves, about the meaning, and menace, of Islam, so that they can with knowledge, and self-assurance, act in their own civilizational defense, and put -- for all time -- Muslims on the ideological defensive, as they will be forced to try to answer the unanswerable proosition, about those connections, between those many kinds of failures, and Islma itself.
That might save the Western world many trillions of dollars. Any possibility of a Finder's Fee? I need a good computer, and I need to redo a bathroom, and a few other things. So, dear Pentagon and State Department, or foundations, or anyone else for that matter who sees and agrees with me, to kindly send your grateful checks made to me, care of this website. Really, this advise, nicely written up in a black binder, possibly with a Power-Point presentation on a CD, will end up costing this country much less than what Halliburton, and Blackwater, and a thousand contractors, and ten thousand consultants in the "war on terror" have cost the long-suffering, benighted, naive American government, "winning" those hearts, "winning" those minds.
How does that phrase go? Oh yes:
"Money is a terrible thing to waste."
I may have gotten the phrase slightly wrong. Well, I like my version.
Posted by: Hugh at July 13, 2008 11:44 AM
"Money is a terrible thing to waste."
I may have gotten the phrase slightly wrong. Well, I like my version.
Posted by: Hugh
You got it right. I know this to be a fact from personal experience. I wish I had now, all the money I wasted in the past. I would not be rich, but I could buy some good wine and cheese...Maybe a gallon of gas...
Posted by: duh_swami at July 13, 2008 12:06 PM
Of course it will go on and on.
If Russia, at the height of their military power, had to pull out of there and admit defeat after 10 years and thousands of deaths then I highly doubt that the US and the NATO forces can do much. This is the way of life for the Islamofacists there, just another normal day. Either hang out in the village and be under the radar or decide to go out and be part of the Taliban. What hat to wear today?
IT's a losing battle, no matter how many troops are there. Sure, we may make some progress, but that progress is undone the next week.
I have no answers, but I can see the writing on the wall.
Posted by: gymgal at July 13, 2008 12:23 PM
The good news: We killed some Talibums.
The bad news: There's a lot more where they came from. Afghanistan is still an Islamic country. It has no oil or other valuable resources.
So on balance, are there enough reasons to keep up our "investment" in Afghanistan?
My understanding is that there is only one reason we invaded and are still there: To deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. But Al Qaeda has merely moved elsewhere.
Yet, ever more billions keep flowing to OPEC and its jihadist affiliates. Isn't that the root cause of this whole mess, and not some God-forsaken stretch of real estate?
Posted by: jewdog at July 13, 2008 12:39 PM
Money is a terrible thing to waste."
posted by Hugh
But, boy, is the gummint ever good at it! It's about the only thing they do well.
Posted by: ebonystone at July 13, 2008 1:06 PM
jewdog why do we still jail and/or put to death those who murder, why do we jail the thief? l mean it never stops always some people will kill and steal. why do the cops chase down criminals, l mean there will always be more eh? we need to pound on them until they cry uncle, and with this pc among our governing elites it will take much longer than if we did a Hiroshima on them.
Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at July 13, 2008 1:14 PM
Official: 9 US troops killed in Afghanistan...
Breaking news, official count unknown...Yahoo news...
Posted by: duh_swami at July 13, 2008 1:31 PM
I'm with you Zena. We need to go WW2 on them. No more pussyfooting around.
As for the Allied deaths Swami is mentioning.. I can can hear that earnest glee in the voices of the "n"pr stooges tomorrow morning already.
We tie our troops' hands.. the enemy hides in mosks.. and we treat these mosks as "holy".
we need to get it inside our heads that a mosk is NOT a church or a temple.
How many of OURS would still be alive if they were free to make their decisions on the battlefield without first consulting a manual or a lawyer?
Funny how that is never discussed on "n"pr!
Why is it that when I hear of US troops dead the first thing comes to my mind are the smirky gleeful KOS-kids who "work" at "n"pr?
Posted by: Ummah Gummah at July 13, 2008 2:01 PM
"n"pr: Can you say Tokyo Rose?
Posted by: Ummah Gummah at July 13, 2008 2:02 PM
"Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the northeastern province of Kunar, a mountainous region that borders Pakistan.."
-- from the article
So the "militants" fired on this base "from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat." What does that mean? That must mean that the base was located very close to the village, and was known to the villagers. Surely the Americans knew that. And surely they had been assured that the villagers were on their side, might even supply them with food, might even warn them if the Taliban was coming.
Or could it be that all along they had been fooling the Americans? It is possible to be a big tough Navy Seal or Green Beret, and still have no idea what you are dealing with, not understand the depths of mendacity and meretriciousness of your supposed "allies."
Where exactly was that base placed, in relation to the village of Wanat, and what exactly were the previous relations, or understandings, that the Americans thought they had, with the villagers in that village of Wanat?
Lessons learned, possibly? Or is the winning-hearts-and-minds stuff just too deeply imbedded in the brains of the bigger shots, civilian and military, who make the decisions, and who put at much greater risk those soldiers who are already risking their lives?
Hugh l am sure glad General Patton did have your attitude. mm you speakin enough German?
sorry Hugh, l meant that l am glad that General Patton did NOT have your attitude.. and l dont want to learn German at that. LOL
Hearts and minds.. Why don't we start with winning hearts and minds at home in our own countries?
The enemy is making inroads only because we are so divided.
Bush is so busy winning hearts and minds abroad that he's lost virtually all of them at home.
Not that he really cares.
Can't be friends with the American people AND hold hands with our enemies, the SOWdis.
Level every structure within 200 yards of the center of the attack. Leave not one brick standing on top of another. Make damn sure the cost of the attack makes future attacks...less desirable.
An attack of this nature could not go forth without the willing cooperation of the residents in the area. Wheat and weeds guys...Wheat and weeds...they all gotta go.
Too bad for the Wheat...shouldn't be hangin' out with the weeds.
There is only one thing that these lunatic murderers understand.
Pure, naked, power.
All else is weakness and folly.
Attempting dialog with Islamic nutcakes, is like trying to talk Rabies out of killing you.
You don't talk to Rabies.
You kill it.
Islam is a lie...and Truth...and the occasional JDAM, is killing it.
I dunno Hugh...I think there is an end to this.
A bloody corpse laden end...with Islam paying the final price. They may have the enthusiasm/fanaticism needed, but they have neither the intelligence nor the technology necessary to win the final battle.
When the fecal matter strikes the air impeller and it becomes clear that we, the West, are about to be covered in the feces Islam is spewing, buttons will be pushed and missiles will fly...so to speak. No more restraint. No more Diplomacy. Just the language of Islam.
Death...in large quantities.
I mean...even Bono wants his Lear. No Lears for Rock Stars in Islam...eh?
”Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of …”
I imagine our military’s Girl Scout rules of engagement prevent them from hitting these villages and mosques – might upset the Muslims.
And they must'nt forget to supply any prisoners with Korans, prayer rugs and habeas corpus attorneys.
We have to go World War II, Omdurman or Civil War on them. The likes of Sherman, Grant, Patton, MacArthur, Kitchener etc would be horrified if they came back to life to witness the way we are fighting these ruthless savages in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially when they discovered what we had at our disposal. We are fighting a vicious and barbaric enemy which only follows Mohammed's seventh century rules of war and is prepared to fight to the death, and is fully motivated to kill our troops and murder our civilians out of their desire to enter Paradise. There is only one way to deal with them, and that is to seize every opportunity to wipe out each and every one of them. If they're seen gathering at a funeral, we should see it as a chance to fire down Hellfires or mow them down with Gatlings. No weapon should be banned in our fight with them, and we should unban those that are banned. Cluster bombs should never be off limits and napalm should be back in our arsenal. Take no notice of those bleeding hearts who want to save our enemies. It is us or them, and it should be us who comes first if we are serious about winning. Anything less is to lose, and every Islamist who gets away with their lives remains a lingering threat to the life and limbs of our troops. Unlike Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1880, we have air power and other weaponry that he wouldn't have dared dream about, and just imagine what the Victorians would have done with that sort of weaponry against the ancestors of our troops enemies, and unlike todays generation, the Victorians realised that the hearts and minds of Afghans were indeed unwinnable, and our troops were given one piece of advice in Afghanistan: "Save your last bullet for yourself and go to your Lord like a soldier", because being captured alive meant an extremely brutal death.
Why is our dialogue so great with Pakistan that our good men are still being murdered?
Am I the only person in this world that sees that most of the jihadist murderers come from the Pakistani hate schools?
Are we going to address this situation, namely Pakistan?
And exactly why did the British agree to separating Pakistan from India?
tanstaafl,
I don't know, why do you think?
Here's an excellent piece by Ralph Peters:
INTELLECTUALS LIE, THE POWERLESS DIE
Posted: 3:50 am
July 9, 2008
THE greatest lie intellectuals tell us is that "the pen is mightier than the sword." That's what cowards claim when they want to preen as heroes.
Billions of words have been hurled at Sudan's government. The misery in Darfur not only continues but deepens. While intellectuals wrestled with compound sentences, Darfur degenerated from selective oppression to savage anarchy.
Legions of columnists and commentators have deplored Robert Mugabe's monstrous rule in Zimbabwe. But none of the hand-wringing by American, European or even African intellectuals restrained one fist or stopped one club in midair. Guess who "won" that election.
Regiments of professors and pundits have bemoaned China's gobbling of Tibet for half a century. The result? Beijing cracked down even harder.
"Brave" columnists wrote countless columns bemoaning the suffering of the Kurds and the Shia under Saddam Hussein. Their earnest paragraphs didn't save a single life.
Only when better men acted did the surviving victims of one of the world's worst dictatorships glimpse freedom - an imperfect freedom but better than a mass grave.
Nothing positive is going to happen in Sudan or Zimbabwe (or Tibet) until rule-of-law states take action. As outraged activists scribble on, Beijing blithely continues supporting these and other rogue regimes (and our president crawls to the Olympics - it's as if FDR had rushed to the games in Berlin).
There was a good reason the assassins of 9/11 attacked the targets they did, rather than steering those planes into Columbia University or Harvard Yard: They knew that the potency of the intellectual is illusory, that it dissolves at the first shot.
As I pointed out on July 4, even our glorious Declaration of Independence and our Constitution would be no more than bizarre artifacts had they not been defended by patriots willing to fight.
Does anyone really believe that there's anything we can write or say that will persuade al Qaeda to make nice? It's on the strategic defensive today but only because our soldiers and Marines thumped the hell out of its cadres in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The point isn't that military solutions are always the best solutions - any problem that can be resolved without bloodshed should be handled peaceably. But we've got to stop playing pretend: In this hate-plagued, often merciless world, events sometimes demand action, not just talk.
Our diplomats and "distinguished commentators" see the world from the 17th floor of a luxury hotel or the office of an English-speaking Cabinet member. The insular safety of their lives has convinced them that every problem has a peaceful solution if only we can all have a good chat.
But those who rule by the sword (or the fist, or engineered famines or outright genocide) don't want to hash things out. They want to win. No elegant phrase has ever stopped a bullet in midflight.
Please, educate me: In over 5,000 years of more or less recorded history, how many tyrannies have been overthrown by noble sentiments? How many genocides have been averted by reasonable discussions? How many wars have been prevented by Quakers?
As William James - no archconservative - put it a century ago, "History is a bath of blood." It's been a long time since we got badly splashed (9/11's casualties were an average day in Normandy). We're so spoiled that we've forgotten how brutal humankind can be. But our enemies are determined to remind us. Meanwhile, they practice on the innocents close at hand.
If the pen truly were mightier than the sword, the defense industry would be making ink, paper and keyboards, rather than smart bombs and body armor. A pen wielded by a talented writer may wound a target's ego, but a sword will cut off the writer's head.
Pacifists mean well. But they're a dictator's best friends. The man who won't fight for justice abets the terrorist, the tyrant and the concentration-camp guard.
All decent men want peace. But wise men know that not all men are decent.
The use of the pen is an indulgence we can afford only because better men and women grip the sword on our behalf.
"And exactly why did the British agree to separating Pakistan from India?"
In order to prevent a sectarian civil war that would have resulted in a bloodbath.
Why do you ask?
There is no end to this. Only lulls in the hegemony, while Islam rests up from losing or winning.
Islams motto is, 'We will be back'. And they are back. Even if Islam was beaten to one last man, Islam still lives, and that man will propagate it.
Islam will die when Allah dies, that is, when NO ONE worships Allah. Beating Islamic countries to a pulp, can alleviate the symptoms, but does not get rid of the disease.
Worship of the false is the disease.
An apostate is one who becomes 'enlightened', and jumps ship. The sinking ship of Allah.
One of the wests greatest weapons is not bombs and bullets, it's the ability to create, or co-create Islamic apostates. The way to do this is the 'Johnny Appleseed' method. Seeds of truth here, and seeds of truth there. Some of those seeds will germinate and apostates will grow.
Apostates are dangerous to Islam, not only for abandoning Allah, and possibly becoming attackers,
but they are like an Anti-Allah virus that can spread to others. In my estimation, apostates and future apostates are Allah's worst enemies. Many muslims probably agree with that, certainly those in Iran. The difference is, they want less, I want more, and more, until Allah worship, and Mohammad worship, are too weak to stand on their own. Until the two or three remaining submitters cave in under the unbearable weight of Allah.
Then there will be an end to it. But that may take a while, so don't hold your breath...
Because the battle might be a hard one it may cause many dead is not a reason to not fight these guys.
After 911 it is called surrender to the guys who planned executed anhd who supported 911.
The problem is not we are in afghanistan the problem is are troops hands are tied and we are not takeing the fight to the enemy with all out assault on them that would be food sources support sources and killing we are restricted to go into areas to strike the enemy.
In world war two against an enemy who basically had us out tooled we used total war on the enemy to defeat them in vietnam and korea we
fought a restricted war you see the results.
Only war that truly beats ideology is total war.
Failed to secure their perimeter.
Basic mistake in warfare.
While our "leaders" fail to understand Islam.
Fatal mistake in this War.
Why should the world morn this as if it was a crime? Indeed the US troops invaded and occupied the country, so this was a legitimate act of resistance.
Why should we mourn this very simple unlike these animals you know the guys who hand candy out after there children kill families and innocent we mourn every one who dies we did not go to afghanistan for the joy of killing we went cause they and yes the taliban was in on thiswith alquada cause they attacked us maybe where your from its ok for your people to die not ours.
jowen...I heard your barking.
The world is not obligated to, nor should it mourn this act of terrorism. We Americans have learned long ago what it is to be the worlds police force. To be the only one willing to do the right thing...regardless of what others say.
If not for the United States, the world would be full of good little Nazis, sharing the world with Japans many colonies.
As it is, the world is what we, those in the West, made it. Like it or not.
Instead of enslaving and exploiting our vanquished enemies, we set them free.
Look at Japan and Germany just for starters.
Are we thanked today for those acts? No...nor do we expect to be. Are our many dead mourned by those that are free today through their selfless acts? No.
These are the things that a free people do. We pass freedom along. No mourning of our dead is necessary. We set people free for Freedoms sake.
The Families of our fallen mourn. The communities they lived in mourn. We, as a Nation mourn.
You may do whatever you wish.
Islam is a lie and truth is killing it.
JOWEN is obviously an Islamonazi ENEMY,here to do CYBER-JIHAD!
"Government blocks US bin Laden search"
Sunday July 13, 2008 (1146 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?203151