OV-10 Broncoes instead of slow helicopters.
Posted on 09/09/2009 5:34:13 AM PDT by tcrlaf
GANJGAL, Afghanistan — 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
...... Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.
NEWS YOU WON'T SEE REPORTED ON NBC/MSNBC...
This upsets me to no end....
Obama's put these guys in an unwinnable situation, with rules of engagement that are more likely to get our own killed, than the enemy, and THE PRESS REFUSES TO COVER IT, because a DEMOCRAT is in charge!!!
Damn.. I just knew it would be this way....
CENTCOM and Pentagon Harvard lawyers are running even the tactical ROE. Would I send a son or daughter into this dogfight?
No way. Meanwhile Generalissimo obama ponders what kind of pie to order for tonight's dinner.
No Excuse. This shouldn't happen.
This should give more creedance to the argument that he is not eligible to be CinC.
Want to bet Nancy Pelosi never waited an hour for a military aircraft to fly her botoxed butt on a boondoggle?
I wonder if we could get a map and overlay of this engagement showing the roads, the nearby town, the deployment of our few troops and allied Afghans, and the deployment of the enemy.
What was the S-2 estimate of the total enemy strength in the area? What weapon systems did the enemy utilize?
In SEA, “Troops in contact” suspended an rules of engagement limitations.
“In SEA, “Troops in contact” suspended an rules of engagement limitations.”
Well, it’s obvious that “CHANGE HAS ARRIVED!!”
Obama has ordered our Marines hands tied behind their backs. This sickens me to no end.
My wife’s coworker has a Marine son on his way to Afganistan right now and my own youngest son, back from Iraq in April of this year, is now training in high country in CA presumably to join those now in Afganistan in a couple of months.
I am sickened by my son having to risk his life in this manner for a President that 1) never served a day in the military in his life and 2) has zero respect for our sons & daughters serving this country in uniform.
Is it true that our allies forces do not havethe same ridiculous rules of engagement that our troops must follow? I heard from a vet of Afghanistan that an allied infantry unit got into a firefight and it let a h*** loose
Shades of Vietnam and Beirut. No targeting enemies unless they were within 25 meters of the Ho Chi Minh trail. In Beirut the Marines couldn't fire on an enemy until they were fired on first and then they could only use similar weapons to prevent escalation. In Somolia during the "Blackhawk Down" mission they couldn't use the AC-130 gunships even though they were in-country and ready to go.
Stupid rules kill troops.
I would nuke them back beyond the stone age. One village at a time, one week apart, until the rest marched naked to surrender.
“has zero respect for our sons & daughters serving this country in uniform.”
We have a President that SOLD DRUGS TO KIDS...
What makes ANYONE think he cares about anyone other than himself???
Military historian Stephen Ambrose writes of the practice of the US Army in Europe, each day along the moving forward front in countering, Army wide, hundreds if not thousands of villages.
Typically at first the Army would leave/drive out of a wood line, across open fields towards a village, where upon Germans would fire upon them half way in the open.
After a bit of that happening, the American Army changed and would shell the outermost structures in a village.
So the Germans then changed tactics and moved into a village, setting ambushes in the narrow streets.
Where upon the US Army decided to just go through houses, though the entire village and avoid the streets.
Another standard operating procedure was to shell the highest structure to deign snipers and artillery spotters. Church or no church.
Another tactic was to have the Mayor come out, and he would be told if there are any snipers, or mines, and the Americans encounter them, then the whole village would be reduced to rubble.
Civil War General Sherman was famous for putting Confederate prisoners on the front of trains or on ships so that if snipers or mines were encountered they be killing their own.
He had three and four stars give the orders.
If I said what I really want to say, I would get banned from this board forever. I am sick to my stomach.
When do we start protesting to get these guys out?
Get ‘em out...Stop this war NOW...
This is appalling. If we are not going to support our troops in the field, and provide them the tools they need to safely conduct their missions, then we should quit the battlefield.
As a veteran, I know that war is a bloody business. But, the needless, senseless losses as the consequence of wrongheaded engagement policies driven by lawyers rather than commanders is tantamount to murder.
It’s time to take back the country.
Just bring the troops home if you are not going to let them fight to win, Barry.
The problem with threatening to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age is tantamount to threatening Br'er Rabbit with being thrown into the br'er patch.
IMHO, the way to win hearts and minds in Afgthanistan is to make the people fear us worse than they fear the taliban/al-qaeda. If victory is the objective, we need a Sherman's March strategy, but if we're not willing to commit the manpower, resources, political will and national courage to do that, we need to pack it up and bring it home.
In Phuoc Long Province in MR III, The District Chiefs’ political clearance were required before artillery could be fired....pissed off a lot of folks in the Fire Support Base.
OV-10 Broncoes instead of slow helicopters.
He's an abject failure, and a lying bastard to boot.
America’s finest. R.I.P.
Damn
Irony noted. That’s why I said “beyond the stone age.” As you point out, the Stone Age would be a step up for these goons.
And you’re right about the fear factor. Kill them all; women, children, all of them, until they beg us to stop. It worked in Japan. I just don’t think that any American leader has the stones to say this, let alone do it.
This story just pi$$es me off to no end! America,what have you done??!! Pull our people out of that Hell hole and carpet bomb the entire area! O.Hussein has no business anywhere near the White House.
Fight like WWII, result like WWII, fight like Vietnam, result like Vietnam.
Hey Hey OBammay, how many kids did you kill today.
“If I said what I really want to say, I would get banned from this board forever. I am sick to my stomach.”
Likewise, and you can believe that...
I want everyone home now, from Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else. None of these men should have to fight under this sorry excuse for a CiC.
Awful but what a great report. Wow.
“We will do to you what we did to the Russians,...”
He may have meant they will do to our soldiers what they did to captured Soviets. Not pretty.
Just a guess, but would that be the 10th Mountain division? I've driven by that place many times. They are an awesome bunch of warriors.
This is very upsetting. If they had sent the helicopters, these Marines and Afghan allies could have been saved. They also couldn’t fire artillery rounds because of liberal made rules which care more about the enemy than our own troops.
The political career of our first half-white POTUS is not expendable, see.
This sh*t is just getting started.
This is the hard-left in action.
Prepare to have your minds blown in the coming months.
Yeah...whatever happened to the big protests that C-SPAN always showed with all the moonbats calling President Bush a terrorist and such...and to end the war ??????
well, here is what i think, and i don’t give a damn if i get banned or not....FUBO is a disgrace for damn sure, but the high command are the real traitors to our men...rules of engagement be damned, if you do not have the balls to order fire to protect your men, what the hell are you doing in a position of authority? their damn stars are more important than the men dying in the fields??? the officers responsible for this debacle should be lined up against a wall and shot.....does it make you proud to deny proper support to the men and women in the field so you can keep your friggin stars???
Afghanistan is and will always be the Wild West.
It is an arid desert with no resources other than the poppies that fuel the opium trade.
Civilized people have no use for Afghanistan, and that is why it will never be civilized.
It is the exclusive domain of terrorists and warlords.
The US experiment of nation building there has failed, as it was always destined to in a land of outlaws and bandits.
What we need to do is what we always should have done: get out, and scorch the earth as we go.
We should burn the poppy fields and destroy the camps and what little infrastructure is there. Instead of building roads and schools, we should be breaking them.
We need to make travel and communication to and from Afghanistan as difficult as possible. And we will have to come back once every decade and do it all over again. But next time, we should follow the Clinton doctrine, and do it from 10,000 feet.
Does it seem as if everything has an overtone of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ since Obamassiah came into power?
Well, I guess we are not fighting the war on terror any more so this is a “man caused disaster”. And I think we all can figure out who the man is that caused this disaster.
I am outraged! Shades of Vietnam and Somalia. God please give us the strength to not let it happen again.
Training near Bridgeport, CA; the US Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center.
This was posted last night and at the link you can find some links to the Senate Armed Services Committee. I am urging my fellow FReepers to please call them this morning and tell them that Obama’s ‘new rules of engagement’ are not acceptable in no uncertain terms. We have to stand up for our soldiers or it is only going to get worse. Tell them about this news report and let them know you are angry!
PLEASE CALL!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335142/posts
http://armed-services.senate.gov/
Then call your Congresscritters!
Exactly. The same congressmen that clamoured over “concern” for our soldiers, Levin, Dorgan, etc, are now SILENT.
“...out of sight, out of mind since Obamassiah came into power?”
Yes, of course. 0bama isn’t trying to conquer the Taliban, he’s busy trying to conquer the United States.
In trouble deep are we.
This is horrifying. I was just thinking about Afghanistan last night because I had seen a tiny mention somewhere in the press of recent US deaths there. Believe me, it wasn’t on the front page the way it used to be with Bush. They’re trying not to report it.
But the secret is that Obama actually doesn’t want us to win there. He can’t come out and say this quite yet, but he is going to impose policies that will result in a huge loss of life to our troops (and to Afghanis, in the long run) and will guarantee our defeat there. And yet the press says nothing.
If there had NOT been a McClatchy embedded “jouranalist” this never would have made print.
I would guess the only reason this made print is because this so called journalist is livid that he almost lost his life and will be blaming anybody but Obama.
In Desert Storm the pilots had to visually identify aerial targets before they could fire. That negated our advantage in Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile technology. I don't believe it cost any US lives, though.
I had friends who were Marines in Beirut and they told me that they watched a guy set up a mortar on a hill near the base, but weren't allowed to fire on him until he actually fired the first round. They couldn't call in air strikes or use artillary, they couldn't use a more powerful weapon than the the enemy.
If I were king the ground troops would pull back when they met heavy resistance and BUFs would carpet bomb the area before the troops went back in. Any ground operation would have helo and close air support.
Yep. Given the rules of engagement etc, it is senseless.
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