Posted on 05/24/2004 2:27:26 PM PDT by newsgatherer
Most Americans are paying a lot of attention to the fighting going on in Iraq. We cringe at the US casualties and pray America is doing everything it can to protect our troops.
In the city of Fallujah, US Marines have been fighting block by block to secure and neutralize the enemy that infest this city. The US Army has fought off repeated ground attacks against several US bases in the Sunni Triangle. Marines in Fallujah are putting broken glass and other trash in front of their positions in hopes that they can hear the enemy coming and get a shot off before the enemy can attack them. US bases are not as secure as they could be because a live soldier can not secure every minor avenue of approach 24 hours a day. Technologies like infrared cameras help but even these can be defeated or malfunction at the worst times.
American Soldiers and Marines are dying needlessly in many of these battles because they are denied one of the most effective defensive weapons ever invented, the antipersonnel mine.
Imagine if Marines in Fallujah could secure their perimeter with something that could actually wound/kill the enemy instead of making them a little nosier. If you were stationed in a US military base, would you sleep better at night knowing high tech cameras and land mines were helping in defending your perimeter?
There is good history on how well mines work to defeat Islamic terrorist attacks. In Afghanistan, the only fear Islamic fighters really had when they attacked a Soviet military post were the land mine belts that protected these areas. They had no real way to defeat them and, because of Muslim traditions, they feared the life of a being a cripple more than death. Just discovering that well placed mines were around a Soviet post forced the cancellation of many if these attacks.
The feel-good antipersonnel landmine treaty was a product of the UN and a favorite cause the late Princess Diana. The US never ratified the treaty but under the Clinton Administration in 1997, land mines and land mine training was banned to the US military (except for very narrow exceptions like Korea). This policy has not been reversed under the Bush Administration. It should be for several reasons:
1. The US Armed Forces uses land mines according to strict regulation. They map every one they place, they mark land mine fields and retrieve all mines if at all possible. The US military does not abuse this weapon.
2. Land mines have been a fact of war since the American Civil War. They are easy to produce (the Vietcong made thousands in jungle factories) and are used by every terrorist enemy of the United States. Without this weapon, the US military is at a distinct disadvantage.
3. The United States has been out numbered in nearly every war it has fought. They overcome this disadvantage by using combat multipliers. Air supremacy, accurate artillery and/or superior intelligence allow each US soldier to be more effective than his enemy counterpart. Land mines are an excellent, low cost and, at times, the only available combat multiplier.
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How would land mines protect against mortars? Eh....
And even more to come due to the new rules, do's and can'ts, while guarding prisoners, etc.
PC is killing us more and more.
If there's a combat engineer unit nearby, the perimeter can be littered with "Fuel Flame Explosives" that the CE's can emplace.
How many troops have been killed by the actions of our "so called free press?" Just wondering.
Bingo!
THANK GOD someone finally has the brain to come out and tell the truth-- LANDMINES WORK and a ban on them is going to result in more deaths, more fighting, and less security. Enough feel-good do-gooderism.
This is BS pure and simple. Mines are as irrelevent to this fight as the nuclear bomb. We are not fighting a real war anymore just police actions and mopping up. Neither can be done better or more safely using land mines. Very silly article which further undermines the Commander in Chief.
That is part of the assignment, all we be speculative, but one can speculate when the fighting gets more intense with each 'Bush bad/terrorist good' report put out by Peter Jennings.
And when the very words used by Kennedy and Kerry end up in the arab press, in editorials used to encourage the terrorist.
So far we are figuring that close to one hundred members of the military and maybe four or five civilians have been killed thanks to the "Beat Bush at any cost" crowd.
We are interested an everything Freepers have to add. That would include constructive criticism.
I love your priorities for shooting! CNN is a great addition!
I concur. The NVA general who said that Kerry and Fonda's big mouths gave him and the communist North all the strength to continue to fight, wanting to cause all the casualties they could to get the US to withdraw. IT worked too. Each time the stinking press prints another story of Bush's ratings falling, people unhappy, families whining, crying, throwing a fit blaming Bush, the show it to the terrorists and they gain strength through it. DON'T FORGET, Jennings used to be boy friend - girl friend with that woman who is a big honcho in the PLO, I don't know her name, but would recognize the photo if shown it. So, just where do you think that SOB's loyalties are?
Not quite the dumbest question I ever read, but it's getting close.
My first thoughts..
I mean do we have a problem with bad guys sneaking up on our soldiers in their camps?
What am I missing here?
The use of landmines along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border would go a long way to eliminating the threat of cross border raids by al-Qa'ida and Taliban terrorists. The only reason not to use them there, would be to continue letting the terrorists stir up trouble in Pakistan and to destabilize our pal Mushi.
--Boot Hill
That area of the world wasn't become very quiet......why?
We don't need to give up freedoms or civil rights to win this war. Our enemies (they aren't critics, they are friends of the enemies of America) are silent about any warcrimes or oppression from the other side.
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. The left defends the Palestinian use of suicide bombers (listen to Pacifica Radio sometime). The left absolves the terrorists of killing Nick Berg, alternately saying that it was the US who killed him or that he was killed because of US policy. Remember how the left derided the notion that Jessica Lynch could have been raped while in custody?
We need to fight wars to win. Not to "maintain" but to win. The media tried at least 3 different times to turn the tide of this war to Saddam's favor (during the initial Baghdad raid, when Saddam was in hiding, and now).
John Kerry understands the notion of "aid and comfort". He was a part of it in 1971 helping the North Vietnamese against America and he commented on France and Russia's support for Saddam in 1997:
It was disappointing a month ago not to have the French and the Russians understanding that they shouldn't give any signals of weakening on the sanctions and I think those signals would have helped bring about this crisis because they permitted Saddam Hussein to interpret that maybe the moment was right for him to make this challenge.
Hey pal, you want to watch that? That tagline is just about an inch shy of a personal attack!
--Boot Hill
I think you miss the point of the article. ANYTHING that could protect our troops SHOULD and MUST be used. Political correctness is strangling our military and rendering the United States more vulnerable against terrorism. The far reaching tentacles of PC is damaging this nation far beyond my ability to explain or delineate here.
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