Yeah our side is a total failure, we only killed 178 enemy.
Posted on 06/25/2005 8:51:09 AM PDT by Jackknife
KABUL (Reuters) - A total of 178 Taliban fighters were killed and 56 captured in three days of fighting in south Afghanistan, one of the group's bloodiest setbacks since their 2001 overthrow, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
But senior Taliban commanders thought to have been in the area of the U.S.-backed operation, in the region where the provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul meet, escaped, ministry spokesman Mohammad Ishaq Paiman said.
"From the start of this joint operation, on June 21, until last night, 178 Taliban were killed and 56 arrested," he said.
The Interior Ministry, which on Friday gave a toll of 109 guerrillas dead, said most were killed by U.S. air strikes.
The U.S. military on Wednesday gave an estimate of 40-50 guerrillas dead, but has not provided any fresh estimates.
The Defense Ministry said on Thursday that Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Brother, members of the Taliban leadership council led by the elusive Mullah Mohammad Omar, were surrounded in the operation, but Paiman said they had apparently escaped.
"If they had been killed, we would have found their dead bodies; if they had been arrested, we would recognize them," he said. "It means they have escaped."
U.S. and Afghan forces have reported killing more than 200 insurgents in the past week alone and more than 300 since March in their drive to protect Sept. 18 parliamentary elections.
While the latest losses will have been a blow to the Taliban, the insurgency has grown stronger since the end of the winter and analysts say it has drawn hundreds of new recruits from Pakistan and elsewhere.
U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban government after it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, but 3-1/2 years on, they have been unable to subdue the insurgency or catch bin Laden.
A month-long voter registration period began on Saturday, but U.N. Special Representative to Afghanistan Jean Arnault, briefing the U.N. Security Council on Friday, said worsening security made it necessary to attack the insurgents' financing, safe havens and support networks as well as use military force.
Analysts say the key to success of the polls will be Pakistan, the Taliban's main backer before joining the U.S. led war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Afghan and U.S. officials have accused Pakistan of failing to act against guerrilla safe havens and the Taliban have claimed responsibility for several recent attacks on poll workers and candidates.
makes me wonder if the escaped, or were allowed to escape and gather another group to target... would be alot easy than trying to find the individual targets
Good news bump.
I'm starting to think it's the media setting our guys up to fail by not catching some mythical Taliban miscreant who ain't real.
Yeah our side is a total failure, we only killed 178 enemy.
I wonder this often times myself. We have the best military around, and these bastards still get away. It does make you wonder if there are intelligence leaks when these operations start to close in on the 'big guns'.
U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban government after it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, but 3-1/2 years on, they have been unable to subdue the insurgency or catch bin Laden.
Leave it to Reuters......
Yeah.....I noticed how the author slips in the 'America is failing' comment. That is par for the course from Reuters.
"A total of 178 Taliban fighters were killed and 56 captured in three days of fighting in south Afghanistan, one of the group's bloodiest setbacks since their 2001 overthrow, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday."
I thought the military operations in Afghanistan were "outsourced to warlords." What gives?
Dead terrorist ping.
How can this be? Nancy Pelosi said the war in Afghanistan is over.
I almost added it to 'Breaking News'. Guess I should have. I bet this will only get a passing comment on the MSM evening news programs (if that).
Shows how in touch with reality Nancy is.
Didn't Mssr. Vietnam say something similar last year? Like that the military had given up hunting for OBL?
Looks like at the first sign of trouble these so called leaders hand over their cell phones and hi-tail it out of there.
We have posters who claim to be in the know who say our Spec Ops guys are still hunting him.
We also have posters who are really in a position to know. They can't talk.
It's almost like a bad James Bond movie. I can almost picture Mullah Omar and Bin Laden blasting off in an escape pod while the rest of the lackeys in matching dresses and turbans get blown to smithereens.
Yes he did.
Love the magnitude of that body count.
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