Posted on 06/14/2006 12:31:19 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Oh THANK YOU!!! I just knew it couldn't be as ugly as it looks like on TV. God Bless and Keep you.
"The worst violence since the fall of The Taliban"
Actually it is. The main problem here is that the MSM is not telling their customers that the violence is almost entirely against the Taliban. They make it sound like the Taliban is doing the violence against us and our allies.
Good! Bomb back to the Stone Age. Wait, there already in the Stone Age. Bomb them back to the Primoridal Ooze Age.
No first hand knowledge of the special forces.
Curious to know your point.
I admit that my logic is as likely to be correct as to be incorrect.
The French are here--not in the numbers they should be given the side of their military (Romania has more troops here than France!); but they have some folks in the west doing the equivalent of Civil Affairs work vic Herat, they have some personnel on both the US coalition HQ staff and the NATO staff in Kabul, they have some fighter planes based in Tajikistan that have flown "close air support" missions in support of troops in contact plus their special ops guys are doing that sneak & peek run & gun kind of thing in the badlands.
Things are pretty peaceful in west Afghanistan where it borders Iran. The problems are in the east and south, the country of the Pashtuns. Almost all the Taliban were Pashtun. While Iran clearly enjoys having us tied down by the Taliban, they do not want the Taliban to come to power--Iran backed the opposition to the Taliban before 9-11. I think their viewpoint on the US vs the Taliban is similar to ours during the Iran-Iraq War: the longer it lasts with nobody winning, the better.
Still why is France even in Afghanistan, after all didn't they withdraw from the Military aspect of NATO a couple years ago?
They took their forces out from NATO control back in the 1960s--a DeGaulle move; although they remained in the alliance and thereby committed to collective defense--they were just going to fight in their own way under their own national control. France rejoined the militay structure of NATO in ~1994.
Having said that, the fighting going on in the south and the coalition troops doing it are under US, not NATO control. The US-led coalition is in charge of the troops, terrain, and fight in east and south Afghanistan; to include the Brits & Canucks doing a big chunk of it over the last several days. NATO has a separate HQ running what is called the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that is in charge of security ops in north & west Afghanistan. ISAF is going to take charge in the south later this summer and then the east in the fall; if all goes well.
Well, the "decisive operations" phase just began. In the parlance of today's military, the "shaping operations" began some time ago. Shaping = recons, putting troops into position, taking charge of key points, fixing up roads and bases you'll be using, maybe some special ops guys hitting some key targets; not saying any of that went on or didn't go on--just those types of things are what happens while you set the conditions for decisive ops. Decisive ops are what you'd think, the major attacks against identified Taliban forces & areas, major troop movements into the area and so on.
Agree with all you said, at my level of understanding. My comment to TigerLikesRooster in post #30 dealt more with future events, not current, as those AQIR want to get out of Iraq. They can flee to Afghanistan via. for instance the NE
cooridor of Iraq/Kurdistan area across upper Iran, then into
western A. It was more illustrative as how AQ may want to flee Iraq once the organization gets pretty well disorganized to the point it no longer can function. So that is why I wrote as I did. Think potential future events. Whatever. We are beating their brains out in both places.
Sorry, I thought you were referring to Iranians moving into Afghanistan. You bring up a good point about AQIR and Afghanistan--there is already a sort of jihadist "lessons learned" operation ongoing as--particularly with IEDs--there are techniques seen in Iraq that are migrating to Afghanistan. Some of the connections would seem to have to go through Iran. Given the narcotics trafficking that already follows that path and Taliban involvement in the trade, there are paths available.
ABC more than likely thought they were warning our enemies. For that reason perhaps the military slipped them the wrong date...
Thanks for the info!
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