Posted on 06/19/2008 6:04:30 AM PDT by Clive
ARGHANDAB DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed or wounded after two days of fierce fighting over a strategic area just northwest of Kandahar City that insurgents had taken over at the start of the week.
By Thursday, all that remained was the mopping up of small scattered pockets of resistance, jubilant political leaders and Afghan and Canadian military commanders told reporters from a mountainside perch overlooking the entire battlefield in a wide river valley.
"This will give them a good lesson," Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said, referring to Taliban insurgents. Mr. Khalid said residents who had fled the area when Taliban infiltrated from the mountains to the north will be allowed to return in the days ahead.
First, though, Afghan authorities have to clear out landmines and roadside bombs planted by the insurgents, and fix destroyed bridges and culverts, he said. Residents are clamouring to get back after the fighting interrupted the important harvest period in the agriculturally rich valley, and some farmers have already been passing through checkpoints to get back to their crops and livestock.
Military officials did not want to divulge any numbers. Mr. Khalid, however, said there were no civilians deaths, but two Afghan National Army soldiers died. They were among the more than 1,000 government and coalition troops who launched an assault across the Arghandab River Wednesday morning.
"The enemy is defeated, but the enemy is still present," said Canada's Joint Task Force Afghanistan commander Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson. He said some of the insurgents had escaped the fight into adjoining districts.
"I'm encouraged by what I saw," Gen. Thompson said of the Afghan-led operation that saw Canadians and other NATO forces assume a supportive battle role, including providing helicopter gunship cover.
Gen. Thompson said Arghandab, while on the doorstep of the Taliban's birth city, is "not a friendly area to the Taliban" and that Afghan forces were assisted with intelligence from locals who wanted the invaders out.
The Taliban had perhaps hoped that a series of recent assassinations of local leaders might have eased the way for its fighters to move in and retake control of an area that has always been an essential conduit for invaders targeting Kandahar City, Afghanistan's second-largest city.
The Windsor Star
Good guys are winning!
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No use taking prisoners ... they just escape. Or worse, the SCOTUS decides we need to have a trial for them and offer them a motor voter form.
“Hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed or wounded after two days of fierce fighting...”
I certainly hope they read them their constitutional rights before they killed them. This could be grounds for impeachment.
Kill em all, otherwise we have to read them the Miranda rights and treat them like American Citizens.
Thank you, you 5 SCOTUS SCROTUMS.
But SUSAN RICE, one of Obama’s closest advisors on Morning Joe yesterday warned us that the Taliban were right outside Kandahar ready to take it back and that was because Bush was fighting the war on terror stupidly!
But I hear Obama is "disturbed" at the lack of judicial and civil rights these individuals were not afforded. [/sarcas]
The contrast between the two Rice's is remarkable.
PRICELESS!!
Answer to prayers???
Send them all to hell!
ADC and Food stamps are next.
What they are experiencing now is that our troops, the Brits, Canucks, and even Danes fight by closing on the enemy and defeating him with fire and maneuver and close support. Our guys' faces are the last thing these muzzies see before they are dispatched to their own version of Hell. That is very disconcerting to fighters who've been conditioned to view their enemy as physical cowards who hide behind technology. They are beginning to learn that our tech will find them, but the last thing they'll see is a trooper or Marine sending a 5.56 in their direction.
Well, so much for that big Taliban attack that was expected.
So hard to read them their Miranda rights.
I love uplifting short stories in the morning!
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