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Sangin, Fierce Battlefield for US Marines, on Verge of Falling to Taliban
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/sangin-fierce-battlefield-us-marines-falling-taliban/ ^ | December 21, 2015 1:03 pm | Morgan Chalfant

Posted on 12/21/2015 7:21:08 PM PST by UMCRevMom@aol.com

The Taliban has for days been fighting to gain control of Sangin, a key district of the Helmand province that U.S. Marines battled to secure during the war in Afghanistan.

The Guardian reported that Taliban fighters stormed Afghan police headquarters in the district Monday morning, according to a western official, but were held off from taking control of the security building by an airstrike, likely launched by NATO.

On Sunday, deputy governor of Helmand Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, addressing Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, wrote on Facebook that Helmand was close to collapsing amid pressure from the Taliban.

"I know that bringing up this issue on social media will make you very angry," Rasoulyar wrote. "But … Helmand stands on the brink. Ninety men have been killed in Gereshk and Sangin districts in the last two days."

According to BBC, police commander Mohammad Dawood reported being surrounded by Taliban fighters for two days, warning that Afghan police were running out of ammunition and needed immediate help.

"I have casualties lying around me; we haven't eaten for the past two days," Dawood said Sunday. "If we don't get support in the next hour or so, our fighters will be captured alive. We only have the police HQ under our control and have a battalion of the national army with us. The district office and the intelligence directorate are under enemy control."

In his Facebook post, Rasoulyar asked the Afghan president to "be quick and act" on the situation in Sangin in order to protect Helmand. The Taliban has for months been battling to retake areas of the Helmand province, its fighters taking and, in some cases, maintaining control of multiple districts.

"Helmand will collapse to the enemies and it's not like Kunduz, where we could launch an operation from the airport to retake it. That is just impossible and a dream," Rasoulyar further wrote.

The Taliban held control of Kunduz for 15 days before being driven from the northern city in mid-October, during which time the fighters destroyed government facilities, freed prisoners, and stole military equipment.

The governor of Helmand said Monday that the Afghan government forces still maintained control of the primary security buildings in the district.

Still, Nargis Rokhshani, a local council member, warned that Helmand will be in danger of falling completely to the Taliban "if the British and American forces do not help, and the government does not think about Helmand."


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; helmandprovince; sangin; taliban; usmarines; waronterror
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To: GeaugaRepublican

It wouldn’t even be wrong to encourage it


21 posted on 12/21/2015 8:27:45 PM PST by Pelham (Muslim immigration...the enemy is inside the wire.)
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To: caww

When Bush first went into the war after 911 I told my wife we will never win because we’re not prepared to do what would have to be done. Afghanistan should be a big sheet of glass. There is nothing there that is useful to this planet.


22 posted on 12/21/2015 8:28:36 PM PST by VerySadAmerican
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To: soycd
New York Police Department officer was among six Americans killed on Monday in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan....NYPD Sgt. Joe Lemm died when an attacker drove a motorcycle equipped with explosives into an international patrol.....Lemm was a detective in the Bronx,


23 posted on 12/21/2015 8:30:37 PM PST by caww
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To: VerySadAmerican

You cannot stop these warring nations from their tribal wars.....the problem now is that ISIS is recruiting many of the Taliban to fight with them In Aphganistan the Taliban do not have the monetary resources to keep them from joining with ISIS. LAst I saw ISIS was paying them $700. a month which is one heck of a lot of money in that country!


24 posted on 12/21/2015 8:34:28 PM PST by caww
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To: caww

I wonder if Obama is secretly funding the Taliban to defeat the US troops? Sound crazy? Just look at what is going on in Syria. Its a Cluster fudge


25 posted on 12/21/2015 8:39:42 PM PST by realcleanguy
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

I am pretty sure that this is what Trump would do to them .......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWejiXvd-P8


26 posted on 12/21/2015 8:46:52 PM PST by boycott (--)
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To: realcleanguy
Obama's in a get by mode until he's out....he'll do nothing but continue to make a mess of anything his hands touch .....he's not interested in resolving issues unless favorable to himself....if he can't get that then he'll remain in his get by with the least effort to say he "tried".

Obama's deeply invested in the Global Idea of re-distribution of populations. How and what collateral damage this brings with it is of no concern...the "idea" trumps everything else and that of moving it forward. He will never count the cost to life nor limb....the agenda trumps it all.

BTW I see his vacations and personal trips have now exceeded $98 million.....

Interesting photo just before he left for Hawaii.....I suspect more times then not he's more than anxious to get leave his office and the job he doesn't do.


27 posted on 12/21/2015 9:23:34 PM PST by caww
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

The issue is that the Taliban are now funded and armed by Russia, China and Iran as a bulwark against ISIS/Dae’sh!


28 posted on 12/21/2015 10:08:01 PM PST by Thunder90 (All posts soley represent my own opinion.)
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

Another “Victory” for Obama.


29 posted on 12/22/2015 3:14:08 AM PST by Redleg Duke (The Federal Government is nothing but a welfare program with a dress code!)
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

How can this possibly be going on for days? Why don’t we just drop some ammo and reinforcements? Barack Obama is on the verge of losing this war.


30 posted on 12/22/2015 5:58:50 AM PST by Brilliant
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

31 posted on 12/22/2015 6:01:17 AM PST by RightGeek (FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com

The democrats put people in harm’s way and then do not support them. they then blame everyone else for the failures.


32 posted on 12/22/2015 10:54:42 AM PST by minnesota_bound
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To: WENDLE

The sad fact is if we leave then we are finished as a player in Asia. Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban, they will form a partnership with ISIS, and then they will make a move on Pakistan.

The sadder fact is if we stay we will NEVER pacify the place, even with a Trump/Cruz running the show. It will be money suck and a killing field for our soldiers.


33 posted on 12/22/2015 12:15:04 PM PST by VanDeKoik
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To: VanDeKoik

You have it locked. I don’t care what happens there. Close our borders and Nuke up. Move the troops to the Southern Border with Mexico. Get the Wahhabis out of this Country and live happily ever after. The assured destruction of the entire Middle East area for any attack on our nation will absolutely work ,I assure you. Tell the Saudis— It better not happen. It is the Sunni threat that is a real threat to us ( Wahhabi sect) . But if the Shiites want to glow in the dark, that is fine too. They don’t.


34 posted on 12/22/2015 12:47:45 PM PST by WENDLE (Trump is not bought . He is no puppet.)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

"Death to America!"


35 posted on 12/22/2015 1:35:43 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: caww

What an effing joke! One C-130 gunship would make mince meat out of these ragheads in one pass. Bring out the “Puff!”


36 posted on 12/22/2015 7:39:18 PM PST by WTFOVR (I find myself exclaiming that expression quite often these days!)
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To: caww

These soldiers need an NCO who can make them wear their helmets. If the average bulked-up GI can deal with the heat, the average underweight Afghan soldier can, too...


37 posted on 12/23/2015 1:26:03 PM PST by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: UMCRevMom@aol.com
Obama is just leaving our remaining guys there to bleed and (as in Iraq) to turn our previous victories into defeats so we will never be a "colonial, imperialist" power again.

Many good men have died because of this traitorous rat and many more will as well. The worst mistake this country ever did was elect this turd. In the end, the harm done by him and his political allies may well exceed that of our first Civil War.

38 posted on 12/23/2015 3:26:16 PM PST by Gritty (Syrians aren't Jews fleeing Nazi Holocaust but Nazis relocating from a bombed out Berlin-DGreenfield)
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To: WENDLE
GET THE HELL OUT!! What are we doing there?

Preventing a nation-state from falling into the hands of the Taliban, lest it become a staging area for God knows what.

Pretty soon half the demented actors over there are going to be able to put their hands on some pretty big ballistic hardware .... want them to be able to deploy it without molestation, as Saddam did when he was rocketing Tel Aviv?

One of those will eventually have a "yield", in kilotons.

Every day Obama works for Islam, to weaken us in the face of regional powers and delay our own projects. The US arsenal is now about 1/4 what it was when Bush 41 left office.

Pretty soon we'll be down to parity with the Chinese and in deficit to the Russians. Then what, when the president of 1.4 billion Chinese starts telling us how things are going to be? But Obama lives for that.

39 posted on 12/25/2015 11:15:41 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: VerySadAmerican
I told my wife we will never win because we’re not prepared to do what would have to be done.

Part of what you are seeing is "normal" -- for us. One weakness we have, as against tyrannical regimes, is change of administrations => change of purposes, ideas, strategies; leading to inconsistent efforts.

Abraham Lincoln, in Congress (as a Whig), tried to screw with President Polk and his Mexican War policy. Polk eventually wound up winning us the entire Southwest. (We're lucky Obama's not ready to pull out of Arizona and California yet.)

Of course, nobody could anticipate the wreckage Obama intended to inflict on our foreign and defense policies. So that is something new in American politics since the Communist SDS took over the Democratic Party.

You couldn't, in 2003, have foreseen the 'Rat backstabbing that started as soon as our tanks crossed the berm. I'd give a shiny new quarter to know whether it was a called play, and whether Hillary knew she and the rest of them were going to turn on Bush, drag out all their 1972 protest signs, and start playing New Mobe as soon as we were committed.

(As far as dragging out old signs .... that's exactly what Houston's Communist cadre did the minute bombs started falling in Afghanistan. They started "protesting" and doing guerrilla-theater confrontations with Houston cops the very first day of hostilities. They were led by a University of Houston professor who taught a course on the Vietnamese War.)

40 posted on 12/25/2015 11:55:47 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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