Posted on 11/04/2001 4:14:32 AM PST by Colorado Doug
Blitzed ... huge columns of smoke tower above Taliban positions Taliban are buried alive From JOHN ASKILL in Afghanistan A TALIBAN survivor told yesterday how an entire unit was buried alive in a carpet-bombing strike by B-52s. Terrified Osman Rakhim, 23, revealed the shattering explosions caused by the giant US bombers started a landslide on his mountainside position. And he confessed: “I thought I was going to die — the earth was raining from the skies.” Dozens of troops were killed when hundreds of tons of earth and rock came avalanching down on top of them. Rakhim, who wandered away from the carnage in a daze and later surrendered, heard screams for help as a whole unit of fighters dug in behind him were buried. No escape ... explosions on a mountain during bombing Rakhim said: “I could not see, I couldn’t breathe. Everything was in darkness. “There were many, many bombs. The earth shook and it rained rocks and shrapnel. “The hillside was falling on us. There were about 300 of us there dug in with sandbags. I have no idea how many were killed.
Sounds like your average account of being in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Payback's a real bitch, isn't it?
Question: If he had received proper training, he would have stayed?
I'm a little confused here! Was this Mindar fighting WITH the Taliban or with the British troops against the Taliban?
If fighting with the British against the Taliban, how stupid is he to expect that the Taliban would give a hoot about those they are fighting against or even those who were fighting for them.
I think this guy has NO IDEA whose side he is on. And from what he said here, he's real dumbo! This is WAR, what the heck did this guy expect - tea and crumpets?
From JOHN ASKILL in Afghanistan. A TALIBAN survivor told yesterday how an entire unit of civilians was were buried alive in a carpet-bombing strike by B-52s. Terrified Osman Rakhim, 23, revealed the shattering explosions caused by the giant US bombers started a landslide on his mountainside position. And he confessed: “I thought I was going to die — the earth was raining from the skies.” Dozens of troops civilians were killed when hundreds of tons of earth and rock came avalanching down on top of them. Rakhim, who wandered away from the carnage in a daze and later surrendered, heard screams for help as a whole unit of fighters civilians dug in behind him were buried. No escape ... explosions on a mountain during bombing Rakhim said: “I could not see, I couldn’t breathe. Everything was in darkness. “There were many, many bombs. The earth shook and it rained rocks and shrapnel. “The hillside was falling on us. There were about 300 of us civilians there dug in with sandbags. I have no idea how many were killed.
or...mounting mohammed B52 style...
Compared to hell, this was a walk in the park...
This "war on terrorism" has turned into a war against the Afghan government, which until recently was receiving millions of dollars in U.S. aid. If we were truly serious about going after governments whose countries are the breeding grounds and paymasters for terrorists, why aren't we bombing Saudi Arabia (the center of radical Wahabbism) and Egypt? The terrorists who struck this country were Saudi and Egyptian nationals, not Afghans or Talibans.
This war on terrorism is a fraud. We're not hunting terrorists; we're engaged in nation-building. In other words, we're once again meddling in the domestic affairs of another country and making plenty of enemies in the process.
Our imperial leaders in Washington will never learn. They insist on sticking this nation's collective hand into every hornets' nest from Tel Aviv to Kabul, and then they wonder why we get stung. If the U.S. government is serious about fighting terrorism, it should start by putting an end to its arrogant, bullying foreign policy -- an in-your-face, high-handed attitude that breeds anti-American hatred around the world. We've given a lot of people in the Middle East and now central Asia plenty of reasons to hate our guts. And as we've seen, some of those angry people are driven to suicidal acts of revenge.
If we're serious about getting Osama bin Laden, let's issue letters of Marque (Letters of Reprisal) and post a $1 billion reward for his capture -- dead or alive. Short of committing hundreds of thousands of troops to a ground war, we're not going to flush him and his lieutenants out of their mountain lairs in Afghanistan. Even if we manage to defeat the Taliban (a highly unlikely scenario), we'll merely succeed in replacing one gang of misfits with an even more brutal gang of Northern Alliance thugs and cutthroats who terrorized the populace during its reign of anarchy. The Taliban actually brought stability to the region.
I don't want our young servicemen to die in a nation-building scheme that will pave the way for some bloated multinational petroleum company (Onoco) to run a pipeline across Aghanistan to a port in Karachi, Pakistan. There's more to this "war" than meets the eye.
Oh well, I'll guess we'll just have to find the transcript of the Pentagon's daily briefing on the internet. Maybe.
I inderstand it to read, he was fighting WITH the Taliban.
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