Posted on 11/26/2010 6:31:13 PM PST by Leisler
.....Andrew Wiltshire, 25, one of the Paras in the advance described it like a scene from the wartime drama Band of Brothers. "The blokes were ducking down behind the Mastiffs with rounds coming in hitting the sides. We were trudging through fields trying to keep up with the vehicles with mud clogging our boots. You certainly got an idea what it was like for an infantryman to be following a tank while under fire in World War Two. Either you stay behind it or you get shot."
With the Mastiffs ahead of him Lt Whitlam, 25, had to lead his men for 100 yard slog across an open field. As they got to a muddy patch in the middle a Taliban machine gun team opened up a short distance away to their left.....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Excellent!
Yep! Most excellent!
“Well-trained and heavily armed Taliban withdraw from the village but were tracked by powerful aerial surveillance systems tracked them for an hour until two American A10 ground attack aircraft moved in.”
“The aircraft made four passes sending 600 rounds into the Taliban leaving no survivors.”
“Since the attack two weeks ago, there has been no sightings of the Taliban in the area.”
I cannot even begin to imagine what 600 rounds of 30mm will do to soft human targets. I suspect it turned them into Taliban pudding.
Good news.
Good news.
OK, I am very glad that the Taliban were beaten and I hope that the entire insurgency is soon defeated but can we stop deluding ourselves that any great “victory” was won here?
Far from the impression of “well armed” “highly trained” enemy troops being defeated by plucky British infantrymen the fact is that the Taliban are militarily the underdogs here.
The Taliban are barely literate mountain dwellers armed with little more than Soviet era Kalasnikovs and home-made bombs. They were defeated on this occasion by a combination of air power, satellite guided missiles and heavily armoured vehicles. If one was neutral, and I hasten to add again I am not, one would have to concede that it is the Taliban who are showing the grit and fighting spirit.
If with all this damn hardware the Allies are still slogging through Afghanistan and the Taliban are still fighting back, when can we realistically see an end to the war? There’s only so many “great victories” we can claim before people start to ask why we haven’t won the war yet.
I’d say passes number 2-4 were more of a waste disposal operation. Something about bio hazard being smaller than one square inch for proper decomposition.
it is the Taliban who are showing the grit and fighting spirit
*****************
They’re fighting for 72 virgins and paradise. It’s not hard to find recruits, when that’s the reward for fighting and dying.
The British, are fighting to go home to their wives, or worse.
You’ll eventually run out of unfortunately deluded Muslims looking for 72 virgins. First, the recruits dry up, then those who recruit will be forced to either hide, or go themselves.
If we’re smart, we’ll send missionaries after all the Taliban are cleaned up.
Every story should have an A-10 in it.
I don’t care how lob-sided the fight is I liked the outcome: Dead Taliban. The only good kind.
The Allies have now been fighting in Afghanistan longer than the Soviets did yet still the deluded virgin seekers keep fighting back. We can dress this up any which way we want but there is something fundamentally wrong about how that war is being fought.
Why after nearly ten years are we still reading about “victories” such as this in Afghanistan? With so many impressive victories like this one you’d have thought Nato could have won the war years ago.
Hanging on until such time as the Taliban give up on Islam doesn’t seem to me to be a winning strategy.
Do you have a suggestion?
We need to stop coddling the civilians who are protecting the Taliban and level the whole area when they start shooting at our troops. The military is there to kill and destroy the enemy. Once we get past the coddling point and start destroying every thing we will win.
The only thing better than a A-10 is a specter gunship.
Agreed. The A-10 - the plane the Air Force really did not want.
They may not know how to read but they have been at war all of their lives and they are probably average age in the mid to late thirties while our soldiers were probably in school a couple of years ago and average age is early to mid twenties.
We have training and equipment, they have maturity, experience, and home field advantage. Many of these people were born to fight. You can't defeat a way of life, you can only eradicate it.
We have a muslim in the white hut. It looks like the Brits under the conservative govt with their lib dem deal is able to actually fight the war and shoot back.
Are guys are just cannon fodder probably being sold out by islamic moles all through the US military, intel and govt.
Good job, Brit Paras!
The Brits have been doing a Herculean job in the ‘ghan!
So glad they’re there.
Thank you Blokes!
I’m surprised - but glad - that American air cover was allowed by OUR regime! This is how it’s done.
Our paratroupers are made of the same stuff - but the new regime restricts air cover for them to a criminal degree. This regimes ROE have resulted in DOUBLE losses - KIA and wounded - since they took office.
(For a stark look at our Sky Soldiers - watch National Geographic Monday nite, 9-11. This is about one Platoon - the 173rd AIRBORNE, 2-503rd in their 15-month deployment in “The velley of Death - the Korengal Valley in n.eastern AFghanistan.
(that little 30-man band included SSGT Sal Giunta, 1st living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnm War. They had already made a name for themselves before this award.
google RESTREPO or Sebastian Junger or
start at these links
http://restrepothemovie.com/video/
http://restrepothemovie.com/story/
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