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GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 3/19/06 -Baquba, Operation Swarmer, Samarra, Kabul, Qala Bost Fort, Shahi Kot, Lashkar Gah, Kundalan, Sheberghan BREAKING: Baquba, Operation Swarmer, American and Iraqi military forces take terrorists and weapons BREAKING: Samarra, Operation Swarmer, American and Iraqi military forces take terrorists and weapons BREAKING: Kabul, cockfight Qala Bost Fort, Afghanistan, Shahi Kot Lashkar Gah - Education for all, freed by American Kabul - Afghan women on International Women's Day Kundalan, Sheberghan QFN ==== YE OLDE QUAGMIRE-FREE NEWS Exclusive to FReerepublic PICTURES YOU WILL NEVER SEE IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ========= Samarra, Iraq ========= Somewhere...

“Memory n. 1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience; the ability to remember. 2. An act or instance of remembrance; a recollection… see smer in Appendix.” “smer – to remember. In Germanic murnon, to remember sorrowfully, in Old English murnan, to mourn.” I remember Chuck Meerholz and the day I was supposed to drive. After four months with B Company, 1st Battalion, 69th Armor; four months of on-the-job-training for a guy trained as an infantrymen, I was being taught to drive our tank. B Company was to participate in a big operation centered on the village of...

GOTTA SEE THIS -- OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM 3/15-16/02 <========================> REPORT FROM THEATRE 1 - AFGHANISTAN Shahi Kot Mountains, Canadian and US forces deliver justice to Al Qaeda. <===== Update from 3/15/02 DOD Briefing =====> Anaconda Is Success; Enemy Killed Unknown, Say Officials Gerry J. Gilmore, American Forces Press Service brWASHINGTON, March 15, 2002 -- Senior DoD leaders today called Operation Anaconda a success, while noting the difficulty to fully ascertain enemy losses as the campaign continues to wind down. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon...

SHAHI KOT, AFGHANISTAN - This is how the battle is playing out: Al Qaeda fighters, usually in pairs, jump out from cave entrances in the snow-covered mountain peaks and fire rocket-propelled grenades and antiaircraft missiles at US positions in the valley below. B-52s - 10 to 15 minutes later - pummel the cave dwellers, while a US special forces team heads higher into the mountains. Their faces camouflaged, and flanked by 50 Afghan soldiers, the US troops advance in three jeeps and two all-terrain motorbikes. As the seventh day of the largest offensive in the Afghan war began, the ...

AUTHOR’S NOTE: We know it’s easy to criticize — and SOF certainly doesn’t want to appear to be a Monday-morning quarterback. However, information from U.S. forces at Kandahar and Bagram Air Fields tells us that Operation Anaconda mission planners violated just about every rule of the tactics manuals: underestimating the enemy’s strength and capabilities, over-reliance on air power for support, transport, and resupply in a high-mountain environment, lack of adequate preparatory and supporting fires, separation of forces, lack of mutual support between units … well, the list is extensive. As you’ll see in this article the entire operation seemed in...

New Zealand troops spied on al Qaeda forces in last week's fierce United States offensive in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, say Israeli journalists. The website debka.com said the elite Special Air Service troops were dropped on to mountains of eastern Afghanistan to spy on the build-up of al Qaeda and Taleban forces and guide 1500 US and Canadian troops in their assault, codenamed Operation Anaconda. They and special forces from Australia and Norway worked in teams of three to five soldiers, hiding in caves above the snowline for up to four weeks. Debka would not reveal its sources, but...