Headline for October 31st: Afghans and NATO kill 50 Taliban and surround 200.
From today's (November 1st) story, Taliban 'Arghandab' offensive halted: Canada:
"Other Afghan sources tell us that most of the Taliban fighters slipped out of the area overnight, which often happens under the cover of darkness."
But wait, I'm getting a sense of deja-vu here. There was operation Baaz Tsuka in December 2006:
HOWZ-E MADAD, Afghanistan - There is no place to hide, and nowhere to run for the 700 to 900 Taliban insurgents now squeezed into a box near here by NATO forces.
...which fizzled out when the surrounded Taliban fighters "moved elsewhere".
And there was Operation Medusa, in which NATO claimed to have another 700 fighters surrounded and then, when they slipped out the back way, claimed to have them "psychologically surrounded".
What an utterly pointless exercise.
5 comments:
Surely you aren't claiming the military brass is lying, with the help of the government, to make this war seem winnable?
Outrageous!
;)
Ok enough sarcasm. This is totally par for the course. If you need to lie, make things up and rely on "body count" metrics to prove you are winning, you have already lost.
Actually BCL, I believe that you are a little off-base here. Remeber the much-vaunted "Spring offensive", for which the Taliban were boasting that they were assembling 10,000 fighters?
It didn't happen. And it didn't happen because NATO troops kicked their asses so badly in operations like "Medusa" that they realized they could not possibly win in conventional warfare against our troops. So they resorted to techniques such as suicide bombers and IEDs.
At least that's my take on it.
To paraphrase Jayne Cobb:
It sure would be nice to have some helicopters about now...
Read, anon? Sure, like here
What about the people who are there, on the ground? Sure
Might I recommend Ghost Wars by Steve Coll, for a little history on Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict there.
So, meat-wrench, I've done lots of reading and I know lots of facts. But if you'd care to point to your sources of our "winning" that is more believable than a UN High Commissioner, a British Air Chief Marshall and a currently serving Canadian Officer. And no, Michael Yon doesn't count.
And if you think body count is how you score, then clearly you aren't old enough to remember anything older than the Gulf War. Google "Viet Nam" fuck nut. You know, the war where the US killed thousands more than they lost, but still lost the war, because they supported a corrupt government in an unpopular war.
Yeah, the MSM - all of them - is conspiring to cover up our glorious victory for what, to embarrass the Conservatives? You are nuts.
Where's the news that civilian deaths have dropped drastically lately? Where's the news about the reconstruction of infrastructure, the lineups to become police officers, the success of the Af'stan army, the reduction in weapons smuggled in from Iran? These are all happening. But because they aren't following the neo-com's playbook of "failure at all costs because all wars are bad" we will never, ever see this on The National.
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