Col. Peter Petronzio, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said Wednesday his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April. Some 2,200 U.S. Marines moved into the town of Garmser in Helmand province to clean the area of insurgents. Helmand province is the world's largest opium poppy growing region, the main ingredient in heroin. It is also the area with the highest level of insurgent activity in the country. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_re_as/afghan_violence;_ylt=AppdQd5sSQPeRdwyoKIn056s0NUE
Any numbers on how many innocent civilians, including women, the elderly and children they have killed? "Insurgents". How the hell can you be an insurgent in your own country!? That piece is strictly propaganda written by a government PR agent.
Well first there are a large number of Arab fighters or Pakistani taliban. Second you are an insurgent when you are attcking tour own government or country. 400 insurgents killed by 1 marine regiment in such a short time is a good accounting. Patton said that he's not trying to die for his country but make the other son of a birch die for his. You need to ask the taliban if they are concerned about limiting civilan causalties. Better yest ask the question to the Kmer Roufe that killed 1 million of their own people after the US abandoned the Cambodian people in 1975.
Bogart, there are not arab fighters and Pakistani taliban. What a load of nonsense. Anyone familiar with the region knows that there are Pashto speakers, Pashto and Farsi speaking Pakistanis, who live in the NWFP, a tribal area. The people being killed are the same ones who fought the Russians, and have defended the region against imperial crusaders for centuries. The entire Afghan mission is about gas pipelines for crissakes, not some silly search for Bin Laden. The damn Taliban are not, and have never been a threat to western security.
The future of this planet is on jeopardy. As Energy Crunch gets bigger, more Energy Wars coming on the way. P.S. Anyone living in an Energy-rich nation, move out NOW! The US Marines are coming to "Liberate" your country... of all your energy resources..
A lot of posters in the p&r like to whine about Iraq. But Iraq is winding down and the Marines are in Afganistan. It's pay back time.
The Taliban are not capable of that. Were any of the hijackers Taliban (which means they are a Pashto speaker, indigenuous to Afghanistan and Pakistan)? Al Queda was and is, however, they were trained by the CIA. They are a creation of Obama's pal Zbigniew Whatchama call it. Killing Afghan civilians, trying to defend their ancestral home as they always have, against the Soviets, against the British, to make up for our mistake in training and equipping Al Queda, is wrong. It's ethically wrong, it's morally wrong, it's spiritually wrong. It's just damn wrong Bogart. I respect you for what you are. A genuine article, conservative Cold Warrior. They don't make'em like you anymore, the current model is the queer neoconservative, which doesn't look as good in a suit and has no concept of history. That said, Cold War America is a fading vision. We're bankrupt, and the world no longer trusts us. Time for a new perspective.
Yeah, payback time. Maybe we can disfigure and maim some civilian children. Decapitate them with bombs and artillery. These poor friggin people who will never see a computer or listen to an MP3, bombed to extinction because some in the West have a blood lust that has nothing to do with justice, peace or freedom. It's about power money and control.
It is so true. People are unfortunate to be born in those countries.Look at how much people have suffered for no fault of theirs, in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, hundreds of wars, millions of people dying needlessly... It's about power money and control. I agree...
The Taliban and Al Qaeda have laptops and sophisticated video editing capability. Bin Laden is a structural engineer. These guys are a lot smarter and cunning than you think. Yeah, they don't listen to MP3s. The taliban has forbidden music.
You're conflating Taliban with Al Queda, exactly as the propagandists want you to. The idea is to see all Muslims as your enemy, even to the point where they will try to convince you that Shias are allied with Sunnis, which is preposterous to anyone who knows anything about the two sects. The Taliban are not Al Queda. The Taliban are regional, low tech and have no designs on foreign aggression or intervention. They are native to the land. They probably are not good people, but then Bush and Cheney aren't Gandhi and Martin Luther King either. Al Queda is our own creation. It's spawned from the same "do whatever it takes, at whatever cost" Cold War mentality you have. We created that monster, just as we created the monster of Saddam Hussein starting with his career as a CIA agent. Why you continue to conflate them, when I have explained this before, and even a cursory amount of research will verify what I am saying.... You're justifying murder Bogart. The murder of innocent people. If it's ok to kill Iraqi and Afghani civilians with our military (when it can be avoided no less) then how can we claim outrage when our citizenry is attacked on our soil? Isn't this an incredible double standard?
I can't help it, but I emotionally enjoy hearing about ANY muslim killed. Maybe it's that thing that happened a few years ago with those two tall buildings...
Americans don't hold muslims personally responible for 9/11. There were no anti-muslim riots and killings following 9/11. Americans shouldn't hate muslims. The Marines are taking it to our enemies and fighting within the rules of war.
What happened on 9-11 was not terrorism as much as a total lack of control on immigration. You let millions of muslims into the country and YES something like that will happen. Law of averages.
good. maybe we also do the same thing. next thing we know that freeport will kick out from papua, and newmount from borneo, exxon mobile from aceh and we stop using american product, we can buy our military equipments from china, europe and russia. most consumer products in indonesia already made in japan, china, korea anyway. that just from indonesia.