Marines in Afghanistan

I haven't mentioned this for OpSec reasons but it hit the news today so I can discuss it. A friend of mine, one of my Marines when I was in, an OIF veteran and now a Staff Sgt. with 4th Recon Bn, Marine Forces Reserve. Called me about a week ago because he said if anyone kept up with what was going on in Afghanistan it would be me. His son is deployed with 3/8 on a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). They were in Djibouti but were sent to Kuwait to prepare to go into Afghanistan if Obama would sign off on it. Well he must have signed because it's happening.
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/06/u-s-official-1400-more-marines-to-afghanistan/

The Marine Corps has also recently deployed a company of 16 M1 tanks to Afghanistan to support the Sangin fight. I do not believe they've actually been used in combat operations as of yet. This is the first U.S. deployment of tanks to OEF. (prior to this Canada was the only coalition force to employ tanks).

When 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, 3/5, took over in Sangin in early October they decided to go aggressive as opposed to a more low key strategy that had been in place prior to their arrival. On 08 October 2010 they took their first KIA and lost ten more over the next eight days. To date they have lost 24 Marines from their battalion KIA and another 90 or so WIA. They are however gaining the upper hand. In December they only lost 7 KIA for the entire month and increased the area under their control and increased operational tempo.
Early on because of the casualties many questioned the wisdom of going aggressive. Well it look's like it is paying off. 1st Recon Bn had been working in conjunction with 3/5 and was operating in the area between Sangin and the Kajaki Dam. They were so effective that the Taliban gave them the name "the Black Diamonds" because of the NVG mounts on their helmets.



A quote from a recent article:

"Nothing proves this more than the nickname the Recon Marines received from Taliban fighters — “Black Diamonds”. The name comes from the mount worn on the Recon Marines’ helmets that is in the shape of a diamond. For the Taliban, the Black Diamonds became a force they would avoid at all cost."

“We first heard it over the radio in Trek Nawa,” said Cpl. Micah Fulmer, a reconnaissance Marine with 1st Recon Bn. “It followed us to Sangin and they said, ‘Don’t mess with the ‘Black Diamonds.’”

more to follow....

 

Thanks for sharing it! Today i met an friend who was at Afghanistan the second time. He reported that it is getting harder at there.

Wish all the best for your and our troops, may they come home safe and healthy!

 

Thanks for sharing that...nice to get some first hand from the "boots on the ground." Just heard from a buddy of mine that I worked with a couple years back...he just graduated from Airborne school and is thinking he'll be headed the Afghan way in the summer.

 

...Continued

The "Black Diamond" nickname harkens back to a nickname the Marines got from the North Koreans during the Korean War. The "yellow legs" because of the canvas leggings they wore. Other forces in Korea had by this time adopted the black combat boot.

quote:
"Do not attack the First Marine Division. Leave the yellowlegs alone. Strike the American Army."

- Orders given to Communist troops in the Korean War; shortly afterward, the Marines were ordered to not wear their khaki leggings to keep the enemy from immediately fleeing.

Well, a couple days ago another event occured. The Marines in the Sangin area got the largest tribe of taliban (little T) to agree to come over and help fight the Taliban (big T, Mullah Omars group). This was largely a result of the thumping they have been taking from 1st Recon Bn and 3/5.

From The Telegraph:
Afghanistan: Sangin insurgents agree to stand up to Taliban

The leaders of the largest tribe in southern Helmand have pledged to halt insurgent attacks and stand up to the Taliban as part of a deal that the US hopes could help secure peace.



The Taliban stronghold has been the scene of some of the worst fighting in the war Photo: AP
7:00AM GMT 04 Jan 2011

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, who commands coalition forces in the southwest, said the deal was struck between local elders in the Sangin district and Helmand Governor Gulabuddin Mangal with the consultation of coalition forces.
The Taliban stronghold has been the scene of some of the worst fighting in the war, but tribal elders have agreed to hand in their weapons and join the peace process.

However it is unlikely that the violence will cease immediately in Sangin as the die-hard Taliban leadership under the command of Mullah Mohammad Omar, which is based in the Pakistani city of Quetta, will keep fighting.

But the cooperation of the tribal leaders in the effort to rid the area of insurgents could help shorten the war in one of the most violent places in Afghanistan.

In the past four years, more than 100 British troops died in Sangin and more than a dozen Marine have lost their lives since their deployment in mid-October. Getting local tribal elders to renounce the Taliban and join the political process has been a key part of the US counterinsurgency plan in Afghanistan.

As part of the deal, Maj Gen Mills said "there was also a pledge from the elders that fighting would cease by insurgents against coalition forces and foreign fighters would be expelled from the area."
He added that "we are cautiously optimistic of this agreement and will monitor whether it leads to reduced insurgent influence and a rejection of illicit activity."
With the nearly decade-old war growing increasing unpopular in the United States and in many NATO capitals, success on the battlefield is an important part of President Barack Obama's plan to begin a gradual withdrawal of American forces in July 2011, and eventually hand over control of the country's security to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
The deal was made with the Alikozai tribe, the largest in the Sarwan-Qalah area of the Upper Sangin Valley. The tribe controls the majority of the 30 villages located in a 10-square-mile region, said Mangal spokesman Daoud Ahmadi. The tribe last rose up against the Taliban in 2007 but failed because of a lack of resources and coalition help.
Sangin is a strategic region for the Taliban and one they do not want to lose. It is a key crossroads to funnel drugs, weapons and fighters throughout Helmand and into neighbouring Kandahar province, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban. It is also one of the last remaining sanctuaries in Helmand where the Taliban can freely process the opium and heroin that largely fund the insurgency.

From the Washington Post: 05Jan2011

"In 2007, the Alikozai rose up against the Alizai and sought to evict non-indigenous Taliban fighters, but Alikozai requests for help from the British military were refused because of concern about getting involved in what appeared to be a tribal dispute. The Alizai eventually killed several Alikozai tribal leaders, and many Alikozai tribesmen had little choice but to surrender and join the Taliban.
The dynamics changed when the Marines replaced British forces in summer 2010. They increased the tempo of offensive operations and struck back harder at the all of the insurgents, including the Alikozai. In mid-October, a Marine reconnaissance battalion swooped into the Alikozai area and conducted a blistering barrage of attacks that commanders estimate killed more than 250 insurgents.
"That convinced the elders," said one senior Marine officer involved in the operation. "They began to see the handwriting on the wall."

Now this is where I need to step in and say a thing or two about news stories. I learned a long time ago when analyzing intelligence that you have to wade through all these stories, look for the hard data, and disregard the opinion. Remember many of the conclusions reached in these stories are made by reporters that really don't undersatand military operations and virtually all have some bias. Assemble enough bits of hard data and you can construct an accurate picture. In this case the writer is providing an unfair picture of the British troops, if you will continue on in the thread I will provide what I feel is the true picture. I'll provide the data, you analize it and decide what the truth is. I have served with the British, they are fine, professional troops.
Also this is where our study of history comes into play. History does repeat itself but you don't see it in the big picture, it is in the underlying factors. That's where you rogues have an advantage in understanding what's happening, you look at not just what happened but why it happened.

continued.....

 

Thanks for the artical I saw it on internet at school but was unable to read it ima fanof force reacon marines.

 

Thanks for that, very interesting...augers well that the Sangin are siding with the Americans...These mob usually only side with the group they think are going to win...

 

continued.....

Background:
When the surge in Afghanistan started the Marines were sent into Helmand Province and decided they needed to adopt a different strategy to, built upon their experiences in Al Anbar Province Iraq. The powers that be opposed them because they were too institutionalized in their thinking. When fighting a counter-insurgency fight, you have to think outside the box. Also they wanted to split the Marines up piecemeal and use them to reinforce their efforts all over Afghanistan. The Marines opposed this, they wanted to fight as cohesive force, that's how they are most effective. Here is an article from the Washington Post:

At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?


A Marine operation began last month to flush the Taliban out of Marja in central Helmand. Some U.S. officials question whether the operation is the best use of Marine resources. (Andrea Bruce For The Washington Post)


By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2010

DELARAM, AFGHANISTAN -- Home to a dozen truck stops and a few hundred family farms bounded by miles of foreboding desert, this hamlet in southwestern Afghanistan is far from a strategic priority for senior officers at the international military headquarters in Kabul. One calls Delaram, a day's drive from the nearest city, "the end of the Earth." Another deems the area "unrelated to our core mission" of defeating the Taliban by protecting Afghans in their cities and towns.
U.S. Marine commanders have a different view of the dusty, desolate landscape that surrounds Delaram. They see controlling this corner of remote Nimruz province as essential to promoting economic development and defending the more populated parts of southern Afghanistan.
The Marines are constructing a vast base on the outskirts of town that will have two airstrips, an advanced combat hospital, a post office, a large convenience store and rows of housing trailers stretching as far as the eye can see. By this summer, more than 3,000 Marines -- one-tenth of the additional troops authorized by President Obama in December -- will be based here.
With Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin reducing U.S. forces looming over the horizon, the Marines have opted to wage the war in their own way.
"If we're going to succeed here, we have to experiment and take risks," said Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, the top Marine commander in Afghanistan. "Just doing what everyone else is doing isn't going to cut it."
The Marines are pushing into previously ignored Taliban enclaves. They have set up a first-of-its-kind school to train police officers. They have brought in a Muslim chaplain to pray with local mullahs and deployed teams of female Marines to reach out to Afghan women.
The Marine approach -- creative, aggressive and, at times, unorthodox -- has won many admirers within the military. The Marine emphasis on patrolling by foot and interacting with the population, which has helped to turn former insurgent strongholds along the Helmand River valley into reasonably stable communities with thriving bazaars and functioning schools, is hailed as a model of how U.S. forces should implement counterinsurgency strategy.
But the Marines' methods, and their insistence that they be given a degree of autonomy not afforded to U.S. Army units, also have riled many up the chain of command in Kabul and Washington, prompting some to refer to their area of operations in the south as "Marineistan." They regard the expansion in Delaram and beyond as contrary to the population-centric approach embraced by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and they are seeking to impose more control over the Marines.
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, recently noted that the international security force in Afghanistan feels as if it comprises 42 nations instead of 41 because the Marines act so independently from other U.S. forces.
"We have better operational coherence with virtually all of our NATO allies than we have with the U.S. Marine Corps," said a senior Obama administration official involved in Afghanistan policy.
Some senior officials at the White House, at the Pentagon and in McChrystal's headquarters would rather have many of the 20,000 Marines who will be in Afghanistan by summer deploy around Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, to assist in a U.S. campaign to wrest the area from Taliban control instead of concentrating in neighboring Helmand province and points west. According to an analysis conducted by the National Security Council, fewer than 1 percent of the country's population lives in the Marine area of operations.
They question whether a large operation that began last month to flush the Taliban out of Marja, a poor farming community in central Helmand, is the best use of Marine resources. Although it has unfolded with fewer than expected casualties and helped to generate a perception of momentum in the U.S.-led military campaign, the mission probably will tie up two Marine battalions and hundreds of Afghan security forces until the summer.
"What the hell are we doing?" the senior official said. "Why aren't all 20,000 Marines in the population belts around Kandahar city right now? It's [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar's capital. If you want to stuff it to Mullah Omar, you make progress in Kandahar. If you want to communicate to the Taliban that there's no way they're returning, you show progress in Kandahar."

Marines support Marines
Until earlier this month, McChrystal lacked operational control over the Marines, which would have allowed him to move them to other parts of the country. That power rested with a three-star Marine general at the U.S. Central Command. He and other senior Marine commanders insisted that Marines in Afghanistan have a contiguous area of operations -- effectively precluding them from being split up and sent to Kandahar -- because they think it is essential the Marines are supported by Marine helicopters and logistics units, which are based in Helmand, instead of relying on the Army.
Concern about the arrangement reached the White House. In early March, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who heads the Central Command, issued an order giving McChrystal operational control of Marine forces in Afghanistan, according to senior defense officials. But the new authority vested in McChrystal -- the product of extensive negotiations among military lawyers -- still requires Central Command approval for any plan to disaggregate infantry units from air and logistics support, which will limit his ability to move them, the defense officials said.
"At the end of the day, not a lot has changed," said a Marine general, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as did several other senior officers and officials, to address sensitive command issues. "There's still a caveat that prevents us from being cherry-picked."
The Marine demand to be supported by their own aviators and logisticians has roots in the World War II battles for Guadalcanal and Tarawa. Marines landing on the Pacific islands did not receive the support they had expected from Navy ships and aircraft. Since then, Marine commanders have insisted on deploying with their own aviation and supply units. They did so in Vietnam, and in Iraq.
Despite the need to travel with an entourage, the Marines are willing to move fast. The commandant of the Corps, Gen. James T. Conway, offered to provide one-third of the forces Obama authorized in December, and to get them there quickly. Some arrived within weeks. By contrast, many of the Army units that comprise the new troop surge have yet to leave the United States.
"The Marines are a double-edged sword for McChrystal," one senior defense official said. "He got them fast, but he only gets to use them in one place."
Marine commanders note that they did not choose to go to Helmand -- they were asked to go there by McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, because British forces in the area were unable to contain the intensifying insurgency. But once they arrived, they became determined to show they could rescue the place, in much the same way they helped to turn around Anbar province in Iraq.
They also became believers in Helmand's strategic importance. "You cannot fix Kandahar without fixing Helmand," Nicholson said. "The insurgency there draws support from the insurgency here."

'Mullahpalooza tour'
The Marine concentration in one part of the country -- as opposed to Army units, which are spread across Afghanistan -- has yielded a pride of place. As it did in Anbar, the Corps is sending some of its most talented young officers to Helmand.
The result has been a degree of experimentation and innovation unseen in most other parts of the country. Although they account for half of the Afghan population, women had been avoided by military forces, particularly in the conservative south, because it is regarded as taboo for women to interact with males with whom they are not related. In an effort to reach out to them, the Marines have established "female engagement teams."
Made up principally of female Marines who came to Afghanistan to work in support jobs, the teams accompany combat patrols and seek to sit down with women in villages. Working with female translators, team members answer questions, dispense medical assistance and identify reconstruction needs.
Master Sgt. Julia Watson said the effort has had one major unexpected consequence. "Men have really opened up after they see us helping their wives and sisters," she said.

The Marines have sought to jump into another void by establishing their own police academy at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand instead of waiting for the U.S. military's national training program to provide recruits. The Marines also are seeking to do something that the military has not been able to do on a national scale: reduce police corruption by accepting only recruits vouched for by tribal elders.
"This is a shame culture," said Terry Walker, a retired Marine drill instructor who helps run the academy. "If they know they are accountable to their elders, they will be less likely to misbehave."
Then there's what Marines call the "mullahpalooza tour." Although most U.S. military units have avoided direct engagement with religious leaders in Afghanistan, Nicholson has brought over Lt. Cmdr. Abuhena Saifulislam, one of only two imams in the U.S. Navy, to spend a month meeting -- and praying with -- local mullahs, reasoning that the failure to interact with them made it easier for them to be swayed by the Taliban.
At his first session with religious leaders in Helmand, the participants initially thought the clean-shaven Saifulislam was an impostor. Then he led the group in noontime prayers. By the end, everyone wanted to take a picture with him.
"The mullahs of Afghanistan are the core of society," he said. "Bypassing them is counterproductive."


Reviving a ghost town
In December, columns of Marine armored vehicles punched into the city of Now Zad in northern Helmand. Once the second-largest town in the province, it had been almost completely emptied of its residents over the past four years as insurgents mined the roads and buildings with hundreds of homemade bombs. Successive units of British and U.S. troops had been largely confined to a Fort Apache-like base in the town. Every time they ventured out, they'd be shot at or bombed.
To Nicholson and his commanders, reclaiming the town, which the Marines accomplished within a few weeks, has been a crucial step in demonstrating to Helmand residents that U.S. forces are committed to getting rid of the Taliban. To other military officials in Afghanistan, however, the mission seemed contrary to McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy.
"If our focus is supposed to be protecting the population, why are we focusing on a ghost town?" said a senior officer at the NATO regional headquarters in Kandahar.
Nicholson notes that Helmand's governor supported the operation, as did many local tribal leaders. Hundreds of residents have returned in recent weeks, and at least 65 shops have reopened, according to Marine officers stationed in Now Zad.
"Protecting the population means allowing people to return to their homes," he said. "We've taken a grim, tough place, a place where there was no hope, and we've given it a future."
Nicholson now wants Marine units to push through miles of uninhabited desert to establish control of a crossing point for insurgents, drugs and weapons on the border with Pakistan. And he wants to use the new base in Delaram to mount more operations in Nimruz, a part of far southwestern Afghanistan deemed so unimportant that it is one of the only provinces where there is no U.S. or NATO reconstruction team.
"This is a place where the enemy are moving in numbers," he said, referring to increased Taliban activity along a newly built highway that bisects the province. "We need to clean it up."
Nicholson contends that if his forces were kept only in key population centers in Helmand, insurgents would come right up to the gates of towns.
Other U.S. and NATO military officials say that what the Marines want to do makes sense only if there were not a greater demand for troops elsewhere. Because the Marines cannot easily be moved to Kandahar, U.S. and British military and diplomatic officials have begun discussions to expand the Marine footprint into more populous parts of Helmand with greater insurgent activity where British forces have been outmatched. That shift could occur as soon as this summer, when a Marine-run NATO regional headquarters is established in Helmand.
Until then, however, Marine commanders want to keep moving.
"The clock is ticking," Nicholson told members of an intelligence battalion that recently arrived in Afghanistan. "The drawdown will begin next year. We still have a lot to do -- and we don't have a lot of time to do it."

Several things I'd like you to consider. Helmand was and is the most dangerous province in Afghanistan, the latest figures from ICasualties there have been 662 NATO deaths in Helmand since the start of the war, 336 in Kandahar Province. One of the biggest hurdles to conducting a counter-insurgency operation like we're fighting now is avoidance of civilian casualties. Doesn't it make more sense to kill the insurgents where they're at (Helmand) and avoid fighting around the largest population center Kandahar? BTW, the U.S. Army has done just fine around Kandahar with it's offensive operations without the Marines and the fighting in Helmand has prevented the Taliban from reinforcing it's forces around Kandahar. Now-Zad is now a thriving community and the SecDef several months ago used it as an example of success in Afghanistan. Deleram, which just happens to be the terminus of the main east-west highway connecting Kandahar with the Iranian border, is secure and has been turned over to Georgian soldiers of their 32nd Infantry battalion.

 

Situation:

Afghanistans location and the reason for it's strategic importance. Note: on the map below Garmser is in Helmand Province.

Pakistan is a nuclear power. It is officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, while the government itself is pro-western, the population, 170.6 million, has sympathies for the radical Islamic groups because of their propaganda abilities in painting the current unrest as a religious war, West vs. Islam. About 75% of the population are Sunni and another 20% Shia. Ethnically the largest groups are Punjabi and Pashtuns. Pakistan borders Afghanistan all the way from it's southwest corner all the way to it's northeast tip.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is the really bad boy on the block, it is basically fighting a proxy war against the west. Weapons, money, explosives, expertise, propaganda and covert manipulation of public opinion in the region flow out of Iran. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the west by Iraq.



Iran with a population of almost 77 million, is 90% Shia, 8% Sunni. Iran is also ethnically 65% Persian, other ethnic groups are represented but in very small numbers. As an example Arabs are 2%, Kurds 7%, Turkmen 1%. This is a point of friction between Iran and it's neighbors going back to the Persian Empire.

Iraq with a population of 31 million, is, ethnically, about 75% Arab, 20% Kurd. 97% of the population is Islamic, split about 70% Shia, 30% Sunni. Prior to the 2003 invasion the Sunni's dominated the government and the Shia were somewhat oppressed. Because of the large Shia population, Iran exerts a great deal of covert influence in Iraq. Because of the ethnic split Arab vs Persian, overtly Iran is very mistrusted.
Iraq is bordered by Jordan to the west, Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south.

Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Has a population of 28 million and is ethnically, 46% Pashtun, 37% Tajik. Afghanistan is 99% Islamic, with 80% Sunni, 19% Shia.

The reason I've included the Shia-Sunni split is bcause it's fairly synonymous with the Protestant-Catholic split that was an underlying factor in conflicts in the west for centuries. In recent history, think Northern Ireland, further back, the Thirty Years Wars, and if you look, it was a factor/friction point, to varying degrees in the relations of European powers for centuries. I've included the ethnicity because it helps to understand how complex the situation actually is, in the west there is the generalized perception that we're fighting Islamic Arabs. Persians and Arabs really don't like one another, nor do Kurds. Afghanistan and Pakistan are very similar ethnically and religiously. Much of the violence, perceived in the west as Islamic vs western is actually, Sunni vs Shia, especially in Iraq. If we ally ourselves too closely to the Shia in Iraq we risk alienating the Sunni majorities in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Worldwide the percentages of the two sects are 80% Sunni, 20% Shia.

Taliban/Al-Queda-often used synonymously for terrorists in the west, they are very distinctive groups. The taliban originated in Afghanistan after the Russian withdrawl to redress crimes committed against the Afghan people by the warlords and drug lords that stepped into the power vacuum and controlled the country. The group grew in power and eventually took over most of the country. They then became radicalized and started repressing the people and implemented a very strict version of Sharia law. They were still however a basically localized threat. Al Queda on the otherhand was a worldwide radical Sunni Islamic movement that desires to eliminate western influence and establish an Islamic Caliphate.
When Al-Queda struck on September 11th, Bin Laden, the Al-Queda leader sought refuge in Afghanistan. Based upon the cultural/religious imperative that those seeking shelter must be given it, Mullah Omar gave his protection to Bin-Laden. When the U.S. demanded that the Taliban surrender Bin-Laden or face military action, Omar went to him and asked if he was involved. He assured Omar he was not, and they refused to surrender him. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan, defeated the Taliban and Omar and Bin-Laden fled to Pakistan where they sought refuge with the Pashtun. That's where the little "t" Taliban and big "T" Taliban comes into being.
When the big "T" Taliban was removed from power, warlords and tribal elements moved into the power vacuum. The, little "T", local taliban/tribal groups are composed of local indigenous persons. The big "T" Taliban is based in Pakistan, operates in Afghanistan and is composed mostly of foreign fighters, Jihadist's that come from all over the world. The big "T" Taliban is primarily interested with Afghanistan. Al-Queda, also composed of foreign fighters from all over the world, is concerned with worldwide terrorist activities but the two groups do cooperate when their seperate interests coincide.

 

Interesting statement, and it shows that Iran is a dangerous player inthat game with some unknown aces and a tricky gambler too! Good work!

 

Good news and bad news coming out of Afghanistan.

From the New York Times

February 21, 2011

Midlevel Taliban Admit to a Rift With Top Leaders

By CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Recent defeats and general weariness after nine years of war are creating fissures between the Taliban’s top leadership based in Pakistan and midlevel field commanders, who have borne the brunt of the fighting and are reluctant to return to some battle zones, Taliban members said in interviews.
After suffering defeats with the influx of thousands of new American troops in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand last year, many Taliban fighters retreated across the border to the safety of Pakistan. They are now coming under pressure from their leaders to return to Afghanistan to step up the fight again, a Taliban commander said. Many are hesitant to do so, at least for now.
“I have talked to some commanders, and they are reluctant to fight,” one 45-year-old commander who has been with the Taliban since its founding in 1994 said in an interview in this southern city. He spoke on condition he not be identified because he was in hiding from American and government forces. “Definitely there is disagreement between the field commanders and the leaders over their demands to go and fight.”
The differences point not just to the increasing stresses on the battlefield for midlevel Taliban commanders like him, but also to the difficulty of ending the insurgency as long as the Taliban’s top leadership has sanctuary in Pakistan, which has long protected and sponsored the Taliban.
Secure across the border, and tightly controlled by Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, the top Taliban leadership remains uncompromising. At the urging of their protectors in Pakistan, Taliban members say, they continue to push midlevel Taliban commanders back across the border to carry on the insurgency, which extends Pakistan’s influence in southern Afghanistan.
The midlevel commanders have little choice but to comply, as they also depend on sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they maintain their families, say residents in Kandahar who know the Taliban well. The Taliban commander said in his interview that the field commanders would obey their orders to resume the fight, however reluctant they might be.
In a meeting across the border in Pakistan this month, Taliban leaders ordered each commander to send four or five men back into their home areas to resume operations by planting bombs, he said. “While commanders are worried for their lives, they have to go, or at least send some people,” he said.
Some of the dissension in Taliban ranks stems from raids by American forces, which have been specifically aimed at eliminating Taliban field commanders. The raids have taken a toll on the quality of the Taliban’s fighting forces and exacerbated differences between the fighters on the ground and their leaders giving orders from their sanctuary in Pakistan.
One close supporter of the Taliban in Helmand Province said that the insurgents had lost 500 fighters there last year, including virtually all the known commanders. Those who survived remonstrated with the leadership in Pakistan over why they had to sacrifice so many men.
The accounts of divisions between the Taliban leadership and its field commanders come on top of reports from American military officials of new frictions within the top Taliban leadership, which is believed to be based in the western Pakistani city of Quetta.
In an assessment of the war written in January to his troops, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said that there were “numerous reports of unprecedented discord among the members of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban senior leadership body.”
A NATO intelligence officer in Kandahar said that he had received one report of a knife fight in a Taliban leadership meeting in December, which he said was a sign of growing internal tensions. People have to leave their guns outside the meeting room, which explains why someone might pull a knife, the officer said.
He also cited divisions over a suicide bombing at a wedding in Kandahar Province last year that was organized by a more radical field commander, without the approval of the Taliban leadership. Some of the younger, more radical commanders have come up through the ranks to replace those who have been killed.
During the fighting in the fall, the Taliban commanders sometimes found their calls for help going unanswered, according to American military officials. One group, in Sia Choy, in the Zhare District of Kandahar Province, appealed for help from commanders to no avail.
Taliban groups to the north, in Arghandab, also flatly refused to help, said Capt. Matthew Crawford, a senior intelligence officer with the 101st Airborne Division.
“There is a definite reluctance to come back into this area,” Captain Crawford said. “I don’t think they were prepared for how we approached the problem.”
The raids have eroded Taliban morale, said Maj. Chris Cavin, chief of operations for the Second Brigade Combat Team from the 101st Airborne Division, fighting in Zhare.
“It created a sense of anxiety,” he said. “Now at night you start thinking, ‘Wow, that guy got taken, that guy got taken.’ You have got to start switching places in the middle of the night. You have got to start being careful how you communicate with others, because, are you a target or not?”
The Taliban commander interviewed said he did not stay more than a day in any one place. He looks like any other Afghan from the countryside, tall, bearded and wrapped in a cotton shawl. He claims to have passed through military and police checkpoints without difficulty.
He wears leather shoes with no socks, despite the near freezing temperature, and sat without hesitation on the cold floor of the unfurnished meeting place for an interview.
He admitted that the Taliban forces had taken a battering in the recent fighting and that some were losing heart. “Compared to two years ago when people were willingly going to fight, that mood is reduced,” he said. “We are tired of fighting and we say this among ourselves. But this is our vow, not to leave our country to foreigners.”
Taliban commanders were even discussing the option of peace talks, but say they will only negotiate with the Afghan government after foreign forces leave, he said.
The Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, recently exhorted his men in an audio tape to keep fighting, the commander said.
“His words have a very powerful effect on us,” the Taliban commander said. “We obey his orders, every Talib does, and we believe in him.”
Despite the setbacks, the commander made light of the Taliban’s loss of territory around Kandahar in recent months. Taliban casualties were lower than claimed by NATO forces, he said.
Most of his men had pulled out and would wait and prepare for an offensive in the spring when the weather is warmer and the trees provide cover, he said.
“It will not be difficult,” he said. “We do not bring in tanks and heavy equipment. What we bring is very light and simple,” he said.
In the end the Taliban would return to their own land, he said. “This is our country, these are our people, and we have only to retreat and wait and use other tactics.”

Afghan employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Looks like the hard fighting is taking effect.

Now the bad news, February has been a bad month for our NATO Allies. Seven British, three Germans, two Australian, one New Zealander, one serviceman from France and one from Finland, have been killed this month.

 

Semper fi...Im not sure where I read it but Brit light skinned vehicles were escorted by dutch or german Leopard mbt.s in 2010..suppose they may have been Canadian...picky though I have nothing but utmost respect for the 'dooers' of the USMC.

 

Mods...do you not think this thread deserves to be stickied somewhere?

 

I try to understand what happens to our troops there and take press reports with a grain of salt knowing I may not know what has happened accurately until the troops are home to report it. Sometimes they do not want to talk or dwell on the things they had to endure. I just support them because they fight for us in the most difficult of circumstances both at the site of their combat and with all the difficulties of military life for their familys at home. Thanks for a little more news from a precious perspective on what goes on.

 

You've gotta love Devil Docs"...

2 awarded Silver Stars for bravery in Afghanistan | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times


2 awarded Silver Stars for bravery in Afghanistan

On two successive mornings in July, Joseph Gould woke up at 3 a.m. with an overwhelming need to pray for his son, a Navy corpsman deployed in Afghanistan. "I awoke and I felt like Peter was in trouble," he said.
On the third morning, also at 3 a.m., Joseph and Malissa Gould got a telephone call from their son, Petty Officer 3rd Class Peter A. Gould. The Marine Corps squad to which he was assigned had been ambushed by the Taliban in the Garmsir district of Helmand province.
Gould, 24, downplayed his injuries. "He said he only had a few cuts and scratches," his father remembers. He made no mention of his actions during the morning-long firefight in which the Marines were attacked from three directions by 35 to 40 Taliban fighters armed with machine guns, improvised explosive devices and other weapons.
The Marines from Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment who were with Gould during the fight later praised his heroism to the brass. On Friday, at a ceremony at Camp Pendleton, Gould was awarded a Silver Star for bravery as the squad medic on that brutal morning.
Within moments of the patrol being attacked, Gould ran through enemy fire to rescue a wounded Marine. As the battle continued, Gould was severely wounded by a shrapnel blast to his face and neck from a roadside bomb but he continued to administer aid to "my" Marines. "His inspirational actions and mental toughness under intense enemy fire led directly to saving at least one Marine’s life that day," according to the Silver Star citation read to a gathering of Marines, family members and friends at a parade deck.
A second Silver Star also was awarded Friday to the family of Marine Cpl. Larry Harris Jr.
During the same attack, Harris was attempting to carry a Marine to safety when he stepped on a roadside bomb. Harris, a fire team leader, died instantly but the Marine that he was carrying survived.
The citation presented to his parents and widow lauds Harris for "his bold leadership, wise judgment and complete dedication to duty."
Harris and Gould were “exceptional heroes," the battalion commander said.
The award to Gould is proof anew of the significant role of Navy corpsmen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dozens have been cited for bravery; 42 have been killed in combat.
Marine infantry "grunts" are famously clannish and standoffish with outsiders, even from non-infantry Marines. But their corpsman, always called "Doc," is quickly accepted, Lt. Col. Fridrik Fridriksson told the gathering.
The term "Doc" is "a magical password to let a sailor come into the brotherhood of Marines," said Fridriksson, the current battalion commander. "These corpsmen do everything to take care of us -- and they don’t ask anything in return."
Gould, one of eight children in the family, grew up in Syracuse, Kan., a farming community on the border with Colorado. One brother served in the Air Force, another was a Marine who served two combat tours in Iraq. Their father is the principal of a Christian high school .
Gould has undergone numerous surgeries to repair his injuries, with more scheduled. He will leave active duty in June and hopes to attend UC Santa Barbara to study medicine, according to his girlfriend, Jackie Baysinger.
She said Gould had not wanted her or his parents to attend the Silver Star ceremony because he was embarrassed by the fuss being made over his actions, which he believed to be nothing out of the ordinary.
Swarmed by reporters, Gould was reluctant to talk. His eyes welled with tears as he remembered Harris and other Marines killed during the battalion’s seven-month deployment. He was asked about the role of the corpsman during combat.
"You do what you have to do to get everyone home safely," he said quietly. "It’s in the job description."
-- Tony Perry at Camp Pendleton

 

More on Cpl. Harris.....

GOV. RITTER ORDERS FLAGS LOWERED TO HONOR MARINE
Gov. Bill Ritter has ordered that U.S. and Colorado flags be lowered to half staff at state and federal facilities throughout Colorado on Wednesday, July 14, 2010, in honor of Marine Cpl. Larry D. Harris, 24, of Thornton.
Cpl. Harris was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan while carrying a wounded Marine to safety July 1. Harris graduated from Boulder High School in 2003.
A funeral service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in Denver.


A press release from Westboro Baptist Church.....

GOD HATES AMERICA & IS KILLING OUR TROOPS IN HIS WRATH.
Military funerals have become pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy, where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom & play taps to a fallen fool.
This message to be preached in respectful, lawful proximity to the memorial of Cpl. Larry D. Harris, Jr.
Wed., July 14, at 9:15 a.m.
Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church
1500 S. Dayton Street, Denver, CO
Cpl. Harris gave his life for the Constitutional right of WBC to warn America. To deny us our First Amendment rights is to declare to the world that Cpl. Harris died in vain, and that America is a nation of sodomite hypocrites.
"Except the Lord build the house, They labor in vain that build it; Except the Lord keep the city, The watchman waketh but in vain." Psa. 127:1.
The Lord no longer builds the American house; nor does the Lord watch over and protect America. These soldiers are dying for the homosexual and other sins of America. God is now America's enemy, and God Himself is fighting against America.
THANK GOD FOR IEDs.


Cpl. Larry Donell Harris, Jr.
Rest in Peace Marine

 

From the L.A. Times....



Marines pay a price trying to secure an Afghan hot spot

What happened to them in Sangin district of Helmand province shows the sacrifices in a campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban in a stronghold and helping extricate the U.S. from a decadelong war.


January 22, 2011|By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Camp Pendleton — Marines tell of snipers who fire from "murder holes" cut into mud-walled compounds. Fighters who lie in wait in trenches dug around rough farmhouses clustered together for protection. Farmers who seem to tip the Taliban to the outsiders' every movement , often with signals that sound like birdcalls.
When the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, deployed to the Sangin district of Afghanistan's Helmand province in late September, the British soldiers who had preceded them warned the Americans that the Taliban would be waiting nearly everywhere for a chance to kill them.


But the Marines, ordered to be more aggressive than the British had been, quickly learned that the Taliban wasn't simply waiting.
In Sangin, the Taliban was coming after them.
In four years there, the British had lost more than 100 soldiers, about a third of all their nation's losses in the war.
In four months, 24 Marines with the Camp Pendleton-based Three-Five have been killed.
More than 140 others have been wounded, some of them catastrophically, losing limbs and the futures they had imagined for themselves.
The Marines' families have been left devastated, or dreading the knock on the door.
"We are a brokenhearted but proud family," Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly said. He spoke not only of the battalion: His son 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed leading a patrol in Sangin.
The Three-Five had drawn a daunting task: Push into areas where the British had not gone, areas where Taliban dominance was uncontested, areas where the opium poppy crop whose profits help fuel the insurgency is grown, areas where bomb makers lash together explosives to kill and terrorize in Sangin and neighboring Kandahar province.
The result? The battalion with the motto "Get Some" has been in more than 408 firefights and found 434 buried roadside bombs. An additional 122 bombs exploded before they could be discovered, in many instances killing or injuring Afghan civilians who travel the same roads as the Marines.
Some enlisted personnel believe that the Taliban has developed a "Vietnam-like" capability to pick off a platoon commander or a squad or team leader. A lieutenant assigned as a replacement for a downed colleague was shot in the neck on his first patrol.
At the confluence of two rivers in Helmand province in the country's south, Sangin is a mix of rocky desert and stretches of farmland where corn and pomegranates are grown. There are rolling hills, groves of trees and crisscrossing canals. Farmers work their fields and children play on dusty paths.
"Sangin is one of the prettier places in Helmand, but that's very deceiving," said Sgt. Dean Davis, a Marine combat correspondent. "It's a very dangerous place, it's a danger you can feel."
Three men arrived in Sangin last fall knowing they would face the fight of their lives.
1st Lt. John Chase Barghusen, 26, of Madison, Wis., had asked to be transferred to the Three-Five so he could return to Afghanistan.
Cpl. Derek A. Wyatt, 25, of Akron, Ohio, an infantry squad leader, was excited about the mission but worried about his wife, pregnant with their first child.
Lance Cpl. Juan Dominguez, 26, of Deming, N.M., an infantry "grunt," had dreamed of going into combat as a Marine since he was barely out of grade school.
What happened to them in Sangin shows the price being paid for a campaign to cripple the Taliban in a key stronghold and help extricate America from a war now in its 10th year.
———
When Lance Cpl. Juan Dominguez slipped down a small embankment while out on patrol and landed on a buried bomb, the explosion could be heard for miles.
"It had to be a 30- to 40-pounder," Dominguez said from his bed at the military hospital in Bethesda, Md. "I remember crying out for my mother and then crying out for morphine. I remember them putting my legs on top of me."
His legs were severed above the knee, and his right arm was mangled and could not be saved. A Navy corpsman, risking sniper fire, rushed to Dominguez and stopped the bleeding. On the trip to the field hospital, Dominguez prayed.
"I figured this was God's will, so I told him: 'If you're going to take me, take me now,'" he said.
His memories of Sangin are vivid. "The part we were in, it's hell," he said. "It makes your stomach turn. The poor families there, they get conned into helping the Taliban."
Like many wounded Marines, Dominguez never saw a Taliban fighter.
"We don't know who we're fighting over there, who's friendly and who isn't," he said. "They're always watching us. We're basically fighting blind."
His mother, Martha Dominguez, was at home the night of Oct. 23 when a Marine came to her door to tell her that her son had been gravely injured. She left her job right away and rushed to his bedside in Bethesda. She's never been far away since.
When Dominguez's father, Reynaldo, first visited the hospital, he was overcome by emotion and had to leave.
"Mothers are stronger at times like this," Martha Dominguez said.
Juan Dominguez has since been fitted with prosthetic legs and a "bionic" arm and is undergoing daily therapy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He and his girlfriend have broken up.
"She wanted someone with legs," his mother said.
When he's discharged, Dominguez wants to return to Deming to be near his 8-year-old daughter, who lives with his ex-wife, and open a business painting and restoring cars.
But his immediate goal is to be at Camp Pendleton, in uniform and walking on his prosthetic legs, when the battalion returns in the spring.
———
By some accounts, no district in Afghanistan is outpacing Sangin in "kinetic activity," military jargon for combat.
"Sangin is a straight-up slug match. No winning of hearts and minds. No enlightened counterinsurgency projects to win affections," said Bing West, a Marine veteran who was an assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan. "Instead, the goal is to kill the Taliban every day on every patrol. Force them to flee the Sangin Valley or die."
When the Marines of the Three-Five arrived in Sangin, many were on their first deployment, eager to live up to the legacy the battalion earned at the battles of Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Okinawa and the Chosin Reservoir.
Some were with the battalion during the 2004 fight in Fallouja, Iraq, the bloodiest single battle the U.S. Marine Corps had fought since Vietnam. And now they were in Sangin, a place they called "the Fallouja of Afghanistan."
Marine brass, to whom heroes of the past stand as the measure of all things, say the Three-Five is writing its own chapter of combat history. Marine Commandant Gen. James F. Amos, who spent Christmas in Sangin, said the Marines there are writing "a story of heroism, of courage, of fidelity."
A victory over the Taliban in Sangin, American officials hope, would bolster the confidence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government and possibly push the Taliban into a negotiated settlement, allowing the United States to withdraw its troops by the 2014 target set by the Obama administration.
Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the top Marine in Afghanistan, has called Sangin the last major Taliban stronghold in Helmand, although there are other pockets of insurgent activity in the province.
Fighters from Pakistan use Sangin as a staging area before launching into other parts of Afghanistan, particularly into neighboring Kandahar province.
"We know that the senior leadership [of the Taliban] outside the country is very concerned that this area is going to slip away," said Col. Paul Kennedy, commander of Regimental Combat Team Two, which includes the Three-Five.
To get a sense of the intensity of the fighting that has killed the 24 Marines of the Three-Five, one might look at a recent deployment by another group of Marines. When the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, was deployed for seven months last year in the Helmand district of Garmsir to the south, another Taliban stronghold, 14 were killed, about half as many casualties in almost twice the time.
Four Marines from battalions assigned to assist the Three-Five by clearing roads and detonating Taliban bombs have also been killed.
U.S. military hospitals in Landstuhl, Germany; Bethesda; and San Diego have seen a steady stream of wounded Marines and sailors from the Three-Five, including at least four triple-amputees.
Less severely wounded Marines have been sent to the Wounded Warrior Battalion West barracks at Camp Pendleton. Still others among the Three-Five injured have been transferred to the Veterans Affairs facility in Palo Alto, which specializes in traumatic brain injuries.
Fifty-six replacements have been rushed from Camp Pendleton to Afghanistan to take the places of the dead and severely wounded. Priority was given to young lieutenants, who serve as platoon commanders, and Navy corpsmen.
Many of the volunteers were Marines from other battalions who had been wounded in Afghanistan, said Gunnery Sgt. Enrique MorenoRuiz.
"We're war fighters," MorenoRuiz said. "If they want to go, they can go."
———
1st Lt. John Chase Barghusen had served with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, when it was airlifted into the Nawa-i-Barakzayi district of Helmand province southwest of Sangin in the summer of 2009 on a mission to wrest control from the Taliban. The progress in Nawa has buoyed U.S. hopes for similar success in Sangin, Marine officials said.
A former football player at Iowa State and son of a retired Marine colonel, Barghusen transferred to the Three-Five so he could return to Helmand "to finish what we started in Nawa."
Like other Marines assigned to mentoring duty, Barghusen believes the fastest way for the U.S. to exit Afghanistan is to train and equip the Afghans to assume responsibility for fighting the Taliban and protecting villagers.
Lt. Col. William McCollough, who commanded the One-Five in Afghanistan, wasn't surprised that Barghusen volunteered to return, calling it "exactly what I would expect from someone of his character."
Early one morning, Barghusen was reconnoitering, looking for places to establish a patrol base. The Marines and Afghan soldiers were walking "ranger style," each man stepping in the footsteps of the man in front of him, in hope of avoiding buried bombs.
The Afghan soldier in front of Barghusen stepped on a hidden explosive and was blown apart.
Barghusen's face, back, left arm and left leg were ripped by shrapnel and the hot blast of the explosion. He tried to apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding but didn't have the strength.
"I knew my face was messed up," he said in Bethesda. "My jaw was broken so it was hard to shout. You try to shout and you can't. Your jaw just hangs there."
His father was hunting grouse in northern Wisconsin when he got the call that his son had been wounded and was being airlifted to the U.S.
"I didn't know if he was going to have arms, legs or a face," said John Clifford Barghusen, who served in Iraq as a helicopter pilot in 2003 and '04 and is now a pilot for American Airlines. "All I knew was that he was alive and not going to die in the next 72 hours. When I finally saw him, he had a face the size of a pumpkin."
Before his injuries, 1st Lt. Barghusen had enjoyed weightlifting and martial arts. After skin grafts and surgery to restore hearing in his left ear, he is back in Southern California. His arm and leg are regaining strength, and his face shows few signs of the cuts inflicted by shards of metal and rock.
He hopes to return to active duty at Camp Pendleton, possibly to share the lessons of Sangin.
He sees a marked difference between Nawa and Sangin.
"In Nawa, they wait for you and then strike," he said. "In Sangin, they come after you."
———
It's not unusual, U.S. military officials say, for the Taliban to "test" a newly arrived U.S. battalion by staging repeated ambush attacks in hope that the Americans will retreat to their bases.
Instead, the Marines have rushed more troops, more bomb-sniffing dogs and more firepower to Sangin. A month ago, a company of Marines with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, was sent to Sangin. Within days, three of its members were killed.
Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit began arriving last week in northern Helmand province with their own attack aircraft, long-range artillery and logistics support. Hundreds of Marines with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, are expected to deploy to Sangin to provide patrols, particularly at a key road construction project that the Taliban has been trying to disrupt.
The Marines have also unleashed artillery and airstrikes, both conventional and from drones. The top Taliban commander in Sangin was thought to have been killed by a drone strike.
Marine tanks from Kuwait and tank crew members from the base at Twentynine Palms have deployed to Helmand and will soon be sent into battle. Among the tank's attributes is better targeting capability, decreasing the chances of civilian casualties, Marines said.
The casualty rate of Marines has declined in recent weeks, although that could be due to numerous factors, including the weather and the ability of insurgents to infiltrate from Pakistan. Marine leaders prefer to see it otherwise.
"We've killed a lot of [roadside bomb] emplacers, several hundred maybe," Col. Kennedy said. "When you start taking that many bad guys off the battlefield, you are going to enjoy a certain reduced casualty rate."
———
On the day before he deployed to Afghanistan, Cpl. Derek Wyatt and his wife, Kait, walked on the beach near their home at Camp Pendleton, writing their names in the wet sand and the name they had selected for their unborn son.
Wyatt had had a good Marine career, including assignment to the security detail for President George W. Bush, the kind of job that goes to only the elite. The young couple had talked of moving to Ohio once his enlistment was finished. But first he was being deployed to a war zone and he was excited.
"He loved adventure," said Kait, 22, a former Marine. "He hated sitting behind a desk."
Still, she knew the dangers. She and Derek had been introduced by a Marine who was later killed in Iraq.
"It doesn't matter if it's the first day they're gone, or the last day before they return home, you're scared all the time," she said. "You pretend to be happy, but you're living in fear."
One morning last month, the knock came at the Wyatt home.
"I automatically knew," Kait said. "But then I had a split second where I thought: 'Maybe he's at Landstuhl, maybe he's just injured, still alive.' But when they asked to come in, I knew."
Wyatt was killed Dec. 6 by a sniper while on patrol. Kait is convinced that he was targeted by the Taliban. It provides her with a measure of comfort that he died as a leader.
"Luckily, none of his Marines were hurt," she said.
The night after she learned of her husband's death, Kait gave birth to Michael Everett Wyatt,
7 pounds, 11 ounces, named after the patron saint of the military.
The pregnancy had been planned in case Wyatt didn't return from Afghanistan.
"We wanted to have something tangible, a physical expression of our love," she said, "just in case there wasn't another opportunity."
Wyatt had recorded passages of the Dr. Seuss book "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" During her pregnancy, Kait aimed her iPod speaker at her stomach; when she brought the baby home from the hospital, she played the recording softly to help him sleep.
Before Kait left the hospital with her baby, a casualty assistance officer decorated her home, including placing an "It's a Boy" sign on the front lawn.
"He made sure that Michael got the kind of homecoming that his father would have wanted," Kait said, her voice trembling. She paused, unable to speak.
Waiting at home was a receiving blanket for the baby, in Marine colors and with the Three-Five logo.
Under a bitterly cold sky, Cpl. Wyatt was buried Jan. 7 at Arlington National Cemetery in a section reserved for the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the funeral service, Kait told of a conversation she and her husband had before he deployed about what she should do if he was killed in Afghanistan.
Kait said she told Derek that she would never remarry. He pulled the car to the side of the road, she said, looked directly at her and made her promise that she would again find love in her life.
"He told me the only thing he wanted in life was for me to be happy," Kait said.
As she spoke, there were tears in the eyes of the mourners, including Marines with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is still fighting for a faraway place known as Sangin.
tony.perry@latimes.com
Perry also reported from Bethesda, Md.

 

Duplicate post

 

Reading this with mixed feelings. It seems to go into the direction of the Nam era. There are some really brave guys out there giving the best they have, and than there are some "nice guys" at the Press site(or the Baptist church) who make idiots out of them.