Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Other War
Salon has a really good "from the ground" report on Afghanistan. Excerpt:
Several soldiers and officers I spoke with told me they were unprepared for their mission in the north of Afghanistan. No one, it seems, told them they would have to fight a Vietnam-style war at high altitudes. One officer told me the 10th Mountain's limited resources and poor planning frustrated him. (He also asked that his name be withheld for fear of retribution.) "Leadership has failed us," he told me. "They don't give a shit about us. We've been shorted everything we needed. Our training didn't prepare us for this terrain or this mission. We're doing the best we can but we're not getting support." He said the summer of 2006 had been filled with air-assault missions in which Chinooks delivered 20 to 30 troops to a ridgeline with little food or water, and no plan to pick them up.
The short version of the article is that Afghanistan is Iraq except with mountains and less population.
Written at 9:06 AM by Greyhair.
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