Sweeping new US operation - Afghanistan

[dArKeR]

Kabul, Afghanistan - The US military on Saturday announced a sweeping new operation across troubled southern and eastern Afghanistan, with the aim of destroying al-Qaida and Taliban infrastructure.

The announcement came as the Americans have been pressing their hunt for Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed hiding out in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The operation, however, was "about more than one person," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a US military spokesman. He said American forces have "confidence" they will eventually catch the al-Qaida leader, but not necessarily during the new operation.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1497732,00.html

[Bandit]

1. Won't be long now and Bin Laden will be trotted out

The earlier the better IMHO. I hope they capture him and not kill him. I want to see a trial because I personally don't believe a thing that comes from this administration and am not convinced he had a thing to do with 9-11. I have seen no evidence and as far as I can recall no other country except England has seen any evidence either.

[davekriss]

4. Evidence was promised

In the days after 9-11, after identifying (so quickly) the 19 hijackers, I recall Rice and Bush promising a "white paper" that would show the world that Al Qaeda was behind 9-11. Then suddenly they stopped talking about it, and the "white paper" never materialized. Just one of the many suspicious things about 9-11; one of those things that make the "official story" ring untrue.

(And don't bring up that video! The one with the fat, short-nosed "Osama" laughing about how well he planned events of that day.)

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tkmorris]

14. Good Question

Ya know, someone really should investigate that.

[Sagan]

2. 13,500 men is a "sweeping operation"?

And at that, they're counting ALL the coalition troops in the country.

[Redleg]

3. I thought we already destroyed the Taliban.

(Sarcasm alert)

Too bad that so many Americans have such damn short memories. We forget about stuff and then people like Bush can more easily pull the wool over our eyes.

[soup]

5. 6 days later-

Operation Mountain Storm 'officially' began on March 7th. Today it's breaking news.(???)

Odd and quite often frustrating in this age of 'instant news' that something this large has been going on for at least 6 days and the first news is coming out today.

A search for something more comprehensive found this from March 4th:

Operation mountain storm continues in Afghanistan

hipakistan
March 04 2004

The US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan have continued their search and hunt operation known as operation mountain storm against Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders.

The spokesman of the forces, Brian Hiferty said that the operation was continuing in Southern, Southeastern and in the north of Kandahar city.<

http://www.afgha.com/?af=article&sid=41680

-----

and this series of reports from Camp Purgatory:

A four-part series by Stars and Stripes on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan
March, 2004

Reporter Terry Boyd spent five weeks with troops, eating, sleeping and continuously patrolling with them throughout the country. The series strives to show the complex set of missions that the 11,000 U.S. soldiers — mostly from the 10th Mountain Division — tackle every day.

http://www.stripes.com/silent/

[plurality]

6. Destroy Al Qaeda and Taliban infrastructure?

What infrastructure?

I didn't think Afghanistan had any infrastructure.

Oh wait...I get it...they mean villages! Yeah for democracy and human rights! God bless America!

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[plurality]

9. And has the US been in there for 10 years yet?

I don't know how familiar you are with guerilla wars, probably not very judging by your question, but they don't start out as full blown quagmires.

Casualties for the occupier start out very low and build over time as the resistance grows. Take Vietnam for instance, we were in Vietnam for over 10 years resulting in 58,000 deaths, know how many died the first 5 years, less than 500. Seeing how we have over 600 in 2+ years of Afganistan/Iraq, we're well on our way, but hey keep waving your flag, it'll do a lot of good.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ScrewyRabbit]

15. Our casualties are low there

...because we're not really in control of the country. Yes, we can roll out our troops out for a "sweeping operation", but when we're not doing that the troops are in control of their bases, and that's pretty much it.

Sure, our casualties are low, but I wouldn't call Afghanistan a blinding success in anti-terrorism, or in nation building for that matter.

[plurality]

16. US combat deaths in Afghanistan are a little over 100

But most of those 100 have occured in 2003. So considering our troops have only been in theater 17 months (10/02-3/04) That's fairly proportional to the USSR's losses. Then taking into consideration that we have around 15,000 troops while the USSR had around 200,000 we're actually losing them at a higher clip than the Soviets did their first year.

Here's some stats- http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/afghanlosses01.htm

And BTW I don't wave any flag, nationalism went out with the jitterbug as far as I'm concerned.

[Voltaire99]

11. "Sweeping new operation". . .yawn.

So, Search-and-Destroy is back, eh?

Worked wonders in Vietnam. Ought to be a smash success.

[bushwakker]

12. Operation Bush/Cheney 2004*

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. Just announced sweeping new operation?

Isn't this the one they've been announcing for over a month already? Nothing like giving the bad guys plenty of time to pack?

BTW: Since the first announcement of this sweeping new operation, we managed to kill a bunch of civilians again and still can't find a 6'10" Arab who mainly travels by donkey and carts around a kidney dialysis machine. Nope two years after taking control of Afghanistan we still can't find Osama. What a successful mission?

[Crachet2004]

17. What happens to the War on Terror if they find obl?

What new Bogey do they replace him with? Why would we need Patriot and all the budget-busting military line items? What excuse would we have for having troops in 120 out of 194 countries?

They would have to come up with a whole new gimmick to keep people in line, if they capture him. The old wedge issues seem to be losing their edge.

Capture obl? I'll believe it when I see it.