Three years ago, 13 U.S. service members were killed during Joe Biden’s botched Afghan pullout. He never mentions them, their grieving families or the changes that have taken place since they made the ultimate sacrifice. It is now illegal for Afghan women to appear outside of the home unless they are fully veiled, Afghanistan’s supreme … Read more
I love it when life imitates art. You know, like when you see something in some Hollywood flick, and you say to yourself, “Self, that could NEVER happen in real life.” But then you find out it can. Has. Did. As in “Afghanistan” and “British sniper” and “two kills with one bullet.” But the details are better than anything Hollywood could dream up…
I received the following email from a friend. (A female friend, no less.) I present it here, verbatim, for your reading pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODmQaQd03Ig
The town of Sangin is best known as the southern epicenter of the Afghanistan opium trade. Today, however, the Pashtun town of 14,000 captured a headline at the Wall Street Journal (Sniper in Afghan Town Puts Marines on Edge) for another reason: an insurgent sniper that the US Marine Corps wants dead. So far, the Sangin Sniper and an accomplice are responsible for two dead (one British and one American) and three wounded. Some of the shots were spectacular . . .
TTAG has reported the U.S. Army’s ongoing sloth re: equipping troops in Afghanistan with rifles capable of effective range. And now, finally, they’re doing something about it. allvoices.com reports that the Army is sending M14 Enhanced Battle Rifles to forces in Afghanistan. The new weapons are supposed to be accurate to 800 yards (731.52 meters). That’s around 530 meters greater than the non-enhanced M14 rifle (200 meters). The M14 Enhanced is designed to eliminate the “range gap” detailed in Major Thomas Ehrhart’s widely-read 2009 study Increasing Arms Lethality in Afghanistan.
After a decade of dithering, the U.S. Marines are equipping two tilt-rotor transport aircraft bound for Afghanistan with the GAU-2B machine-gun. Strategypage.com reports that the Marines will retro-fit the guns to the rest of their Afghan-based fleet of MV-22 aircraft. Just in case you have no idea what this all means—save the fact that this … Read more
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. I’m going to Afghanistan. A country whose rigged elections and endemic corruption was the focus of the Obama Administration’s pre-surge anxiety—until it wasn’t. And now it is. Well, for the western media. OK, for a few news organizations. The Guardian, actually. Which reveals that Afghan Prime Minister Nour “Sneaky” Maliki is trading weapons and cash for votes in the run-up to the next round of democratic, free and fair nationwide elections. “Maliki, who faces a bitterly contested final week of campaigning ahead of the 7 March poll, has been photographed handing out guns to supporters in southern Iraq, engraved with a personal message from his office. However he denies that the delivery of weapons, along with cash payments, were improper.” Perhaps “unusual” was the word he was looking for. Is this a problem? Surprisingly enough, yes. Make the jump for a look at the source of Maliki largess. As if you couldn’t guess . . .
The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee spent a good part of today hearing testimony about the misadventures of Afghan defense contractor Blackwater (a.k.a. Xe Services a.k.a. Paravant). The senators were not happy, calling the company (and its shell companies) “reckless” and “irresponsible.” A document submitted to your duly elected reps revealed that Blackwater employees removed … Read more
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