I hope not, there is already one war being run dreadfully, lets hope we dont get another.
The way the media is portraying the war is frustrating. Some of the stuff that comes out is out of date by several days, ill informed or mispresented.
With regards to the Taliban/Foreign Fighters we are defeating them and driving them out. Slow progress granted (so far), but it will pick up pace. Believe me the lay of the land is quite different from what is presented to you by the media...after all, NATO winning doesn' exactly sell papers does it?
The biggest problems we actually face are Pakistani indifference/double crossing (slowly changing) and corruption within the country. The war on the ground is slowly being won, as we can now hold the ground thanks to the US uplift and more ANA units coming online..
Firtsy JJ, I didnt know you were servig so wouldnt have been as blunt as that if I had known. I am just a civilian so my take cannot be as incisive as yours but this is what concerns me.
On Decmber 30th Nato commented on an overnight raid that had taken place the day before, its statement said
' As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals. Several assault rifles, ammunition and ammonium nitrate used in bomb making were discovered'
Then the day after when the above statement was questioned
' the victims were an IED bomb cell that Afghan an US officials had been developing information against for some time'
This was again questioned and an inquiry into the raid concluded that this is what happened
'A unit of International forces descended from a plane and took ten people from their homes, eight of them were school students, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them all dead.
They were aged 12-18, so that raid killed schoolchildren that were sleeping in their beds and Nato simply made up 2 statements in an attempt to cover this up.
After being given the evidence from the report they then said
'Knowing what we know now, it would probably not have been a justifiable attack.We dont now believe that we busted a major ring'
I think this figure is correct, there have been around 60 civilian casualties in Afghanistan in the last month, 27 of those people were in a bus , returning from work, or nights out, just going about their business when the bus was targetted with an airstrike that killed them all.
Another enquiry is taking place into this incident.
Now as I said, I am just a regular bloke and have no axe to grind but that seems to me to be totaly unacceptable.
Let me ask you this JJ, if a set of Afghans shot 10 schoolchildren in a any city in Britain, it would be called a terrorist attack and we would be appaled by this. Again, if a bus in any city in Britain was blown up by Afghan's it would also be called a terrorost attack. Yet when we do that what followed is a cover up and NATO statements that are past misleading and verging on blatant lies.
The families of those schoolchildren have been offered $2000 in compensation for every child their family lost.
This is why the war doesnt sit easy with a lot of people, tho please understand the general consensus is that out troops are doing a great job and I am sure they are.
Couple this type of story that seems to be getting uncovered quite often now and couple in the MI5 debacle that has surfaced in the last 2 days and it is starting to sound like we(allies) have been getting away with quite a lot.
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