Corporal Luke Tamata, 31, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, 26, and Private Richard Harris, 21, of the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Two hundred soldiers of the 1st and 2nd battalions greeted the coffins when the dead soldiers were repatriated.
Image via Wikipedia
A total of 276 British troops have died in the Afghan conflict since operations began in 2001.
The bodies of two soldiers killed in Afghanistan last week will be brought back to the UK on Tuesday.
L/Cpl Scott Hardy and Private James Grigg, both from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died last Tuesday north of Musa Qalah.
The cortege will pass through Wootton Bassett after arriving at RAF Lyneham.
Team Rubicon member Dr David Griswell, like yesterday, becomes the lead physician in the outdoor General Hospital. "It's a disaster. There is no drinking water
With no structural engineer available, Team Rubicon Firefighters Jeff Lang and Craig Parello conduct the initial structural damage assessment on the General Hospital after the 6.1 quake this morning.
Go to the website, read the blogs, follow them on Twitter and donate. Whatever you do, please pass this on!
Team Rubicon member Dr. Dolhun inspects a 4 hour old baby born in the street outside the General Hospital.
Hat tip to Mostly Cajun, All American and OpinionatedFrom the Sand Pit:
It’s freezing here. I’m sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar ‘yoi Pomir River , watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
Image by Randy Son Of Robert via Flickr
I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I’ve actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard.. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that’s where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.
It’s all about intelligence. We haven’t even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they’re in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel-plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me, I’m a romantic.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This country blows, man. It’s not even a country. There are no roads, there’s no infrastructure, there’s no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That’s it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that’s your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those ‘tent cities of the walking dead’ is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I’ve been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of ‘em, are Huns… actual, living Huns.. They LIVE to fight. It’s what they do. It’s ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families, nor for each other, nor for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other’s barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47’s. Then again, maybe I’m just cranky.
I’m freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can’t recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban ’smart.’ They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is ‘cunning.’ The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they’re real smart.
They’ve spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They’re still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I’m good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We’ve got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we’re doing over here, because you have no idea what we’re doing, and really, you don’t want to know. We are your military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi“Freedom is not free…but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share”.
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2009 – With unprecedented speed, the first of thousands of mine-resistant, ambush-protected all-terrain vehicles —known as M-ATVs -- are being deployed to Afghanistan just three months after a delivery order was awarded.Conventional MRAP vehicles feature a V-shaped hull to deflect roadside bombs, and are proven to be lifesavers on the battlefield. The procurement of the M-ATV grew from an urgent requirement to provide troops a smaller and more maneuverable vehicle that can travel off-road and navigate Afghanistan's difficult, mountainous terrain, Marine Corps Systems Command officials said.
“We have pulled out all the stops to collapse the schedule and get these vehicles into theater,” said Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Michael M. Brogan, commander of Marine Corps Systems Command and joint program executive officer of the MRAP program. “We are doing everything that’s required to ensure that they are safe, that the risk assessments are complete, [and] that they’re fully integrated and flown into Afghanistan.”
The M-ATV supports small-unit combat operations in highly restricted rural, mountainous and urban environments that include mounted patrols, reconnaissance, security, convoy protection, communications, command and control, and combat service support. It is designed to replace the up-armored Humvee in Afghanistan. The M-ATV will carry up to five personnel: four plus a gunner.
The Defense Department has ordered more than 4,300 of the all-terrain mine-resistant trucks, and another 1,400 are planned. Oshkosh Corp. is producing the vehicles.
Al Qaeda's second-in-command has accused President Obama of supporting a Palestinian state that would do the bidding of Israel."Obama wants a Palestinian state that works as a branch for the Israeli government," Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a nearly 90-minute video called, "The Realities of Jihad and the Fallacies of Hypocrisy."
"Israel is a crime that needs to be wiped out," said
al-Zawahiri
Image via Wikipedia
Nice
"Obama can come with all the eloquent words he has, but it is nothing but illusions."
He had nothing but scorn for Obama's work. "What new did Obama bring us," he asked. "He brought us the bombing of Gaza where 1,000 martyrs died. He brought us the destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. What else? He expanded the American prisons so they can absorb more innocent Muslims."
Cheery little bunny isn't he?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tJUQ-ojT2kaKI5TD1q0Ef0g1h5AjKbifHOyC_eO4IeEcArfkHFVzB-jTSQ8GvfoCRycQp7cFUd3ndv_sxcKaS4sHQxRJ4r4CMbmUv6xMGHnpA5N3SNQ0u8KvfgdHeY0UL83AQO2aBpYS618sEDuiRP=s0-d)
Sangin is an active battlefield. To describe missions with other than vague details would present danger to these soldiers and to the next rotation. This is not like the sweep from Kuwait into Iraq, wherein the previous week’s missions were tantamount to ancient history. Here in Sangin it’s a daily brawl over the same terrain and sentiments, morning and night.
A couple minutes after the explosion in the photo above, an Apache flew over to take a look but like so many times, it’s just a mushroom with no known cause. A few days ago, in this area, another RPG was fired at a British helicopter and missed. The area within these photos contains more IEDs than perhaps anywhere else in Afghanistan. The British managed to locate one of the worst places in the country and proceeded to build bases all around.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ttVNYdryzevQxBPCEZjbI4wUTpXWbessHVtUEmBmSsOrHKYCgGlPMElDrfXabcneGGIzR-CPMTjRIDzK4O-4cnj4dOqumnIPg9WcnabexuuA3Kofv4beiSssL446GV7kmGWYWuKHM4YQaKuND2FSAn=s0-d)
