A very disturbing report from Afghanistan.
Two points about what follows. Fire-fights are perplexing things. I've been in a few. They're not like what you see in films or even on the news, (which are normally staged for the cameras). If the enemy is serious, he's completely invisible, and the source of his gunfire is quite undetectable. Yet despite this, the Grenadiers' patrol commander, a major, declared that a nearby house on a rubble-covered hill was definitely the source of the Taliban fire, and called in an airstrike on it. But only conventional soldiers would think of a house as a strongpoint.
For insurgents, it's a hideous trap: any window in it offers a vulnerable firing point, with limited scope or cover, and almost no escape, compared to the hundreds of acres of hospitable scrub and rock around it.
A Hellfire missile was fired and the building was blown up. Needless to say, there were no insurgents there, merely a family, who by the grace of God -- but certainly not of the Grenadier Guards -- escaped injury. A group of Afghan soldiers with the Grenadiers were incandescent with rage, and as if to underline the cretinousness of the entire affair, a British Ministry of Defence minder forbade the BBC cameraman from filming the now homeless family. It gets better. A second air-strike was later called onto another target: and this super-accurate, laser-controlled, precision-guided, infallible wonder-weapon missed the intended aiming-point by a hundred yards: hitting what? No idea. Another strike was then called in.
Either this guy is full of crap or the UK has a real problem. Unfortunately, after the Iranian capture of a British boat and the pathetic behaviour of the crew afterwards, I am inclined to think this report may be accurate. This reporter sounds like he knows something about the subject and seems more upset about the way in which they are fighting than just decrying the entire war, as most liberal crybabies would do. I think he is legit....damn....
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