War #3

[sanfran22]

I could be wrong here, but it seems like you are advocating wiping out innocents just to get to the bad guy. As for declaring martial law when "we take over", how is this even possible when "we" don't run the country "we" invaded.

Looks like the US Armed Forces have taken your advice. Headline from a UK newspaper.
U.S. rescue chopper SHOOTS six friendly Libyan villagers as they welcome pilots of downed Air Force jet

Thanks for making my point. It's people like you that scream bloody murder from a headline from the media, Then a bunch of knee jerk reactions occur and we become severely handicapped.
No one likes war, and we all want to avoid it whenever we can. But we need to do what we need to do.

[duane1969]

For some reason your article would not come up but I think it is a little wrong based on the headline.. The chopper fired some small artilery shells between the downed pilot and the villagers because no one knew if they were friendly or enemies. The 6 that were injured were hit by shrapnal from the shells.... It is my understanding no one was killed by this action but I honestly could be wrong.... It is just that headline makes it sound like the copter was unloading on the villagers which is not true

You are correct. Nobody was killed.

An article yesterday in The Australian said none of the injured saw who fired the rockets.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226026529549

None of those injured in the incident could confirm who or what fired the rockets.

"God only knows, we couldn't see any plane," Ali said.

Earlier, media reports suggested that an aircraft involved in the rescue of one of the aircrew who ejected from the F-15 before it crashed may have opened fire as it attempted to extract the American pilot.

But eyewitnesses said it was impossible to tell, and they did not speculate about who was responsible.

In articles that came out today suddenly those who were injured saw American helicopters.

[Hairylemon]

I stand corrected,my mistake. I am curious to know how a no fly zone can turn into a bomb the crap out of them zone though. Please be aware I am not being anti American about this, the UK government is neck deep in this also.

[11chaos]

When you don't know who is the enemy and who is the friendly it makes fighting a conventional war impossible. In Iraq and Afghanistan the enemy is not wearing a uniform, so how does the average soldier know who is who?

More than soldiers are here but I know you mean the Coalition forces as a whole. With a literacy rate of what many say is 28% is actually very false. The majority of local nationals that I come into contact with are illiterate. They can understand a little of the Koran and that is it. Most of the survey's you see are from their capital, Kabul. You have the country broken down into 3 groups hate all coalition (See us as Infidels) - 15%, Don't care and just want to be left alone by all - 70% and finally the ones that love us - 15%. You could also add in the ones from the other countries that are just here to do battle against the Infidels. So with all that being said, it's hard to say who is the enemy until they actually shoot at you.

Listed below is the nations in Afghanistan.

Contributing Nations
NATO Members: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America

Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC): Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrghz Republic, Malta, Republic of Maldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tonga, Tunisia

Istanbul Cooperation Initiative: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates

Contact Countries: Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand

[duane1969]

I stand corrected,my mistake. I am curious to know how a no fly zone can turn into a bomb the crap out of them zone though. Please be aware I am not being anti American about this, the UK government is neck deep in this also.

If I understand correctly, the assertion is that the locals were approaching the downed craft and were supposedly fired upon. Considering none were killed it is my opinion that the shots were warning shots that landed close-by.

Assuming it was American attack choppers (Apache?) then they would have been firing Hydra 70 rockets. At close range a Hydra would turn a human into hamburger. The fact that all survived, most with minor injuries, is testament that the rockets were not fired with intentions of killing.

A short video of an Apache in action in Iraq is testament enough that if those injured were targeted then they would not have survived.