Pretty fascinating piece on the tactics the Army is using to kill the Taliban in Afghanistan:
By that time, reinforcements from the 1st and 3rd platoons have arrived. All escape routes are blocked. The Taliban are trapped.
“The fire was extremely close,” says O’Neal, who was with a second team providing covering fire lower down the hill. “But toward the end it got dark, so we just ran to the bottom.”
As night falls, American AC-130 Specter gunships arrive to engage Taliban fighters who have also decided to make a run for it. By the end of the day, 76 Taliban bodies are counted, and another nine Taliban fighters are captured.
To this day, the men of the 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company, can’t figure out what the Taliban were thinking. Were they suicidal? Why did they gather so many Taliban in one place? Did they really think they had enough men to defeat the Americans?
“They called the BBC to tell them they had taken the district headquarters,” says O’Neal. “They knew we were going to come.”
Dangerous work, that.
neil
The tactic of printing the body count is new, too, hmm.
Don
I guess some people think “because they’re idiots” is too simplistic an answer but it works for me.
Steve S
Any mention of the tactic of incinerating the bodies and then over a loudspeaker yelling “You’re next, you yellow bastard!?”