Bing West, author of "The Strongest Tribe" blogs a lot at the LongWarJournal. He often states that the new, restrictive Rules Of Engagement are endangering our troops' lives. My son, deployed in Afghanistan since June, grouses about the ROE's every time he calls. 

This report from Jonathon Landay (McClatchy reporter) describes an ambush in which 4 marines and 9 Afghan soldiers were killed, and in which repeated calls for artillery and air support were refused. Not only did they refuse supporting fores for buildings, but also for the trees surrounding the village. 

 

 

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless
gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides
and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their
ammunition.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's
leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to
capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind
stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an
hour for U.S.
helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five
minutes away.

U.S.
commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated
calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree
lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren't near the village.

"We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We've
lost today," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator
to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter's repeated demands for
helicopters.

Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members
assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single
incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and
the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the
subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2
p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to
the Pakistan
border.

Three Americans and 19 Afghans were wounded, and U.S.
forces later recovered the bodies of two insurgents, although they believe more
were killed.

The Marines were cut down as they sought cover in a trench at the base of
the village's first layer cake-style stone house. Much of their ammunition was
gone. One Marine was bending over a second, tending his wounds, when both were
killed, said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who retrieved
their bodies.

HISTORY OF RESISTANCE

A full moon was drenching the mountains in ghostly light as some 60 Afghan
soldiers, 20 border police officers, 13 Marine and U.S. Army trainers and I set
out for Ganjgal at 3 a.m. from the U.S.
base in the Shakani District.

The operation, proposed by the Afghan army and refined by the U.S.
trainers, called for the Afghans to search Ganjgal for weapons and hold a
meeting with the elders to discuss the establishment of police patrols. The
elders had insisted that Afghans perform the sweep. The Americans were there to
give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.

Dawn was breaking by the time we alighted for a mile-long walk up a wash of
gravel, rock and boulders which winds up to Ganjgal, some 60 rock-walled
compounds perched high up the terraced slopes at the eastern end of the valley,
six miles from the Pakistani border.

Small teams of Afghan troops and U.S.
trainers headed to ridges on the valley's southern and northern sides, setting
up outposts as the main body headed slowly up toward the village and,
unbeknownst to us, into the killing zone.

The terrain — craggy ravines and sweeping, tree-studded mountains riddled
with boulders and caves — was made for guerrilla warfare. The ethnic Pashtun
villagers pride themselves on their rejection of official authority, their
history of resistance and their disdain of foreign forces that many regard as
occupiers.

A possible clue to what was to come occurred when the lights in Ganjgal
suddenly blinked out while our vehicles were still several miles away, crashing
slowly through the semi-dark along a rutted track toward the village.

NO AIR SUPPORT

The first shot cracked out at 5:30 a.m.,
apparently just as the four Marines and the Afghan unit to which they were
attached reached the outskirts of the village. It quickly swelled into a
furious storm of gunfire that we realized had been prepared for our arrival.

Several U.S.
officers said they suspected that the insurgents had been tipped off by
sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or by the village elders, who
announced over the weekend that they were accepting the authority of the local
government.

"Whatever we do always leaks," said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28,
a New Yorker who was born in Nigeria
and is the operations officer for the trainers from the 3rd Marine Division.
"You can't trust even some of their soldiers or officers."

Sniper rounds snapped off rocks and sizzled overhead. Explosions of
recoilless rifle rounds echoed through the valley, while bullets inched closer
to the rock wall behind which I crouched with a handful U.S.
and Afghan officers.

Lt. Fabayo and several other soldiers later said they'd seen women and
children in the village shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows
and roofs. Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and
Americans fired back.

At 5:50 a.m., Army Capt. Will
Swenson, of Seattle, WA,
the trainer of the Afghan Border Police unit in Shakani, began calling for air
support or artillery fire from a unit of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. The
responses came back: No helicopters were available.

"This is unbelievable. We have a platoon (of Afghan army) out there and
we've got no Hotel Echo," Swenson shouted above the din of gunfire, using
the military acronym for high explosive artillery shells. "We're pinned
down."

The insurgents were firing from inside the village and from positions in the
hills immediately behind it and to either side. Judging from the angles of the
ricochets, several appeared to be trying to outflank us to get better shots.

"What are you going to do?" Maj. Talib, the operations officer of
the Afghan army unit, asked Maj. Williams through his translator.

"We are getting air," Williams replied.

"What are we going to do?" Talib repeated.

"We are getting air," Williams replied again, perhaps knowing that
none was available but hoping to quiet Talib.

At 6:05 a.m., as our position was
becoming increasingly tenuous, Swenson and Fabayo agreed that it was time to
pull back and radioed for artillery to fire smoke rounds to mask our retreat.

"They don't have any smoke. They only have Willy Pete," Swenson
reported, referring to white phosphorus rounds that spew smoke.

Fifty minutes later, as a curtain of white phosphorus smoke roiled across
the valley, Swenson and Fabayo unleashed an intense volley of covering fire
while the rest of us sprinted back some 20 yards to a series of dirt furrows,
weighed down by our flak vests and water carriers.

The two officers raced back to join us. Everyone jumped up and ran for the
next stone wall. Everyone but me. Afraid that too many people were jammed
together as they raced, offering easy targets, I waited behind for a break in
the gunfire, an Afghan border police officer crouched next to me.

TIME TO MOVE

We soon noticed that the insurgent snipers were trying to outflank us again.
I saw one up on a small rise fire and miss us by several feet. My companion
decided that it was time to go and bolted away across the wash, but the gunfire
grew too intense, and again I pulled my body into the dirt and rocks.

I wasn't as terrified as I was angry: angry at the absence of air support,
angry that there was no artillery fire, angry that Williams' interpreter had
been killed, angry at the realization that the operation had obviously been
betrayed and angry at myself for not bolting with the others.

I knew it was time to move when I saw a gaggle of Afghan soldiers pounding
through the boulders past me, their commander, a bright 26-year-old lieutenant
named Ruhollah, hopping between two of them, a bullet wound in his groin.
Staying put was no longer an option.

Bundling my legs beneath me and grabbing the small bag I use to carry my
pad, pens, glasses and other necessities, I sprang and ran, trying to weave as bullets
kicked up dust around me.

I reached the next wall and plunged behind it, nearly falling on top of
Swenson, Fabayo and several badly wounded U.S.
soldiers.

As Fabayo cracked off rounds, Swenson lay flat on his back, clasping a pressure
bandage to the shoulder of one soldier with one hand and holding the microphone
of his radio in the other, calling out insurgents' positions to two U.S.
helicopters that finally had arrived.

It was now 7:10 a.m., and with the
helicopters prowling overhead and firing into the hillsides, the incoming
gunfire slackened enough for us to move again.

I stumbled down the valley to safety after I helped one of the injured
soldiers into a medivac helicopter. Capt. Swenson and Lt. Fabayo headed off to
find vehicles and, together with Cpl. Meyer, crashed back up the way we'd just
fled to retrieve the bodies of the dead Marines and any other casualties they
could find.

ABOUT THE REPORTER

McClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay, who was ambushed with U.S. Marines in a remote
Afghan village Tuesday, is a veteran foreign affairs reporter with long
experience in South Asia, Iraq,
the Balkans and Washington.

Landay covered South Asia — including Afghanistan
— as well as the Balkans from 1985 to 1994 for United Press International and
for The Christian Science Monitor. He joined the Knight Ridder Washington
Bureau in 1999.

He was part of the Knight Ridder team, with State Department correspondent
Warren P. Strobel and Bureau Chief John Walcott, that investigated and
disproved the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had an
active nuclear weapons program and ties to al Qaida.

I have highlighted the aspects of this report, which if 100% accurate are quite frankly criminal, and are a major contributor to teh deaths of the US and Afghan personnel.

So in a nut shell the US advisors were there to call for Arty which as it turns out didnt actually have any HE or Smoke, and took 50 minutes to actually be allowed to start dropping WP to mask the withdrawel of troops under fire with wounded!!!! And to call for Air which took 1 hour and 40 minutes to get on station when the brown stuff hit the large rotating thing!!!!

 

Who the feck planned this abortion!!! 

Twenty-odd years ago I watched with alarm as fellow Marines were committed to peace keeping action in Lebanon. I knew that they were being sent into a shooting gallery where anyone who wanted some face time in the news could get it by killing a few Marines.  I heard that squads sent out on patrol were being threatened with prison if they couldn't fully justify returning fire. My fears were paid off in spades as the battalion headquarters was wiped out.

 

Now, twenty years on , my son is with 4th Infantry, 4th ID in Afghanistan. He complains about the rules of engagement every time he calls. We've removed any penalty for attacking Americans. Our soldiers, sailors and marines are, effectively speaking, hostages.Here we go again.

 

This is deeply, outrageously wrong. 

Actually the hijacked tankers were being used as wedding limos by the local Taliban, which got stuck in the Kunduz riverbed before activating a rapid taskforce to loot gasoline (which would also serve to lighten the truck) for the upcoming kegger party at 2:30 in the morning. 

Unfortunately the wedding cake was lit up preemptively.

 

*cough*

 

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