Thu Aug 14, 2008 at 03:18:00 AM EDT
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This is kind of a big deal:
SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan -- Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.
The soldiers -- two of them members of the National Guard from New York -- died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.
A source close to the situation explained to me several weeks ago that two of the Americans survived the initial ambush and were captured alive--before being hauled off and butchered. I didn't say anything about it here or elsewhere because a.) I didn't know what the families knew, and b.) I couldn't confirm it with anyone else. As for the soldiers being alive when captured, I still don't know with certainty whether or not that's true or just battlefield rumor. But everything else my source told me has turned out to be correct.
The New York Times explains in more detail:
The three were identified as Sgt. First Class Matthew L. Hilton, 37, of Livonia, Mich., of the Michigan Army National Guard; and Sgt. First Class Joseph A. McKay, 51, of Brooklyn; and Specialist Mark C. Palmateer, 38, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., both of them part of a reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition unit of the New York Army National Guard, according to a Pentagon news release.
Their Afghan interpreter was 21-year-old Muhammad Fahim from Kabul, who had been working with the Americans for the last three years. His body was burned beyond recognition, his family said.
One vehicle struck a mine, but the convoy of three Humvees apparently kept moving, until a second vehicle hit a mine, said Capt. Haji Rahim, who visited the scene afterward. The Humvee caught fire, and the blaze was so strong the trees around it burned too, he said.
Captain Rahim did not see the bodies but learned from an American officer that one or more had been butchered. "Their bodies had no heads, legs or arms," he said. A Western official in Kabul confirmed that at least one of the bodies had been cut up. "Organs were removed," the official said.
Those behind the attack were swiftly identified as a group led by a local man, a former Hesb-e-Islami commander named Mullah Najibullah. Two weeks later United States and Afghan forces tracked him down at his home and killed him and his followers in a siege of the compound, Afghan officials said.
"Organs were removed."
America needs to wake the fuck up. U.S. soldiers are being butchered like animals in Afghanistan and most people have no idea that there's even a war going on there.
Despite the fact that unhelpful Americans like Bing West continue to insist that Afghanistan isn't the central front in this war, the reality on the ground says otherwise. This is a situation that requires an immediate military solution. It is not a situation similar to that in Iraq--where the people are capable of governing themselves, and where U.S. forces are not wanted. This is a situation that requires the use of force to take and hold terrain now controlled by Taliban and other militant groups. Once this is done, non-military means must be utilized to further stabilize the country. Currently, U.S. forces are too few and Afghan forces are too weak to prevent the rampant lawlessness that has infected the extremist-plagued areas of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
During the first two weeks of August, twice as many coalition forces were killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan as in Iraq. |
| Brandon Friedman :: Afghan Militants Butcher American Soldiers |
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