Another UK soldier dies in Afghanistan
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Independent Minds
Another British soldier was killed in Afghanistan today, bringing the total death toll level to that suffered in the Iraq war.
The serviceman, from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, died near Nad-e-Ali in Helmand province this morning, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
Ten soldiers have died in 10 days in southern Afghanistan, taking the number of British troops killed since the start of operations in October 2001 to 179.
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "The loss of this brave tankie has hit us all deeply. We grieve for him at this very sad time.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and colleagues who feel the greatest loss. His loss has not been in vain."
His family has been informed.
This is as many as died in the bitter Iraq campaign, which lasted from March 2003 until the end of combat operations in April this year.
Another two soldiers - one from 4th Battalion The Rifles and the other from Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment attached to 1st Battalion Welsh Guards - died in separate incidents in Helmand yesterday.
The grim news came as the bodies of another five British servicemen killed in Afghanistan over the past week were returned to the UK.
Eight of the 10 most recent fatalities came during Operation Panchai Palang, or Panther's Claw, a major British assault against the Taliban in Helmand ahead of next month's Afghan elections.
Some 3,000 troops are involved in the operation, which began on June 19 and has seen fierce fighting and significant casualties on both sides.
The top US commander in the Middle East has warned of tough months ahead in the fight against the Taliban.
General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, described the battle in the south of the country as "the longest campaign".
Meanwhile, a former head of the Armed Forces today accused the Government of putting UK forces at risk and spending the "minimum they could get away with" on defence.
General Lord Guthrie, chief of the defence staff from 1997 to 2001, said commanders on the ground were struggling with too few troops.
He told the Daily Mail: "I spoke to an officer the other day who said that the Treasury had affected the operational safety of our soldiers, by preventing an uplift in our numbers."
It is "very likely" that fewer soldiers would have been killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan if ministers had provided funding for more helicopters, he added.
His criticism came after Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg warned that troops' lives in Afghanistan were being "thrown away" by politicians.
He wrote in the Daily Telegraph yesterday: "I am appalled that so many of our soldiers have been killed because of inadequate equipment, and disturbed to hear from experts that we don't have enough forces to hold and rebuild territory once it has been won."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged it was a "very hard summer" for the troops but insisted the Government's resolution to seeing through the mission was "undiminished".
Speaking from the G8 Summit at L'Aquila in Italy, he said: "Our resolution to complete the work that we have started in Afghanistan and Pakistan is undiminished.
"We knew from the start that defeating the insurgency in Helmand would be a hard and dangerous job but it is vital."
He added: "There is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains and towns of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain."
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth acknowledged this week that there was "gloom and worry" about the British fatalities and admitted more lives would be lost.
He insisted tonight that the conflict in Afghanistan was "winnable" but warned that there would be no early end to the fighting.
"I do believe that we are making progress and I do believe that this is winnable, but it is not winnable in the short term," he told the BBC Radio 4 PM programme.
"We are going to have to stick with this, we are going to have to show resolve, we are going to get behind our armed forces who are doing the brave fighting."
Mr Ainsworth told ITV News that the risk could never be removed from operations of this kind.
He said of the military personnel fighting in Afghanistan: "They know that they have to take risks, they take that risk on our behalf, they've been making progress. Sadly we've had some people killed, some brave people and we must never forget them."
But he urged the public to "get behind" surviving soldiers who remain in combat in the region.
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Comments
Nine soldiers dead in nine days - for NOTHING.
"Meteropolitan Police?"
Who's Stalinist when he's at home? Did you mean meteorological police? Please do send the whole lot to the Met, maybe someone there will finally realize what a looner you are and have you committed.
Is my abusive language personal enough for your taste? If you prefer I can talk about your hot flushes and that irritating dryness in your lady parts that is partly responsible for your raving rants.
If only some kind soul would lock you up for a couple of weeks and put some librium and oestrogen into you, you would emerge a contented old bingo-playing fart and leave the rest of the world in peace at last.
Of course the 'proles' have swallowed the freedon and democracy, or women's rights propaganda, not even realising they don't have real freedom or authentic democracy at home, or that far more depicalble regimes are left alone because they provide oil to the west in cosy 'arms for oil' deals.
There is another apsect. It seems that the Taliban were very effective in reducing poppy growing and reducing the Afghan sector of the international drug trade. The US was keen to get that situation rectified, and have succeed: poppy production up and the Wall St money laundering business seems to be back to 'normal'.
Nine soldiers dead in nine days - we thank these brave UK & Allied soldiers, for saving humanity again; this time. from the Islamist Neo-Nazis ! May these brave UK soldiers rest in peace.
These brave young men gave their lives, so the young piggies such as adroog, schoolstudent etc have the privilige to do so.
I would love to see them try this in the hell hole that has become Iran, where the most Seniior Cleric lies and the Immam's remain silent while their young people are slaughtered and tortured.
nooraza, you will find one thing common throughout the replies these disrespectful piggies post, they ARE COWARDS.
Never will you see these small minded people out protesting in public because they know the British public will not stand for them and their cowardly views.
Could you imagine them at Wootton Bassett, especially the Walt who calls himself ancientoneuk! Being Special Forces (in his dreams)he should be able to handle himself against a few pensioners paying their respects to our brave dead, but you wont see him, because he lives in a world of fantasy and is a COWARD of the first degree, hiding behind a keyboard.
What do you think nooraza, will he, or any of the little piggies dare turn up?
I will be there at the next repatriation and would love to shake ancientoneouk's hand, RIGHT behind his spineless back.
R.I.P all you brave young men.
Yes, Goalhouse, R.I.P. to all the brave Allied soldiers. History will remember their brave struggle; to liberate humanity again; this time from Islamist Neo-Nazis!
As he is sent abroad to fight in a pointless conflict,his country back home, will continue to change beyond recognition.
One of the functions of the Afghan conflict is to divert many of our best young people away from what is happening at home,the "rebranding" of Britain.
another mindless sheep gets what he deserevss
Boy soldiers: Private Robbie Laws, 18, left, was killed in action in Afghanistan while his friend Private Danny Eaglesfield, also 18, was wounded
These two kids came from no-future two-job families and were looking at a no-hope no-job future. They were tricked by their government into a throwing themselves in the mouth of hell, thinking that it was the gateway to careers and adventure. They are the victims of child abuse and of working class exploitation by a "labour" government that eats the country's children alive to serve its imperial lord and master Uncle Sam.
Well then give us a clue as to what they achieved by dying.
This Colonel is what is commonly referred to as a tosser, although my word would be imbecile.
Those poor ignorant mugs died for nothing, having achieved nothing and with no possible expectation that their 'enemy' would ever concede defeat and acclaim them victorious.
They may have been brave but they the lacked basic intelligence to comprehend the stupidity of their mission, whatever it was.
Just like their Iraq buddies, they will eventually be forced to run in shame and failure.
Better sooner rather than later.
We need cheap oil and gas to carry on as usual.... these boys are securing the Central Asian Oil supply... preventing it from falling into the control of the Russians or being diverted to feed China... its a price we have to pay to ensure our way of life and the economic prosperity of the free world continues for another 30-50 years... we need Mid Eastern Oil and we need Central Asian oil... loosing a few is the price we have to pay for our comforts... they are professional soldiers and knew what they were getting into .
No oil or gas has been stolen from Iraq and the only way Afghanistan will supply gas or oil from the Caspian is to Pakistan, India and China.
There is no advantage to the USA of enabling this to happen other than the answer you cannot accept so find yourself believing these oily fairy tales, that answer is that the USA does it because they think it is the right thing to do by Afghans having removed the Taliban who sheltered people who attacked the US and would have done so again. Still, acknowledge that and your whole miserable house falls on your head doesn't it, so the narrative of death you promote must live on in defiance of the observable facts.
When we come to our senses and get out of this pointless and un-winnable war our soldiers will still be dead and the injured will still be suffering.
We will not be remembered for the lives lost or bodies broken.
The only reminder will be that Blair and his liars will still be rich.
That their sacrifice and that of thousands of other British men and women over the centuries all over the globe has allowed the breeding of such a worthless, complacent, and self-centred generation sickens me to the very core and makes me ashamed to be of the same species.
May every single one of you have occasion to rue your disgusting sentiments in the very near future.
And for WHAT, eh? Going to tell us that, you gutless piece of scum?
Nailed on you've never so much as raised your voice to another human being in person, let alone thrown a punch, classic cyber-warrior.
The scariest your life has probably ever gotten was going to Glastonbury the other week, or maybe you had to walk home through a council estate one night, because daddy couldn't pick you up.
I ask no man to die for me, the lads that are serving in Afghanistan are there because it's their job and for their fellow soldiers, not abstract concepts like Queen or Country.
But whilst they are out there they have my utmost respect and gratitude and it sickens me that their sacrificices allow amoeba like you and the rest on here the luxury of calling them 'scumbags'.
Twat.
The sad off-topic gutless garbage of Britain's armchair generals.
Wanker.
You rage impotently about the faults of others, governments and individuals and declare everything worthless and in vain and yet you offer nothing yourself, no solutions, no strategies other than 'not getting involved'.
Ultimately you stand for nothing, to use your own (also repeated) term you are 'gutless', an irrelevance.
Twat.
You are an empty warmongering gasbag.
Goodbye, I hope you drop dead tomorrow. The net IQ of the British Isles would rise if you did.
Have a word with yourself son, wishing death on strangers on the Internet, when you know you wouldn't utter a peep if we met on the street. Easy to rattle eh.
What a mug.
We are in Afghanistan to stop the country from becoming the Sandals of global terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.
As a byproduct of this and thanks to the wonderful world of realpolitik, maybe the Afghans and especially Afghan girls and women might one day have the choice to live a post-Medieval life and help their country take it's place in the world.
Stay in your state of childlike indignation that Governments lie to the people and only ever act out of self-interest, it's been pissing people like you off for millennia, me I'll stay in the real world.
However just to make you happy, here's Version B.
We're there to further the global Zionist and neocon conspiracy that has created the War on Terror to distract us all and keep us in a state of cowed fear whilst they and the Illuminati take over the world.
It'll be any day now.
Toodle pip.
How your fellow chinless bourgeois cynics must have tittered around their mugs of camomile tea as they read your rapier-like comment.
Get back to your latest boundary-pushing 'artistic creation' there's a good fella/girl.
EIGHT DEAD IN 24 HOURS!
It's a fucking massacre. It's the Khyber Pass all over again.
The slow putrefaction of British politics and economy, the gradual disenfranchisement of the voters alienated by a binary political system that doesn't address any of their real needs, and the creeping Nulab police state have finally come to this: The sudden catastrophic collapse of the economy and the subsequent equally sudden collapse of the shoestring military, whose trouncing at the hands of amateurish Shiite guerrillas in Basra should have been sufficient warning to preclude its deployment to the far more demanding mission in Afghanistan.
If Basra wasn't enough of a wake-up call, how about the ignominious defeat of the Brits in Helmand itself 2 years ago, when they cried uncle and made peace with the Taliban?
The British military, which has been running on a wing and a prayer for far too long, has reached the end of the road. It is being butchered out of existence. Morale will collapse and no one will ever enlist in that broken and threadbare army any more. The "special relationship" for which so much fortune and blood has been squandered, the hope that Britain would keep "punching above its weight" thanks to it services to Uncle Sam, all that will fall along with the gullible young cannon-fodder on the hills and valleys of Helmand.
And who do we have to thank for it? Barack Obomber, who took Dumbya's "surge" hype for reality - completely oblivious to the fact that any improvement in Iraq was owed to the bribes paid to the Sunni resistance - and attempted to replicate a "surge" that never was in the stronghold and birthplace of the Taliban, Helmand and Kandahar.
The Taliban have started their counteroffensive. They call it "Iron net." They will first take care of the Brits, then the Yanks. The population is utterly opposed to the foreign presence. None of the village elders are talking with the Marines and the Brits can't leave their foxholes long enough to try talking with anyone anyway. Obomber is handing the Taliban victory on a silver platter.
Call him tomorow and ask him the names. Who?
Five killed in single bomb blast as operation makes them vulnerable
Have that unrepresentative body, the UN Security Council reverse their stupid resolution of 2001.
This was NOT a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, just the tiny few who decide how they can run the world. Not for the better of all mankind either.
Ever wondered why Tony Blair, George Bush, John Howard and others never put the "War on Iraq" or "War on Afghanistan" to the United Nations General Assembly?
It would never have passed.
Reverse it. Everyone go home, pay compensation to both Afghanistan and Iraq and in the future all play nicely in the sand pit.
Of course the Oil Barons and the Military-Industrial complex won't like it one bit.