Thousands of U.S. Marines, Afghan troops attack Taliban-held town

400-1000 insurgents, now thats intel folks. raining hell fire on a population of 80,000, will create about 50,000 insurgents in due time. Sounds to me like the US invented a perpetual motion machine. I wonder if Blackwater has a patent on it already.

polypals should be grateful for the brave U.S. Marines and Afghan troops who are risking their lives to fight the Taliban low-lifes who would torture and kill him/her without hesitation or remorse.

polypals should be grateful for the brave U.S. Marines and Afghan troops who are risking their lives to fight the Taliban low-lifes who would torture and kill him/her without hesitation or remorse.

Give it a rest, the "wrap myself in the flag" argument is well past its use-by date. While I respect the DFs on the ground that have to do the dirty work, setting these people up as deities is not right. As I said yesterday, its a job, get over it. Some of them will not come out of this alive, however, them is the breaks.

Actually, what really worries me about this "attack" and many of the others is the media build-up. Last week we had the intro, yesterday we had the warm up and today we have the main event. Talk about war by media proxy. Instead of worrying about getting the media on-side, the folks in the head-shed should be more worried about getting the grunts on the ground to get this job done.

The US commanders specifically ordered their troops to be absolutely sure the enemy is Taliban and not a civilian before shooting and be accurate. They know scorched earth tactics would not help their cause. We'll see how this plan is actualized.

Can't wait for the analysis of this activity on KFI's Dark Secret Place this coming Sunday PST.

I agree with Sarge about this. The Taliban do not care about the welfare of civilians but would kill them themselves to use as props for propaganda. The US military will restore civilian rule to this area.

the biggest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan

The Nobel committee must be kicking themselves right now over their decision to award the Peace Prize to Obama.

Hopefully now, with Obama sending in a lot more troops, they will train some Afghan troops and begin a turnaround in the sense of Afghans taking on more responsibility for their country. Yes, we also need a political solution with the Taliban. But I still think force is needed to make a separation between the Taliban and al Qaida. As I said quite a long time ago we need to make deals with the poppy growers or whoever to win this conflict. We can't have political stability in the middle of a war without military stability. Then we can't maintain military stability without political stability.

The US has occasionally managed to kill large numbers of civilians, and Karzai is right to be concerned. Of course there is the problem, that if the enemy you're targetting, is hiding under the skirts of women and children, trying to shoot them, means occasionally a lot of innocents get killed as well. That is of course unfortunate, and to be avoided if at all possible. But what it really comes down to is, is there an alternative? Should an enemy be permitted to hide under these innocent womens skirts, and continue to brazenly carry out their attacks? Eventually you have to decide, how many more people will die, before you're willing to take a shot that might kill an innocent?

Is a tough call, I'm glad I'm a civilian and don't have to make it. I don't envy the military at all in having to fight these guys who show their bravery by hiding behind little girls. You'll note though that Karzai is saying, please be careful, not don't go kill bad guys.

I don't know how this operation is going to end, but I do know that the military is at least taking a different approach to Afghanistan. We had 7 years of a misguided, mismanaged war and we got no where. At least we're trying something different. We've left the old "Stay the Course" mission and we're trying something new.

I pray for successes to start taking hold in Afghanistan. We need to end this war someday. < :-)

I share the worry of timorborder(media show) but will wish for the success of this operation, safe for troops and no or minimum casualty for peaceful civilians. Easy part is taking the town , terribly difficult part is keeping it but I guess there is NO alternative.

Just really sad - its Vietnam all over again. To many young Americans dying for what will prove to be for NOTHING in only five more years when they pack up and leave and it goes back to the way it has been for the last 2,000 years.

There are many Taliban's major places all over the country. The US marines just did one of them. I really doubt that the US would exterminate all of them. Even if Bin Ladin were killed but someone would take his place and continue to fight against the US, It means Endless war or 100 year war. This war is already 2nd Vietnam. Best option for the US would be that soldiers leave the country, otherwise they would fight for more decades and see more deaths.

Not really OgieDoggie, you have a completely different terrain, size of force, population, nations involved, weapons, coastline etc. You also have different tactics and what appears to be from declassified military documents a shift in momentum from Taliban to NATO and Afghan forces.

The US military will do their job professionally along with their Afghan and coalition allies. This is hard work that doesn't get done overnight. I support President Obama's efforts in Afghanistan. Despite the Nobel committee's overt effort to influence American foreign policy by giving the peace prize to a guy that obviously hasn't earned it, Obama has a chance to make good on this prize by defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.