TELL THE TRUTH! - MR BLAIR-OF HOW LONG OUR TROOPS WILL REMAIN IN AFGHANISTAN.

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Daily Mail

Tuesday, September 5-2006.

TELL THE TRUTH,

MR BLAIR

Labour claimed we could be out of Afghanistan’ without a shot fired’.

YET

In just 48 hours, 15 British servicemen have been killed.

In this damning despatch

Military historian

MAX HASTINGS

Says

IT’S TIME THE PM

ADMITTED IT!

From:

 Max Hastings

IN KANDAHAR.

FROM THE FLIGHT DECK OF OUR AIRCRAFT, 25,000FT IN THE DARKNESS ABOVE AFGHANISTAN,

    -the flashes of a fire-fight on the ground were visible.

‘Probably the Americans, down towards the Pakistan border,’ said Sir Richard Dannatt. There is almost always a fire-fight somewhere in southern Afghanistan today – the latest killed four Canadians on Sunday while the suicide bomber killed another British soldier in Kabul yesterday.[Monday, September 4 - 2006]

Utterly contrary to what the Prime Minister and the former Defence secretary John Reid assured Parliament and the British people before our deployment to Afghanistan earlier this year, British forces are now engaged in a full-blown war here, of which we have so far seen only the first actions.

General Dannatt who last week took over from Sir Mike Jackson as head of the British Army, at the weekend found himself visiting Helmand province as news came of the loss of the RAF surveillance Nimrod outside Kandahar, with the loss of 14 dead.

If the tragedy put this theatre of war into British headlines as never before, for the men at the sharp end it is only the latest instalment in the toughest battle the Army has fought in many years.

‘This is the most difficult campaign we have ever fought – a much more dangerous environment than Iraq,’

Major Mike McGinty told General Dannatt.

Major McGinty, who commands the helicopter unit at Camp Bastion, the Army’s huge base in the midst of the great sandy emptiness of the Helmand desert, added wryly:

‘When I write my book about this business, it’s going to be called “Without a Shot Being Fired”.’

Not a man here has ever forgotten John Reid’s declaration that the Army was not going into Helmand to fight terrorists.  Hopefully, said the minister in one of his many grossly misleading Government statements, out troops would be able to go home having done their job of helping Afghan reconstruction, without a shot being fired.

[We wonder how the Afghans are coping with those Health & Safety Lectures which the MoD so kindly gave space on their supply aircraft as a service that the Afghan population would much appreciate when they return their thanks for such grotesque impingement on their liberty by showing that they have no need of Health & Safety measures as they show by their usual  historic stubborn defence of their homeland and have on  their minds –  matters out of this world.]

To return:

As on Sunday, 3 Para’s battle group based at Camp Bastion has taken part in 320 ‘contact’ with the Taliban since May. Its men have fired 300,000 rounds of rifle and machine – gun ammunition and 2,500 mortar rounds. They have lost 11 men dead and 35 wounded.

When Major Dan Rex of the 2^nd Gurkhas went round his young soldiers to see how they were bearing up after their first actions, a series of fire-fights in which they fired 25,000 rounds, all they asked for was MORE AMMUNITION.

‘We’ve got to the stage where everybody works really well together,’ said Major Dean Goodall of the Household Cavalry. ‘The lads like to feel that were taking the fight to the enemy.’

At every unit General Dannatt has visited, he has heard the same story of high morale and amazing enthusiasm, but also of a British force committed to the most difficult fight in decades.

In 30 years in Northern Ireland around 20 IRA rockets were fired at the Army.  In Helmand as many can land around British positions in a single day.

There is no sign of the Taliban slackening. As the British maintain their offensive to establish their dominance of the region, more losses are inevitable.

‘It’s only a matter of a time before a helicopter goes down.’ An officer said to me on Sunday. ‘If it’s fully loaded, then our casualties could double in minutes.’

No soldier suggests this is a reason to flinch. It is simply a brutally realistic assessment of mounting cost of trying to save Afghanistan from anarchy.

[A project which should not have been taken on knowing the history of Afghanistan when we of all people have much experience well over a hundred and fifty years ago that that country is no walk-over. What has the Taliban done to warrant the British forces being there in the early years of the 21^st century? If it is still a matter of controlling the massive drug flow into Britain then the Government should have adopted a positive fight against the drugs on our streets and have controlled immigration instead of its open-door policy.  If it is as many suspect a question of giving dear old George a help to keep the oil flowing in the area or more ambitious projects then time is overdue for our brave soldiers to be withdrawn rather than be cannon-fodder to a people who saw off the 100,000 Russian Army and because of Tony and George’s illegal invasion of IRAQ there is now an unlimited supply of freedom-fighters who will join the Taliban so that our brave soldiers will be dieing for a cause which is not theirs to fight. While they are there they will as always give a good account of themselves as they did in 1879 at Rorke’s Drift when after a brave stand the Zulu leader acknowledged their bravery. They were rewarded with 11 VC’s  and there have been countless other instances before and since where the stoical members of the British Army and the other Services have stood their ground for their Comrades –their Regiment and their Country which is their accustomed conduct as Soldiers of the QUEEN.]

To Return:

General Dannatt told the men of 3 Para on Saturday they were ‘an example to the whole Army’.

Likewise, Lieutenant-general David Richards, the British NATO commander in Kabul, emphasises how high the stakes are. ‘If we left, the Taliban would be in Kabul in about four days.’

Yet the challenge for the Army is immense. To put it bluntly, Britain [As usual] is leading a pathetically small NATO force, seeking to stabilise this country with woefully inadequate resources.

The original British plan may have made political sense, but it was

MILITARY NONSENSE

-it simply provided the Taliban with fixed targets, which they exploited to the full.

It seems inevitable that in the next few days, the Army will have to accept the painful loss of face involved in withdrawing from fixed positions.

General Richards has wretched

General Richards has wretchedly little of everything – above all men and helicopters.

The 4,500 British and 2,200 Canadian soldiers in the south are the ONLY substantial forces here which are willing seriously to fight.

The GERMANS AND FRENCH have been deployed in the cushiest areas of the country.

Day after day, the British battle group and its supporting Apache helicopters [Whoop! –where did they come from?] , Harriers and artillery find themselves engaged with Taliban units in fire-fights of bitter intensity.

The British never fail to prevail but at a cost. Soldiers get more tired, scarce helicopters use up hours – ‘we’ve ground the Chinooks into the ground,’ in Major McGinty’s words –

Some men are killed, others are wounded.

RSM John Hardy of 3 Para, the archetypal senior NCO with a shaggy moustache and infinite care for his men, told General Dannatt:

‘Don’t worry about the lads. They just want to get out there and dish it out. I feel very humble with these young lads.’

He says he has found the experience of Afghanistan immensely rewarding, ‘but I’ve also had to collect 11 body bags.’

The aspect of the fighting that has amazed every soldier is that it is such close-quarters stuff.

 [Any history of those British regiments who served in Afghanistan in the 19^th century should reveal such tactics as being the trade mark of the Afghans a brave and resilient enemy as many regiments learned to their cost.

Men of the Gurkhas, attached to the Paras, found themselves in a hand grenade duel with Taliban attacking their positions a few weeks ago.  The Americans, who have 22,000 of their own troops hunting the Taliban, believe next year will be even tougher than this one.

After the enemy have taken a winter pause to regroup, they expect them back, looking for more trouble in Helmand, Kandahar and other traditional strongholds.

 THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG STRUGGLE.IT IS TIME THE GOVERNMENT BELATEDLY STARTED TO EXPLAIN TO THE BRITISH PEOPLE WHY WE ARE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR US TO STAY HERE.

Back in 2002 and 2003, if the Americans and their allies had got down seriously to the business of sorting out this country instead of rushing off invading Iraq, it might have been a relatively easy and cheap task to sort it out.

World opinion agreed that it was right to depose the Taliban that it would be a disaster for Afghanistan again to lapse into anarchy and become a stronghold of Al Qaeda. YET nothing was done to translate this goodwill into action.

[We have only a few days ago learned that 75 Professors in the U.S. believe that the Twin Towers was an INSIDE JOB.-more details on EDP bulletin board]

In the intervening four years, though elections have been held and a president installed, his writ runs little further than the local warlords will allow and, a stunning consequence of Western neglect, Afghanistan has become the largest narcotic economy in the world, growing more than £1 billion worth of opium poppies this year.

When Tony Blair announced Britain would lead the NATO ‘reconstruction force’ into Afghanistan this summer [with their imported Health and Safety and Awareness projects], part of its purpose was alleged to be poppy eradication.

IN REALITY, COMMANDERS AGREE THAT AS LONG AS THEY ARE FIGHTING A HOT WAR WITH THE TALIBAN, THEY CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY SUPPORT THE

ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN.

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The British Army having accepted the toughest assignment with its deployment in Helmand, Afghanistan’s chief opium kingdom, is determined to make the best of the [short straw they have been given] job.

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[Reminds one of the film the

Bridge at Remagen

-where the advance American unit was always in the front line whatever the circumstances because his commander volunteered his unit for every dangerous mission not considering the need for rest or recreation but to further his own career.

In our day Tony Blair is that man who in order to impress world leaders has our troops scattered across the globe with insufficient and out-of-date equipment but what does that matter when Blair is on the world STAGE. ]

To return: [Not Blair –of course.]

But it is so desperately short of helicopters that a trip for General Dannatt to visit an outlying ‘platoon house’ on Sunday had to be cancelled because every British ‘chopper’ was committed to combat operations.

[Well General Dannatt should have arrived with the decision makers from the MoD and used the means that many of our brave troops have had to use and that is Land-Rovers –and see at first hand how dangerous it is to be driving such unprotected vehicles in the Middle East theatre of war.]