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AP Report from Afghanistan

Mar- 4-2010 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

Afghanistan battle shows war rarely fought to plan | ajc.com

Over the past week, men belonging to the 5th Stryker Brigade and Afghan forces have swept through villages and compounds once held by Taliban fighters, advancing with painstaking caution to avoid casualties from booby traps and harassing fire.

In the military's innocuous-sounding jargon, the soldiers have cleared "objectives" and had "contact," which really means vicious firefights. They "engaged the enemy" and "possibly destroyed" snipers. The Taliban rarely leave their dead, if they are, in fact, dead.

At night, U.S. and Afghan commanders, with Canadian advisers, pore over maps based on satellite imagery as they plot the next day's assault. The mission has a start time and an estimated end. There are questions, comments. It has the feel of a classroom exercise, removed from the shouting, the diving and hugging of cover, the cacophony of battlefield bullets and machinery.


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