Article

2008-11-10 Afghanistan

British troops 'cannot bear brunt of Barack Obama's Afghanistan surge'

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Posted by john frum 2008-11-10 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top
File under: al-Qaeda

#1 the British are in Iraq? I thought they left awhile back

Posted by chris 2008-11-10 11:23|| 2008-11-10 11:23|| Front Page Top

#2 Anyone with the name Jock Stirrup is going to have a tough time getting credibility/respect. His old man musta left at an early age per the Boy Named Sue theory.

Posted by remoteman 2008-11-10 12:55|| 2008-11-10 12:55|| Front Page Top

#3 Chris, what's left of them are holed up at Basra Airport, cleaning their (unused) weapons.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2008-11-10 13:03|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2008-11-10 13:03|| Front Page Top

#4 And thus the screamingly obvious fact of the non-existence of "allies" in any concrete sense bursts onto the scene, after years of distortion by the media and Dems, and characteristic silence of the Bush administration. Yes, yes, many Brits are true allies, and their military is good and over-stretched (and under-resourced, and demoralized) - but aside from them, there are hardly any allies who can, literally, be of much use. Lack of political will, and the indolence and dependency of decades, render them thus. I'm wondering whether we'll actually get to enjoy the spectacle of one of the opposition's dumbest and most counter-factual idiocies of the Bush years exploding in their faces, now that the electorate has inexcusably allowed them back in power.

Posted by Verlaine 2008-11-10 13:26|| 2008-11-10 13:26|| Front Page Top

#5 Well, there's also the Oz Stralians.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2008-11-10 13:31|| 2008-11-10 13:31|| Front Page Top

#6 And y'know, if it were my country's troops, I wouldn't want to surge them into Afghanistan anyway. President Zero doesn't have a secure way of supplying them, if he'd ever done anything besides politics and acadamia in his entire life he could probably grasp that.

We need to make sure we're not sending them there to just wind up as hostages.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2008-11-10 13:33|| 2008-11-10 13:33|| Front Page Top

#7 12000 men in the field and the British are overstretched? WTF?

Posted by DK70 the Scantily Clad7177 2008-11-10 16:25|| 2008-11-10 16:25|| Front Page Top

#8 The overstretch of British forces in Afghanistan is due to the meat axe approach to defense spending taken by the Labour governments in Britain since the end of WWII. As bad as it may seem to be in the US military with the teeth to tail ratio, it is 10 times worse in any of the European militaries. Also, the US has been replacing/rehabbing/rebuild equipment the whole time since 9/11, while the Europeans have been coasting along on their Cold War era equipment. The approach works for awhile, since most military equipment is very robust but eventually stuff wears out and needs to be replaced. And the British and other Europeans have taken the "penny wise and pound foolish" approach to procurement : don't buy it until there is nothing left, and buy only European models of all major weapons systems.

Posted by Shieldwolf 2008-11-10 16:52|| 2008-11-10 16:52|| Front Page Top

#9 Given the ongoing saga reflected in this and infinite earlier stories, it really makes one wonder about the French, British and Russian nuclear arsenals. Could they be approaching Pakistani levels of efficiency?

Posted by Large Spomoling6782 2008-11-10 19:04|| 2008-11-10 19:04|| Front Page Top

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