Eggs Laid by Tigers

Sunday, October 04, 2009

The Battles of Barge Natal, Wahat and Kandesh [Times] or Kandeshh [Post]

The Battle of Wahat took place in June 2008, just before General McChrystal took power. Nine Americans died in that battle.

The battle is widely seen as the wrong way to conduct warfare in Afghanistan: the people were against us, there was inadequate intelligence, and all the rest. You can read the analysis in The New York Times , and google has a number of accounts from soldiers and parents of fallen soldiers who took part in the battle. Some are moving, indeed.

The criticism is severe, all the way up the chain of command. We are assured that when McChrystal commands, matters will be different.

Wahat is a village in Kunar Province, just south of Nuristan, in the Hindu Kush Mountains, bordered by Pakistan, if you believe the Times.

If, however, you believe the Post, it is in Nuristan., and is spelt "Kandaysh".

Neither spelling proudices information or images in google, which is exceedingly odd, since our troops like to send bkoattle pics to google.

Just recently, the Times reported eight American deaths in the Kandesh district of Nuristan, where we recently sent troops presumably to further Karzai's politician ambitions. See yesterday's blog. Google has no pics of the Kandesh district yet.

The report of the Kandesh battle is remarkably similar to the report of the Wahat battle, though we do not have a formal investigative report yet.

Query: has Mcchrystal made a difference?