A NATO helicopter attack in the Kandahar Province killed more than 20, according to coalition officials. Officials said all those slain in the attack were insurgents, and that no civilian casualties were reported, a comparative rarity in recent NATO raids.
The official statement insisted that the insurgents had opened fire on the helicopter, and that the helicopter returned fire. Ground forces were said to have discovered a cache of anti-aircraft rounds after the attack.
The attack was part of what has been an ongoing offensive in Kandahar, the largest NATO offensive of the year. Though the offensive has yielded a large number of casualties, officials have conceded that it has largely failed to accomplish any of its goals.
Yet officials have warned against rushing to conclusions, and insist that the offensive cannot fairly be judged until next June. This means, if nothing else, officials will be able to shrug off the year end review of the war, or at the very least not include the defining offensive of the current year.
A US soldier died Thursday, Oct. 28 in Kandahar province from an IED attack the 44th US soldier to die this month. Two more US soldiers died Wednesday the 27th one in Helmand the cause of death not reported as usual from combat deaths in Helmand. The other soldier was killed in an IED attack near Gormach. Three more US soldiers died Sunday the 24th throughout the country.
The question I have is there some sort of ban on reporting US combat deaths in Afghanistan at Antiwar.
These first day accounts of "Nato" deaths at Antiwar with no follow up as to nationalities in later reports, no information as to when where and how these deaths occurred leaves the reader as much in the dark as in the main stream press concerning combat in Afghanistan. But when there are Taliban casualties Antiwar faithfully prints these vague AP reports of rounded numbers of 20, 30, and today 80 Taliban or insurgent deaths.
According to one of the top Australian commanders in the field in Afghanistan foreign troops are being overwhelmed in Afghanistan by the Taliban and the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily. If you follow the daily casualty reports at the Department of Defense and the continuous stream of US combat deaths from throughout the country but especially in Helmand province it is easy to see that the US is loosing this war. If you hide behind these vague empty "Nato" embed reports and phony AP reports of 20, 35, and 80 Taliban killed, you may help fool the American public that somehow we are winning.