Quote Originally Posted by Puckstop31 View Post
The mission CANNOT be about ONE man. Somalia was. Get him and it takes away some of your ability to do other things that may need done.
I was intrigued by this statement. I wonder if you could clarify - did you mean that focusing on destroying one man takes the proverbial eye off the ball, with regards to the real problems in the country? Or perhaps that, once you have the man, you create more problems in getting the population on your side? Just curious.

I agree with Puck that war cannot be about knocking one guy off his perch. I believe Osama was justification for sending troops out to Afghanistan. 'We want to risk soldiers' lives to sort out a country whose regime is displeasing to us' probably wouldn't have sat very comfortably with most UN countries, I should imagine.

Osama Bin Laden was the face of terrorism, and whilst it's great he can no longer bring any more of his hate to the world, there's plenty of other nutjobs like him bringing fear to the people of the Middle East through acts of terrorism. I suppose that is the 'unwinnable' part; the fact that it's one nutjob after another. I personally wouldn't like to say.

I for one am glad that we haven't abandoned the innocent once we got what we 'came' for. That being said, the loss of more and more lives of our soldiers is heartbreaking. Again, I have faith that someone's got to know when the cons outweigh the pros, and that they will have the means to take action.

Quote Originally Posted by lizbud
Same unit but different men. I read that they were flying on a rescue
mission to pick up other men who were pinned down by sniper fire.Along
with the men on the helicoper were a dog & his handler.
Thanks for clarifying, Liz. How sad, too, that they were on their way to help others.