At 04:52 PM 3 March 2002 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>I presume that 0.15" and 0.15 inch is not a controversial distinction.
They are the same: double quote (") is a symbol for inches, and single
quote (') is a symbol for foot.
>Yes. Military personal serve overseas and are immersed in metric
>cultures in professional and social lives. They work in multinational
>metric teams. If the US military use it, it certainly can't be regarded
>as unamerican.
This last sentence is most excellent!! Next time any of us encounters some
"red-neck" saying it is "un-American" to use metric, the obvious reply is
"Well, all of our Armed Forces use it!"
Since most of these "red-neck" types tend to be gun-ho, patriotic
supporters of the military, it will put them in quite a quandary.
Jim Elwell
P.S. I'm not implying with this that there is anything wrong with being a
patriotic supporter of the military!
Note, however, that even though the military use SI and give reports in meters, some reports or editors will dumb it down for the American public, even when SI is in a direct quote.
Read carefully the following.
Carleton
U.S. Pulls 400 Troops From Afghan Battlefield
Officials Vow to Wipe Out Taliban, Al Qaeda Holdouts
By Pamela Constable and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 11, 2002; Page A01
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 10 -- The United States withdrew 400 troops today from its military campaign against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in eastern Afghanistan but declared Operation Anaconda will continue until the Islamic die-hards who are still resisting from their mountain redoubts are captured or wiped out.
While fighting has subsided over the last several days and allied Afghan commanders on the scene have described a lull, senior U.S. military officials characterized the pullout as a rotation and predicted fresh American troops could soon join the fight. "We have moved these forces in and out over about the last week," Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the Afghan war, said on ABC television. "And I would expect that would continue until we have reduced each of the pockets in the area."
"We are obviously repositioning our forces, but the operation has not ended," said Maj. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, as soldiers poured out of CH-47 Chinook helicopters at Bagram air base, 35 miles north of Kabul, and sank onto their heavy combat packs, exhausted and sunburned from nearly a week of high-altitude warfare.
Interviews with more than a dozen returning soldiers -- snipers, medics, helicopter pilots and combat engineers -- indicated that the unexpectedly stiff resistance U.S. forces initially encountered from enemy fighters, who rained down mortar fire from hidden ridge-top positions, has dwindled dramatically in the past several days.
Their accounts, offered as they sat down to rest, buttressed reports by U.S. military officials that hundreds of enemy fighters have been killed by U.S. bombing and helicopter fire since the assault began March 2. The troops seemed exhausted and elated after what was, for many, their first combat experience.
"We went through a dust storm and an earthquake. The days were extremely hot, and the nights were so cold I couldn't even feel my feet," said Sgt. Sean Driscoll, a combat engineer whose job was to set up and secure mobile operating areas for infantry troops.
Sgt. William Mace, 28, a member of the same squad, said the air was so thin that "if you walked 500 [yards], you had to stop and take a breath." Initially, he said, the squad expected to be in the combat zone for 12 to 72 hours; instead, they remained there for more than a week.
"We were hailed on, snowed on, shot at and mortared at, but we did the right thing at the right time. After a lot of close air support came in, anything that moved was killed by our birds [helicopters] or snipers," said Army Lt. Chris Beal, 28, an infantry platoon leader who spent seven days in the mountains.
Fighting appeared less intense today in the snowy mountains around the village of Shahikot, about 100 miles south of Kabul, where the Taliban and al Qaeda forces have holed up, refusing to surrender. Despite improved weather, few U.S. warplanes were spotted in the skies until late afternoon, when a B-52 began circling overhead.
Afghan commanders in nearby Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, reported that the battle has mostly paused while they and their U.S. counterparts prepare a possible final offensive for the next few days. Local Afghan leaders in Gardez largely abandoned any hopes of a negotiated end to the conflict, saying the U.S. military rejected the idea.
But tension flared between rival Afghan forces on the U.S. side. Local militia commanders, mostly ethnic Pashtuns, demanded the departure of a largely Tajik force, including tanks and armored vehicles, sent as reinforcements from the Northern Alliance militia that is under the command of Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim in Kabul, the capital.
The 1,500-strong detachment nevertheless was settling in and preparing to join the battle. Unlike the 1,000 U.S.-trained and paid Afghan fighters operating under American commanders, the new arrivals in theory answer to an Afghan commander on the scene, Gul Haidar.
Haidar traveled along with U.S. Special Forces officers today to Zurmat, a town near Shahikot where Taliban support remains strong, to discuss a joint operation. The delegation later drove closer to the fighting, until it was separated from the village of Shahikot by a single hill. Haidar and his deputies began climbing to have a look, but the half-dozen U.S. soldiers opted to stay behind, according to an Afghan soldier who accompanied Haidar.
Several Afghan commanders said a final push against the recalcitrant extremists could begin soon. Just days after proposing peace talks to get the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to come down from the mountains and lay down their arms, the local Afghan leaders in Gardez gave up today in the face of firm U.S. opposition.
"The Americans said you must not negotiate," said Said Mohammed Isshaq, the Gardez security chief. "They refused to negotiate." He added that the Americans appear to want nothing but to kill the enemy fighters. "Right now they're bloodthirsty toward al Qaeda people."
Several Afghan sources said Saturday that a local Afghan commander named Ziauddin had sent a secret peace overture to Saeef Rahman Mansour, the leader of the al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Shahikot. Reached today, Ziauddin initially did not deny the report, instead demanding to know who had disclosed it. Several minutes later, he said he had sent no message and walked off.
There will be "no negotiation at all," declared Haidar, who only the day before had said he wanted to explore a peaceful solution. "We didn't talk about that at all. We talked only about the offensive."
But the newly arrived Afghan troops seemed ill-equipped to launch a major fight atop freezing 10,000-foot peaks against an entrenched and well-armed enemy. While many were given shoes today, they have yet to be fully outfitted.
"We don't have ammunition, we don't have sleeping bags," one soldier said. "We're still waiting."
Some of their would-be allies made clear they have no interest in helping. Mohammed Ismail, the operations officer for the U.S.-trained Afghan force, called on the newly arrived Afghan forces under Haidar to "return back to the barracks from where they came," complaining they had only come to claim credit for beating al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "It was not necessary for the reinforcements to come to Paktia," Ismail said. "There are enough forces in this region. The enemy has already tried to divide us by various names. The current situation is a very ripe one for foreigners to divide us on ethnic lines."
Haidar met with the local council, or shura, to try to ease the tension and solicit its members' support for his visiting forces. After an hour-long meeting this afternoon, he emerged to declare that he had won them over. "It was very powerful," he said. "All the elders of Paktia announced their support for us and all the forces who are against al Qaeda."
The squabbles among Afghans were far from the minds of the returning U.S. soldiers at Bagram.
Sgt. Billy Stallings, 27, who led a squad of military police in the combat zone, described an experience that quickly shifted from surviving harrowing attacks during the first 48 hours to greeting relative quiet during the last several days. "It was surprisingly easy for us to walk in, and then the chaos started," he said. "One mortar round landed half a [yard] from where we were, but fortunately it didn't go off. Every soldier was praying."
After helicopter gunships wiped out numerous enemy positions, Stallings said, he and his squad began patrolling several villages and found numerous caches of weapons and supplies left by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
"They were well-bunkered in," he said. "They had protective masks, radios, explosives and manuals on how to use them, and much more weapons and ammunition than we expected." If any enemy forces are still in the area, he said, "I don't think they can survive unless they are really stockpiled. A lot of their supply avenues have been taken out."
Several snipers and helicopter gunship pilots described spotting and firing at clusters of enemy fighters, who they said were defiant at first but soon overwhelmed by U.S. air power.
"They were brave, but then so many planes and helicopters came in, and they had nothing like that," said Sgt. Justin Celano, 21, a sniper team leader who repeatedly spotted enemy positions on surrounding ridges and called in bombers to strike them. "After the first day, we did a lot of waiting."
Marine Capt. Brunson Howard, 28, who piloted an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter, described flying repeatedly over foxholes where enemy fighters were hiding, then firing when they emerged.
"One of them came out of his hole with an RPG, but he never got the chance to put it on his shoulder," Howard said, referring to a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "We had three gunships with rockets and 20-millimeter machine guns, and the odds were in our favor. After we found their positions and engaged the targets, we never saw any more of them."
Most soldiers said they had not seen any enemy fighters at close range, but Stallings said his military police squad had brought one detainee back to Bagram today, an Afghan man he described as about 20 years old, with some minor wounds and a face covered with open sores. He said the prisoner insisted he was a student from Kabul.
Baker reported from Gardez. Staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.
� 2002 The Washington Post Company
