U.S. soldiers executed

While the Pentagon and White House have maintained a tight lid on any strategic information coming out of Afghanistan, Russian military intelligence has been closely monitoring U.S. activities in the country, claiming that 18 U.S. soldiers were captured and then executed by the Taliban, reports Geostrategy, the global intelligence news agency.

All of the soldiers are believed to have been executed on April 10 after the United States ignored a Taliban and al-Qaida deadline for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

No bodies have been recovered.
www.wnd.com...

ouch.
not good.

60 killed and wounded in Op. Anaconda.

Its amazing, if you watched the news you'd think we came out of there with a couple of paper cuts and some light bruising.

I wouldn't exactly trust the WND, a lot of it is based on speculation and exterpilation. As soon as the story is carried by a major press, I'll take heed. I know, the media minipulates... blah... there are still enough people out there that knew if it was true it would make a good story.

It could easily be a little russian propaganda, but thats not really the point.

In the main streem press I've seen very little reporting of actual numbers involved in this war.

I can't believe no americans were killed, The biggest report we got was that helecopter that crashed.

death toll is almost certainly being supressed at present.

Originally posted by Dakmarid

there are still enough people out there that knew if it was true it would make a good story.

Really ? A good story ? May be their familly will have a different opinion if " this story " is true !

I do not know how accurate the Russians are,but they seem to have more info on our troops than any other resource I have come across.It could be propaganda,time will tell.

Finding info on MIA's is not easy to do.The Russian claim anywhere from 18-100 American MIA's.

I have been waiting to hear about something like this,as hard as they fought the Russians,its not likely they are going to rollover for us.

The thing that burns me is,when we capture prisoners,we keep them alive.Maybe its time for the U.S. to change tatics in this war.I wonder how al-quada and others would react if they saw their fighters strung up and shot,or beheaded.And knew that if they were caught the same would happen to them.

They is aprevios thread on this subject with a constantly updated link on CBS ( I think ) of US dead in Afghanistan .It includes accidents as well as combat deaths. There numbers don't add up with this alleged execution.

Yeah, I believe the russians...uh huh...not.

However, there is confirmation of one US serviceman who was executed by the Taliban. An Air Force pararescueman was on a rescue mission, and fell from the chopper he was on that had just rescued some other US personell. The Taliban grabbed him and, while his fellow servicemen watched in horror, he was executed on the spot. I haven't heard, but I expect the chopper opened fire on the Taliban murderers after they buchered the wounded man. I know I would have.

nyeff, while I agree that the treatment of US soldiers is abominable, we will never treat others the same way. We must continue to treat prisoners and wounded with compassion, or we risk becoming the same as the barbarians we abhor.

I believe the soldier who fell out of the helicopter was a US Navy Seal.

The classified report described Friday estimates Roberts, the only U.S. or allied soldier on the ground, held off enemy troops for more than 30 minutes with a high-powered belt-fed machine gun.

Roberts was overrun and killed at close range -- a shooting some of his colleagues have described as an execution -- when his weapon jammed. He was dead by the time a six-man rescue team arrived on the scene, an official said.

The team, believing the SEAL was still alive, came under heavy fire when it reached the site. One member of this rescue group, Air Force Technical Sgt. John Chapman, was killed by gunfire.


www.cnn.com...

Thank you for jogging my memory. You are correct, I mixed up my incidents. The AF Pararescueman was Jason Cunningham. He was killed while treating wounded during the battle of Roberts Ridge during Operation Anaconda, and was awarded the Air Force Cross, the highest award the AF can give. He was only the second enlisted awardee since Vietnam.


www.daily-times.com...

US news sources say that only 39 soldiers have been killed in the Middle East... and some were accidents after the fighting was over.

You can confirm this by searching newspapers online. When a soldier is killed, there's reports printed in the local papers. Families are also notified of MIAs... it's not swept under the carpet.

WND seems pretty unreliable.

WND is using a story from Geostrategy based on Russian intelligence, interesting. Bill Gurtz is w/ Geostrategy and usually has reliable information - he reported about the scuds going to Yemen days before the big bust at sea. Is this another attempt by the Russians to make the US look bad? Pravda reports that sort of stuff all the time. Part of me thinks it might have been published so the US would have to respond, true or not.

Didn't some Russian source report that '20 soldiers a day were being killed Afghanistan' - we had a thread about it in here somewhere.

[Edited on 12-12-2002 by Bob88]

Here is a list of 51.

www.vfw.org...

Here is another one,55 killed in the war on terror.
asia.cnn.com...

Tho I am sure that the actual figure is far higher than the uS claims it to be. They don't want Afghanistan turning into another Vietnam.

Originally posted by nyeffThe thing that burns me is,when we capture prisoners,we keep them alive.Maybe its time for the U.S. to change tatics in this war.I wonder how al-quada and others would react if they saw their fighters strung up and shot,or beheaded.And knew that if they were caught the same would happen to them.

In my opinion, the problem with executing prisoners is that it gives the message to the soldiers that since they will be executed they may as well fight to the death. It is always tougher for an offensive when faced with resistence that fights to the very death. If the enemy knows they will be treated decently as prisoners then when they are losing the fight they may surrender. This could affect the amount of casualties you face, in that battles would last a shorter duration.

We've looked at this a few times,, and I'm not sure we're any the wiser.
There is no doubt that the Russian English-languge sites (Pravda, the obvious one) have been publishing stories of undisclosed casualties almost from Day 1.
Of course, they were remarkably silent over Soviet losses in Afghanistan, and still are about losses in Chechnya.
It would be surprising if they didn't want to minimise the suggestion that the US had been more successful than the Russians were ( on the other hand, it's not hard to believe that the US would "under-report" or "massage": governments do)
My inclination is to accept that there have been more losses than is the common perception; but these have probably not been "hidden" -simply that the authorities have not made a single complete disclosure. However, the heavy looses reported in Russian sources and elsewhere strike me as propagandist fantasy.

Originally posted by Fantastic_Damage
Tho I am sure that the actual figure is far higher than the uS claims it to be. They don't want Afghanistan turning into another Vietnam.

You are sure....hmmm... and what, praytell, do you base your statement on? A feeling? A premonition? Some psychic power?

The US government immeadiatly notifies families of the death of their loved ones. There are teams at every base whose job it is to make notification. The numbers the Government releases are correct. I lost a friend in afganistan who is on the list, and I knew of her death within 36 hours, and I'm not even family.

You can take your "I'm sure" in one hand, and a dump in the other, and all you'll have is one dirty hand...

[Edited on 13-12-2002 by Affirmative Reaction]

I agree.

I think there'd be quite the public outcry if 100's of soldiers just went missing. Like I said initally, look at the source - not exactly the most reliable. I hold most of the stuff in WND, Newsmaxx and other publishings of the sort in the same regard as the National Enquirer. Sounds nice, but where are the sources coming from?

In the days of old Rome when a legionaire lost his life in a non-combat related manner resulting from subversive enemy acts the local Roman commander would extract horrific retribution. At times thousands of civilians were crucified to make the point clear that Roman legionaires were sacred arms of the empire and that harming them meant death. Why does the United States not adopt a similiar policy? Just imagine the compliance we would gain were we to identify the area where these supposed executions took place and section it off killing everything within it right down to the goats and chickens. We have unfortunately lost our intestinal fortitude to survive and have not had a real president since Harry Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan while they were trying to surrender.