It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Marjah, by all accounts appearing in the US media, is supposed to have been a city, or at least a major town. Described as containing some 80,000 inhabitants – and a bustling center of insurgent activity, a Taliban stronghold that had to be taken – Marjah was depicted as a rather large target, and our glorious "victory" was therefore portrayed as a major triumph. The only problem with this narrative is that it bears no relation to reality.
As Gareth Porter points out in a piece published on this site, Marjah, far from being a major city or even a town, is a minor hamlet consisting of one mosque and a few other buildings, mostly stores. There is no city of 80,000 souls, as Western "reporters" have been telling us, there are no "neighborhoods" as described in countless news dispatches from the "mainstream" media, and the imagery of house-to-house fighting imparted by these reports is a total fiction.
Iran's president says the US must explain what its troops are doing in Afghanistan, as catching terrorists only requires intelligence work not military deployments.