Word: kot
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...Bush Administration originally declared Operation Anaconda a victory after al-Qaeda and Taliban forces were battered in the fighting at Shah-i-Kot, near Khost. But the bad guys in Afghanistan keep slipping away. Senior officials in Washington concede that "at least" hundreds of the enemy have crossed into Pakistan, where diplomatic and strategic considerations keep them beyond the reach of U.S. forces. Among the fleeing al-Qaeda, say intelligence sources in Islamabad, may have been Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri. He was reportedly sighted a month ago, near Anaconda's mountainous...
...read about the battle in the Shah-i-Kot Valley in southeastern Afghanistan, I could not help wondering about American military "intelligence" [THE WAR, March 18]. Underestimating the enemy's numbers and not fully appreciating their will to fight, as well as relying upon local forces to carry out the combat, were aspects of the Vietnam conflict. Going after one or two injured or killed men has been tried in numerous wars, and the result is usually the same--more casualties. I'm not saying that it is right to leave bodies behind, but this obsession with retrieving American casualties...
...soldier. I am sure, however, that all military leaders would call the battle for Shah-i-Kot a crushing defeat for al-Qaeda. Even if we estimate conservatively that 480 al-Qaeda fighters were killed (at the price of eight Americans) over the course of an intense battle, a kill ratio of 60 to 1 is the stuff of martial dreams. Seven of the men died owing solely to our very difficult decision to leave no Americans behind. A redoubtable enemy with suicidal tendencies was routed. This was not a U.S. debacle, and it certainly wasn't Mogadishu redux. HARRY...
...recent Shah-i-Kot offensive, far from deterring the opposition, has emboldened it. Applauded in the West as a victory for the international coalition, the operation has been celebrated by Kandahar Talibs as an American failure. "How many bodies are there?" asks a former Talib, mocking U.S. claims of a major victory and citing eyewitness accounts of only a few Taliban and al-Qaeda corpses. "With all their power, the Americans could not capture our fighters," he says...
...military planners are marveling over the success of a key piece of battlefield equipment, worn for the first time by U.S. troops in combat. The new lightweight Kevlar vest, officially dubbed "interceptor body armor," is being credited for holding down casualties in the just completed battle for Shah-i-Kot. Some soldiers pinned down in fire fights survived AK-47 and other small-arms fire to their chest and back because of the new vest. After the battle, soldiers noted that most of the wounds suffered by U.S. troops were in the arms and legs...