Word: talibans
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Ellis understands the rationale for the rules - "It's what distinguishes us from the Taliban" - but that doesn't make them easier to enforce. Just after the fatal IED attack in February, a man on a motorcycle emerged from a crowd in south Senjaray and seemed to charge a U.S. patrol. "They shouted at him, tried to get him to stop, but he kept coming - faster, it seemed. Finally, they fired a warning shot into the ground, but it bounced up and hit the guy in the hip. What the soldiers couldn't see was that he had two kids...
...permitted to use his or her discretion in a matter of self-defense. But the overall impact of the rules has been a hunkering down, a decidedly less aggressive attitude about going after the enemy, from the air or from the ground. "Day by day, we're watching the Taliban put in IEDs, creeping up toward the town," Ellis says. "I'm losing two inches of Senjaray every day." The effect on morale has been brutal. "Maybe half the guys in Dog Company spent their last tour in Iraq, in Ramadi, in 2007," says First Sergeant Jack Robison. "That...
...them $2,000 max," Ellis said, but ultimately the owners - after checking around - changed their minds and decided to offer the land for free. "They said, 'We'll give it to you, but could you beat us up a little and make it look like you seized it? The Taliban don't want this to happen.' " (See pictures of life in the Afghan National Army...
...South, Nick Carter, on the project, and he was in favor. But General Carter was on leave - and his staff didn't want to take the risk. Regulations were regulations. "I mean, if we don't have a strongpoint there, you endanger the kids. Do you think the Taliban are just going to let us ... open the [freakin'] school...
...General Daniel Menard, who was furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control in the area...