5 more “green on blue” casualties
The Associated Press reports that five more US troops were wounded in the latest “green on blue” attack;
An Afghan National Army soldier shot the U.S. troops in the early evening at a military outpost in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province, in eastern Afghanistan, according to officials with the International Security Assistance Force. The five troops were medically evacuated and are being treated at an ISAF hospital, though officials would not disclose the severity of their injuries. The shooter escaped.
On Sunday, an Afghan policeman shot and killed three British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand province. The shooter was arrested.
Lt. Cmdr. Brian Badura, an ISAF spokesman, said the number of green on blue incidents is low relative to the number of Afghan troops and police working with ISAF forces, but said the coalition was continuing to work with their Afghan counterparts on safety measures when recruiting troops.
Personally, I wonder how the shooter escaped after shooting five US troops. Obviously, they didn’t return fire for a reason while they were being shot. My guess is that they weren’t allowed to either have ammunition or weapons while they were on their “outpost”. Some of our readers have suggested that is the case.
And I’d like to see Lt. Cmdr. Brian Badura tell the families of the 80 US casualties so far this year that they should feel reassured that the attacks are “relatively low”. When you bury a son or daughter, wife or husband, mother or father, from one of these attacks, the incident rate seems relatively high.
Category: Terror War
This in addition to the blue on green incident with the British forces.
Can’t get out of that place fast enough.
“The shooter was arrested.” Spectacular. Three of your guys are shot and killed and you arrest the shooter. And, yeah, it’s a more than a little troubling to note that five US troops are shot and the shooter “escapes.”
Just what the fuck does “the coalition was continuing to work with their Afghan counterparts on safety measures when recruiting troops” mean? Holy crap.
“Just what the fuck does “the coalition was continuing to work with their Afghan counterparts on safety measures when recruiting troops” mean? Holy crap.”
Badguy gets sent back to Allah, or turned over to the Catch’n’Release program. Win-win for badguys. Yay.
My M-60 was in the ready condition flying over or landing at a AVRN camp or outpost.
All in a days work for fuck us in the ass ofuckturd. Bet he has a BIG smile on his butt fuck face when he hears about this type of news.
This crap is REALLY getting old.
Put Badura’s ass and the other empty suits out on coalition outposts unarmed and we’ll see what “relative” means.
Okay, question. Blue is for US troops. Red, I would assume, are bad guys and green are allies? right?
What they don’t talk about is the effect even one of these incidents has on our forces over here. You can’t trust these people as far as you can throw them. Of course if you just assume they’ll steal, lie, and possibly kill you when you do your mission planning there won’t be any nasty surprises.
#8 Andy:
Yes.
I am currently over here in the Stan as a security escort force for a support command. I can tell you that we are required to carry weapons condition 3, or condition amber for you Army types, while on Coalition/ISAF bases. When we make our way to the Afghan posts, my Marines are in Condition 1 at all times(RED). What I have seen though is an appalling lack of tactical or safety sense shown by many of the personnel here.
Many seem to be completely oblivious that there is a war going on, to the point that we have to remind people to go back and retrieve their rifle from their hooch, because a M9 is not sufficient for protection. I have also watched many service members unable to load their weapons without assistance, even had a LTC show up with the zip-tie still in his pistol, effectively rendering it useless. Granted, majority of these people are support types, primarily ones that would be very far from the frontlines. It still doesn’t excuse the complete lack of weapons familiarity that is rampant out here. Discussing it with some of the people I am assigned to protect, they informed me that they do a two-week crash course and off they go, some receiving their weapons upon arrival in country. To say the least I was blown away, on all four of my combat deployments I conducted no less than 6 months of theater specific work-ups. Hell just a MEU was 15 months of training before the deployment.
Needless to say, most of these green on blue incidents involve support personnel, which is not to say that they are not as good soldiers as the combat arms guys. I honestly feel the military is failing them by not allowing them to receive the proper training they need to function in this environment.
SandBag, this has been my complaint about the USAF for 22 years now. We’re an “armed service”. So we should damn well be armed, and act like it, and be trained for it. All of us.
Frankly, I think basic training for all services should be combined, with all personnel getting basic infantry training before moving on to specialty training.
And all “armed services” personnel should be armed at all times, no matter where they are, state-side, overseas or combat zone. At the least, it would help prevent another Ft. Hood, or repeats of the Afghan incidents.
@8 Andy: actually, “green” stands for “those Afghans wearing Afghan military uniforms but whose dependability and allegiance(s) may be in doubt”.
[…] are unarmed inside their bases, the Afghans would be as well, especially when an Afghan is able to shoot five Americans and then escape on foot. But that’s just me. I’m addicted to common sense, I […]