The Story Is About Honor & Valor, Not Victims

This is the true story about what happened at the Combat Outpost in Afghanistan where the US slaughtered the hundreds of attacking Jihadis. It sounds like a great movie to me!

Now that I know the full story, this turned from a horrible incident into a heroic incident. Too bad the MSM could not report it that way.

Wolf Howling: The Story Is About Honor & Valor, Not Victims: " The story the MSM should be reporting has nothing in common with the NYT article. The story is how a reinforced platoon size element of soldiers, vastly outnumbered, defeated a joint Taliban and al Qaeda attack on their position. The nine men who died at that Combat Outpost were not nine victims. They were nine soldiers who paid the ultimate price for their bravery. Their bravery and valor and that of every man on that mountain is the story.

This from Jeff Emanuel provides the entire story:

. . . Three days before the attack, 45 U.S. paratroopers from the 173d Airborne, accompanied by 25 Afghan soldiers, made their way to Kunar province, a remote area in the northeastern Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and established the beginnings of a small Combat Outpost (COP). Their movement into the area was noticed, and their tiny numbers and incomplete fortifications were quickly taken advantage of.

A combined force of up to 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters quickly moved into the nearby village of Wanat and prepared for their assault by evicting unallied residents and according to an anonymous senior Afghan defense ministry official, "us[ing] their houses to attack us."

Tribesmen in the town stayed behind "and helped the insurgents during the fight," General Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, the provincial police chief, told The Associated Press. Dug-in mortar firing positions were created, and with that indirect fire, as well as heavy machine gun and RPG fire from fixed positions, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters rushed the COP from three sides.

The attackers quickly breached the outer perimeter, and, under a withering barrage of supporting fire, a contingent of a mere 70 U.S. and Afghan soldiers combined were forced to fight for survival on their own outpost against the all-out assault from nearly 100 assailants.

The overwhelmingly outnumbered U.S. troops called in artillery, as well as fixed and rotary-wing air support, to help the repulse the attacking forces.
As recounted by the AP and other media outlets, nine U.S. paratroopers lost their lives -- a full fifth of the American contingent.

Further, fifteen U.S. and four Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the attack, meaning that, against an assault and support force of nearly 500 militant fighters, only 21 U.S. and 21 Afghan soldiers were able to fight at full strength -- and they succeeded not only in killing dozens of attackers, but in repelling the onslaught completely.

. . . Perhaps the most important takeaway from that encounter, though, is the one that the mainstream media couldn't be bothered to pay attention long enough to learn: that, not for the first time, a contingent of American soldiers that was outnumbered by up to a twenty-to-one ratio soundly and completely repulsed a complex, pre-planned assault by those dedicated enough to their cause to kill themselves in its pursuit.

That kind of heroism and against-all-odds success is and has been a hallmark of America's fighting men and women, and it is one that is worthy of all attention we can possibly give it."