Page 69 - Commandos News Today

Again. in many ways, theyve changed little. a rural movement led by deeply conservative clerics. but the taliban have shown themselves smarter on the battlefield, adept at the negotiating table, as theyve seized one province after another. theyve deployed a slick pr campaign to trumpet their victories, coaxing foot soldiers to hand over their arms and equipment, then sending them home. but as cnn has reported, also executing commandos, assassinating air force pilots, and other selected officials...

Spring, in may. and right from the beginning there was just -- the air force and afghan commandos who were resisting and both of those are quite small units relative to the big army that the u.s. trained and equipped. so i dont know why the u.s. military would have thought that it could have lasted another couple of months when very early on, entire divisions were falling. and then war is all psychological. its about momentum and the taliban got the momentum and they broke the morale of the afgh...

Good. they werent that big. a small rump of them very professional commandos fighting hard. but they have been able to race towards the fires that need putting out. so its, sadly to day, the long deceit of americas presence here, that they were building an afghan army, essentially assumed that the americans made are leaving and have physically done that job, that army has crumbled, as has the notion that there was anything other than an ugly messy exit for the united states here. but i should sa...

That never yielded fruit on the ground, and faced with what you have to probably accept is the very difficult task of building an army to fight for a government backed by a group of americans who said theyre eventually going to leave. with minimal cash resources, poor infrastructure. they created such a vast chain of supply and command infrastructure around this military that it required vast amounts of assistance simply to keep it afloat. fundamentally, too, there are 300,000, that number weve ...

Theyre not as organized as the taliban. the taliban are much more battle hardened and experienced. and they have a lot more discipline than the afghan army. theres a lot of reasons for this that we can sit and discuss until the morning, but the fact of the matter is that they are a much stronger force, and without the support of nato and u.s. troops, the afghan army simply doesnt have a fighting chance against the taliban, so this shouldnt come as a huge surprise that it fell. yes, maybe the tim...

For a little while because a couple units, the commandos in the air force were fighting and they, too, eventually were not able to keep the fight up on their own, especially as the taliban wasy gaining momentum d capturing weapons and the morale broke. because in war, its all about momentum and its all about morale and once the armys morale got destroyed, it was really game over. >> so the argument from the white house is that the afghan government enforcers will have to defend themselves and ga...

Taliban coming. five years ago, the militants were divided after losing their leader and disagreeing about who should pick up the manu tell. but as nic robertson reports, the group knew how to adapt and rebuild. take a listen. >> reporter: 20 years after being driven from kabul, the taliban are poised to enter afghanistans capital, once again. a rural movement led by deeply-conservative clerics but the taliban have shown themselves smarter on the battlefield. adept at the negotiating table. as t...

Kabul, and be clear-eyed about what is about to happen. we have a minimal force on the ground. i dont think the taliban are going to try to overrun the airport or probably the embassy, but theyre going to close in on it in the next 48 hours. the kabul evacuation is over except for with the tolerance of the taliban. they can interdict the air space over karzai international easily. we dont have enough combat power to fight our way through the four miles into the u.s. embassy and the embassy distr...

By thist taliban offensive, th afghan government has been sending some of these special operators out to the most critical areas to help sure thep up. excuse me. to help sure them up, including the north which andrea mentioned. herat in the west, kandahar in the south and to kabul. these commandos are exhausted. they are worn thin. as theth taliban was cutting th off, it became harder and harder for them to be resupplied. and frankly they just started to break down and they could not defendul th...

Intelligence, all over the country and in very critical way supporting them with air power, that was allwi going to go away. so the morale of the afghan military began to deteriorate then. and fissures and potential fractures began to emerge then. that being said, there still are some elements or there were some elements of the afghan military that were very capable. the afghan special forces and the commandos, they have been a very strong and capable fighting force for several years now. theyve...