Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
NBC
April 27, 2008 By Jim Maceda
NBC Nightly News, 6:30 PM
LESTER HOLT: Each spring the fighting heats up in Afghanistan, but this year NATO troops there are getting help from the U.S. Marines who are returning to a remote forward outpost in full force. NBC’s Jim Maceda has made several trips to Afghanistan since the war began. Tonight he is traveling with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Helmand Province. It’s a dangerous part of southern Afghanistan where the Marines plan to take on the Taliban on their own turf.
JIM MACEDA: This is the muscle, U.S. military experts say, that’s been lacking in NATO’s fight against the Taliban, who still control much of Afghanistan’s southern region where most of the world’s opium-producing poppy is grown.
Since mid-March, some 3,000 Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, have been crossing the desert into Helmand Province, the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, joining NATO – mostly British – soldiers who, undermanned and underequipped, have mostly fought the Taliban to a draw here.
[To British soldier.] Does it make you guys feel a little bit more secure?
BRITISH SOLDIER: Yeah, definitely. You know, the more the merrier.
MACEDA: In several remote bases the Marines are building up supplies, mounting weapons, and loading ammo one bullet at a time.
MARINE: Making sure the people out here are protected, you know. Basically just getting rid of the bad guys pretty much.
MACEDA: Ready, they say, to take on the Taliban in its own backyard.
STAFF SGT. JASON WHITE [24th Marine Expeditionary Unit]: If they want to come face to face, you know, I’m sure we’ll be ready. And if they want to launch IEDs and indirects at us, we’re ready for that too.
MACEDA: And as the Marines push into Taliban country, this mobile, fully-equipped surgical unit is running daily drills to save lives and limbs even in the most remote front lines.
COMMANDER ROBERT CATANIA [U.S. Navy Doctor]: We need to bring our medical capability farther and farther south as well.
MACEDA: This will be the seventh spring offensive since this long, sometimes forgotten war began, but it’s hoped that with the additional U.S. forces now on the battlefield it will be the last. But many critics warn that the U.S. military punch will only in the long run recruit more angry Afghans to the Taliban side.
Jim Maceda, NBC News with U.S. Marines in Helmand Province.
April 27, 2008 By Jim Maceda
NBC Nightly News, 6:30 PM
LESTER HOLT: Each spring the fighting heats up in Afghanistan, but this year NATO troops there are getting help from the U.S. Marines who are returning to a remote forward outpost in full force. NBC’s Jim Maceda has made several trips to Afghanistan since the war began. Tonight he is traveling with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Helmand Province. It’s a dangerous part of southern Afghanistan where the Marines plan to take on the Taliban on their own turf.
JIM MACEDA: This is the muscle, U.S. military experts say, that’s been lacking in NATO’s fight against the Taliban, who still control much of Afghanistan’s southern region where most of the world’s opium-producing poppy is grown.
Since mid-March, some 3,000 Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, have been crossing the desert into Helmand Province, the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, joining NATO – mostly British – soldiers who, undermanned and underequipped, have mostly fought the Taliban to a draw here.
[To British soldier.] Does it make you guys feel a little bit more secure?
BRITISH SOLDIER: Yeah, definitely. You know, the more the merrier.
MACEDA: In several remote bases the Marines are building up supplies, mounting weapons, and loading ammo one bullet at a time.
MARINE: Making sure the people out here are protected, you know. Basically just getting rid of the bad guys pretty much.
MACEDA: Ready, they say, to take on the Taliban in its own backyard.
STAFF SGT. JASON WHITE [24th Marine Expeditionary Unit]: If they want to come face to face, you know, I’m sure we’ll be ready. And if they want to launch IEDs and indirects at us, we’re ready for that too.
MACEDA: And as the Marines push into Taliban country, this mobile, fully-equipped surgical unit is running daily drills to save lives and limbs even in the most remote front lines.
COMMANDER ROBERT CATANIA [U.S. Navy Doctor]: We need to bring our medical capability farther and farther south as well.
MACEDA: This will be the seventh spring offensive since this long, sometimes forgotten war began, but it’s hoped that with the additional U.S. forces now on the battlefield it will be the last. But many critics warn that the U.S. military punch will only in the long run recruit more angry Afghans to the Taliban side.
Jim Maceda, NBC News with U.S. Marines in Helmand Province.