For The Soldiers On The Ground......

FDR shared the enclosed prayer with our Nation as he felt it was the best way to help those who were battling to free Europe on D-Day. Today, we are engaged in a battle to free the people of Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban. A prayer for our troops is appropriate and the words FDR used still resonate....Almost 70 years later, the mission is the same.

Afterwards, watch the enclosed video on the brave men & women who fly the Apache AH-64 Attack Helicopters and listen to why they do it.....

For the Soldiers on the Ground.

Our prayers of protection for all the troops who serve our nation far from home.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6th, 1944 - Address to the Nation

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor..... to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.....

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be....

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944

Thanks Mr. Marine.......

White Taliban spotted in AF/PAK border regions

White Taliban were something I had heard about while stationed in AFGHN....they were an oddity but understandable as the Taliban in AFGHN were looking for technical assistance from Chechen's and other Europeans who have knowledge in warfare forged in the Balkans....

Not really concerned if the Taliban are local or imported, they are all Thugs and COWARDS as they kill women & children......like the T-Shirt says,

" Mess with the Best - Die like the Rest "

We'll take them out like the garbage they are.

Mysterious ‘White Taliban’ strike fear in village hearts
Tom Coghlan, Forward Operating Base Lane, Zabul
Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 England

As they got to the crest of the hill the US patrol stopped in their tracks, astonished at the scene below. In the river was a group of men, one soldier said, “just kinda frolicking about”.

For several minutes each side contemplated the other in silence. “There were about 15 of them,” said Specialist Tom Weaver, 24. “At first I thought it was some of our Navy Seals” — US special forces who are encouraged to grow beards. “They saw us and they didn’t really run away. Some just stayed and watched us.”

The men had long beards and long hair, in some cases below their shoulders, quite unlike the local style. They were shirtless and wore only Western-style shorts, a degree of nakedness alien, even offensive, to Afghan culture. But their most remarkable feature was their skin colour. They were white.

Foreign fighters remain a rarity in the Afghan war — Nato commanders insist that Kandahar, the focus of the next big campaign, is all but free of them — but Zabul is one area in which there have been consistent reports of their presence, infiltrating from Pakistan’s Waziristan province, a few days’ walk across the border.

We’ve had reports of Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens,” says Lieutenant-Colonel David Oclander, commander of the 1-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of 82nd Airborne Division. “We believe there is a training camp in the Larzab Bowl” — 30 miles north of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Lane.

The identity of the white militants is a mystery. One local man with memories of the Russian invasion has told the Americans that they speak Russian, which could make them Chechens.

These are not the only ominous comings and goings. Until recently FOB Lane — a clutch of plywood buildings, watchtowers and galvanised steel walls overlooked by jagged peaks — was a quiet corner of a largely forgotten province, but in the past month it has been the scene of an increased level of Taleban activity, centred on the arrival of a group of white fighters said by locals to number about 100.

This is the time of year that always brings an increase in Taleban activity but the changing tempo of enemy movements around FOB Lane has been dramatic. “This place was dead till last month,” said Staff Sergeant Matthew Chambers, 28, the senior NCO for 3rd Platoon. At dusk on Saturday three 107mm rockets fell around the perimeter of the base without causing casualties.

It was the ninth such attack in 30 days. US spotters saw the firing point of the last rocket and two minutes later a distant hillside was splashed with fire and smoke as they responded with high explosive and white phosphorus mortar rounds.

On Monday red tracer fire arced back and forth after dark as an Afghan Army convoy moving up the valley was ambushed a mile or two from Lane. Ten days earlier the base was subjected to a two-hour attack from the surrounding hills by about 40 gunmen; it had the feel of an attack designed to test defences and probe for weaknesses and response times. Several other firefights have taken place along the Arghandab Valley, running southwest into Kandahar province.

Despite its remote location FOB Lane sits across a key infiltration route into Kandahar, where Nato forces are making final preparations for the largest offensive of the war. With reports of mysterious foreigners and a rise in Taleban activity, the key question for Western commanders is whether the insurgents will put up a fight in Kandahar or simply move elsewhere — such as Zabul.

“My gut instinct is that the Taleban won’t have the ability to oppose Nato directly in Kandahar,” Lieutenant-Colonel Oclander said. “It is more likely that they will shift to areas where the coalition is not.”

That could well mean Zabul, a grindingly poor and almost wholly illiterate desert backwater — “not particularly relevant to the Government of Afghanistan”, said Lieutenant-Colonel Oclander “but very relevant to the Taleban as a place of movement, training and command”. The Nato presence in this province is less than 2,000 strong.

The commotion caused by the arrival of the new fighters is being felt not only by the Americans. US intelligence intercepts suggest that the new arrivals are also causing divisions within the local Taleban, some of whom have taken a deep dislike to the foreigners.

Nor do the locals want them to stay. The arrival of the white Taleban has been accompanied by the imposition of a crude campaign of intimidation against the population. Last week several local tribal elders were taken away by the foreign fighters. They have not returned. The locals have been told that anyone trying to leave the area will be killed.