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Дата 19.04.2002 09:08:09 Найти в дереве
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Из кого гвозди лучче...

Мир вам,

Англичане утверждают, что британские горные гвозди куда лучше для Афганистана, чем Нью-Йорские, которые "горные"-то только по названию.

U.K. troops better than Americans, British press says.

The Vancouver Sun, April 18, 2002

Royal Marines are 'real' mountain troops, not like those from the 'mountains' of New York

LONDON — As British troops secured a deserted cave complex in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the press back home was flushed with pride — as the newspapers saw it, the U.S. military wasn't up to the challenge and had been forced to call in the Brits.
In the words of the ever-patriotic tabloid London Sun, the U.S. troops "did their best but the job needs finishing."
Despite Prime Minister Tony Blair's repeated assertions that Britain and the U.S. stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the war on terrorism, the country's armchair generals are busy asserting British supremacy.
The Sun's military adviser, Major-General Ken Perkins, wrote Wednesday: "The al-Qaida terrorists still lurking in their mountain caves have not yet come up against troops used to mountain warfare."
The U.S. 10th Mountain Division, which has been heavily involved in fighting in Afghanistan, "are mountain troops in name only," he said.
London's Evening Standard recounted with delight a reported comment from a soldier of the unit — which, despite its name, is based in non-mountainous Fort Drum, N.Y. — to a journalist: "We don't do mountains."
"It's verging on the scandalous that the U.S. commanders in Florida saw fit to throw the 101st Airborne and the 10th Mountain Division into altitudes of 10,000 feet," said Major Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies.
"Operating in Arctic conditions is partly a state of mind. You need training and acclimatization."
That, said boosters of the British military, is where the Royal Marines come in.
The members of 45 Commando Royal Marines sent to Afghanistan are mountain and Arctic warfare specialists who have rigorous training in freezing mountains. And they do it in Norway.
On Monday, some 300 Royal Marines launched an operation to clear out al-Qaida caves 3,000 metres up a snowcapped mountain range in southeastern Afghanistan.
They met with no resistance. Troops found ammunition, communications equipment and documents in the abandoned caves and bunkers.

Associated Press

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