British Special Forces bring home NYT reporter
 

A very brave and dangerous operation. Unfortunatly, they lost one of their own, and the Afghan journalist.

Reporter's account of the ordeal

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I am happy that a life has been saved but I'm outraged that this journalist firstly ignored advise from people who knew the dangerous nature of the region and secondly that his actions cost the life of 2 people, one a highly trained and infinelty more valuable to a war effort than some poxie journo.

I hope this time was well spent reflecting in his stupidity and the agony and heartbreak he has caused the victims family.

Plus two civilians died. And for some reason the body of Munadi, the Afghani journalist, was left behind. Bit strange.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/as...ter/index.html

Special forces people generally know what they sign up for. He lost his life in the line of duty. That being said, The journalist did act like a proper arsehead and personaly would not concidered the recources spent worth it to save him.

I wouldnt call leaving a corpes in a gunfight strange, but that must just be my weird standards where a dead body is not really worth risking anyones neck for.

Well they did retrieve the body of the dead soldier. I guess different rules apply to Afghani journalists.

From what I could tell from the article, the soldier in question was qounded, but died of his wounds on the plane. But yes, even if he had died on the spot an afghani journalist is not a brother in arms in the same way a soldier is to a fellow soldier.

Lets face it. The guys on the ground are not going to stay around looking for a Afghan jurno. When the prime target of the Op is accounted for and they are in a major fire-fight and they already have a man down. The comes a time when you have out stayed your welcome and it is time to get out of dodge.

Oh yea, I think that about sums up the attitude of US & UK to this whole war.

:nope::nope:

Attitude has nothing to do with it.

It's training and orders. You do your job and get out. End of.

Putting on my logical head for a moment. Value wise, an injured and highly trained member of the forces is more valuable than a corpse.

They did the correct thing.

Somebody gives them the orders. It's not like a robot gives the orders that the brainwashed soldiers are then just blindly forced to obey.

I think them leaving the Afghan journalists body (how exactly did they know he was dead and not just wounded as well?) there is a good metafore of the whole war. Afghan casualties mean nothing to the coalition.

While I agree with some of the reasons why the Afghani journalist was left behind, I cant help but think that if it would've been a western journalist, his body would have been taken back.

I have emotional sympathy for the anger about a journalist becoming the reason for a soldier KIA. However, it is irrational in that way that every day many more soldiers risk their lifes and occasionally lose their health or life due to not journalists but stupid politicians. I wonder what is the difference with this case of a journalist? Politicians are given the legitimation to make stupid decisions, and journalists are given the job and by that: the communal legitimiation to report - sometimes also in stupid working manners. And of the two, politicians do the far greater damage.

Maybe mate but we'll never know. TBH with you, I would have been happy to let the idiotic US Journalist be dealt with by his captors rather than risk UK soldier lives.

@ OneToughHerring

And UK deaths mean nothing to you?

200 Finns committed to the Afghanistan conflict. (set to be reduced back to 100 btw)
200+ UK Forces men and women already dead during Afghanistan conflict.

Perhaps now you understand why we don't want anymore to be risked.

Well imagine they brought back the Afghan journalist's body, only to find out he was downed by UK bullets. Would have been quite embarassing.