U.S. Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, pass by a pile of dried poppy plants as they patrol in Afghanistan's Helmand province Monday July 6, 2009.
Monday was the deadliest day in a year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with seven Americans dying at the hands of insurgents.
As the Associated Press reported:
Four of the deaths Monday came in an attack on a team of U.S. military trainers in the relatively peaceful north, bringing into focus the question of whether the U.S. is committing enough troops to secure a country larger than Iraq in both population and land
mass....
... The four American soldiers killed in the north died in a roadside bombing of their vehicle in Kunduz province, said Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a U.S. military spokesman. The
soldiers were training Afghan forces, he said.
Two Americans were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan, Naranjo said. And another American soldier died of wounds in a Monday firefight with militants in the east, a U.S. military spokesman said.
Roadside bombs have been the bane of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan for more than a year as insurgents have learned from the success of their counterparts in Iraq.
While the U.S. military is trying to get mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, which proved so useful in saving lives in Iraq, into the Afghanistan theater, it's being hampered by the fact that it just can't use the simplest solution: shipping MRAPS from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's steeper, more rugged terrain and flimsier infrastructure require blast-resistant vehicles that are nimbler and not as heavy as those used in Iraq which means it is taking longer to get the necessary vehicles to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
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