Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
No, not strange. What is it, that you do not get about the fact that there aspects to this subject which are both operationally and politically sensitive?
Those of us who actually care, do not want to get sucked into a pointless debate with you on a public forum.

SWC is a prominent and highly regarded source of information on operational issues. (well it used to be!) Thus it is read by a great many people.

JMA - you have no dog in the fight, and you are neither formally or informally involved with the discussions concerning UK activity in Afghanistan. Now none of that would be an issue, if you could contribute usefully to open source learning and discussion on the issue of "Small Wars." - which is why most of us are here. Your agenda seems incompatible with that objective.
Lets take a step back and look at this subject:

I introduced it with the following:

"I often wonder what the ratio of kills between the two sides is? I know it has to be poor when it is classified."

Then having to explain myself again I said:

"What I'm saying is if this ratio ISAF KIA / Taliban KIA were in any way reasonable it would be released."

then you countered with "Ratios >100:1 were mentioned" to which I responded whether these kills were verified.

Then we got the official line from an actual serving officer (who really does have a dog in the fight) which I complemented with a copy of a letter under the Freedom of Information Act (what a joke) which basically said we are not goin to tell you. (see here)

The MoD came up with the bizarre "There is also no reliable method to calculate the number of insurgents killed." to which I replied "why not just count the bodies"?

Boy did that open up a can of worms...

Infanteer came up with "As easy as it may be to say "just count the bodies" it is very hard to do with insurgents such as the Pashtun who police the battlefield in such a detailed and rapid manner."

And you put the rider "when they can" in response to my question about troops clearing the contact area.

It appears that for whatever "operational" reasons the contact area is not really/properly swept/searched/secured.

The reason for this and the actual number of Taliban casualties are being kept from the public.

Then I get the "I'll put this upstart in his place" speech from you.

I respond as follows:

* The Taliban know exactly how many casualties they are taking.
* The Taliban know exactly why some of the time/most of the time the Brits do not consolidate and sweep/search the contact area.

There is no OPEC issue here other than what the MoD wants to hide from the British people. This being what the actual Taliban casualties are.

Is this what you term operationally and politically sensitive?

Then your comments re my contributions to SWJ, I treat them with the contempt they deserve. Your cheap attempts to silence me are the stuff of the playground bully.

Serious military men would never shy away from dealing with the "difficult" issues and would welcome the opportunity to talk through some of these issues in a forum such as this. If still serving they have the option to hide behind a nickname so as to give them greater freedom to discuss sensitive issues.

It would have been better had Infanteer responded with "Count the dead, you make it sound so easy, we can't do that because of A, B and C." Then instead of attempting to make a simple action (clear the contact area after a contact and count the bodies and collect/destroy the weapons and equipment) familiar to almost every soldier who been in a war sound unreasonable he would have shown an understanding that the problem actually lay with his situation and not with the routine experience of others.