Yeah, I sort of blew the headline out of proportion to the actual story--but just remember my home-town paper is the L.A. Times! Here is a Toronto Sun article describing what happened when some Canadian troops came across a large ammunition dump in the Belgian controlled zone. Notice the reaction of the French, German, and Swedish officers. "A Frog, a Kraut, and a Swede walk into an ammunition dump....":

Canadian soldiers attached to the Afghan National Army (ANA) have stirred up a hornet's nest in Kabul by being too efficient.

They've "discovered" a huge Soviet ammunition dump a few kilometres from Camp Julien with the potential of obliterating the camp, as well as most of Kabul....

Many of the rockets, missiles and shells had been pried open for the explosives, which are used peacefully to blast mountain rock into gravel, and by those who want to make bombs that disrupt Kabul....

I've never seen anything like it. The feeling is that AMF soldiers were selling access to the dump or permitting friends to enter it.

Littered with burned out Soviet military vehicles, the whole area is a junk pile strewn with every sort of live ammunition, fuses, unexploded shells, rockets, etc., all supposedly under the authority of Belgian troops (at the moment), who ignored it.

In the midst of examining the bunkers and taking photos, a Swedish UN guy, a French major and a German colonel arrived to make a fuss and order the Canadians to leave. The French major insisted his government had a deal with the Afghan government for the area, and ISAF had no business being there.

PS-Super-secret memo to INDC BILL. I'll see your .wav/.gif and raise you twenty. Oh, I also agree with Citizen Smash--Oh to have seen that, even if it meant breaking my vow never to buy anything French again!!!

Posted by: Rusty at 03:27 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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