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NBC's Jim Maceda dubbed it "Apocalypse Now Zad, a hellish mix of 130F heat and killer wasps" when he was embedded with USMC patrols in August (here and here). Now ABC's Miguel Marquez pursues his embedded mission (his previous reports are here, here and here) with the Marine Corps in southern Helmand Province as yet another offensive was launched on the town of Now Zad, where "over the last four years the Taliban has set up a shadow government."
Nominally, Operation Cobra's Anger was a joint mission of USMC forces and the Afghanistan national army. In fact only 150 local soldiers were fighting alongside the 1,000 leathernecks and their "tanks, helicopters, planes and artillery." ABC's Marquez told us that there was very little fighting to do anyway. Now Zad, with a supposed population of 30,000, turned out to be a boobytrapped ghost town. "We have been halted here and it looks like we are going to spend the night in this MRAP;"--the armored vehicle in which he was cramped--"we cannot even step out of it for fear of Taliban bombs."
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