Oh! Canada!

The Canadians kicked some serious ass here. We salute the valor and the effectiveness of the Canadian warriors, as we mourn their losses.

SANGISAR, AFGHANISTAN — Canadian troops pushed the Taliban out of their birthplace in a storm of artillery shells and rockets on the weekend, during a major operation that killed two Canadian soldiers and an interpreter.
The smoke and dust of explosions hung over the dry fields of Sangisar, a stubborn enclave of insurgents where the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, founded the armed movement in 1994.

The gunfire started at sunrise Saturday and continued until noon. It was a bitter fight on both sides. The Taliban resorted to using children as human shields, according to soldiers who witnessed the tactic, and the encircled Canadians called in artillery and air strikes so close to their own positions that a soldier suffered shrapnel wounds from friendly fire.
“I feel like I aged 40 years,” said Corporal Philippe Lemieux, a member of a reconnaissance team, after two nights on the battlefield with little sleep.
A roadside bomb exploded under an armoured vehicle carrying troops toward the battle in the earliest hours of Saturday morning, killing Corporal Nicolas Raymond Beauchamp, 28, and Private Michel Lévesque, 25, and injuring three others.
A military interpreter also died in the explosion.

Estimates of the number of Taliban killed varied widely but most officials guessed at numbers in the double digits; Kandahar's police chief said 20 Taliban died, while another provincial official put the figure at 40.