Favourite weapon for me was the Bren LMG
First had my hands on one in 1980 both long barreled and short barreled versions firing 0.303 ammunition
Progressed to the 7.62mm LMG in 1983 (Date stamped 1942) and continued with them until 1992 
sad day when I gave mine up for an LSW (although the general capability was the same just lighter)
Accurate, reliable, easily maintained (just a beast of a box for the 12 mags)
My favourite weapon is a woman; I mean a really pretty woman. When used as a distraction, they can be extremely beneficial to the goal of distracting the enemy. A man can’t really be used the same as a woman, in distraction. The best way to win the war with the Taliban, is to send over women showing their Hair; this way, the Taliban will get blinded by the mere sight of a woman’s hair uncovered and while they are blinded, the army can shoot them between the eyes to end the war!
An example of the Pefect weapon that can be used for distracting the enemy-hands down-no question about it!!
A+ for creativity, herman. But why restrict ourselves to open hair? Let them run around in Bikinis, and you’ll see Taliban switching sides quicker than you can count. 
The only danger might be that our own troops could be too distracted to shoot any Taliban at all…:neutral:
Sadly not. Haven’t you heard about the man-love thursdays they have out there?
I certainly have not. What’s that all about?
http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/world/afghanistan/afnews009.htm
Actually, I think the burkhas cause the man love thing…
I liked the hand gernade, it was very effective against ground assults.
I prefer the AK-47.
ADK-45 anybody???
That looks like a Drawing from C&C Red Alert 3…
From your link:
Richardson, the psychiatry professor, says it would be wrong to call Afghan men homosexual, since their decision to have sex with men is not a reflection of what Westerners call gender identity. Instead, he compares them to prison inmates: They have sex with men primarily because they find themselves in a situation where men are more available as sex partners than are women.
“It is something they do,” he notes, “not something they are.”
Yeah, right.
I spent a few years in my late teens in an exclusively male environment where we went into town, some towns consisting of a pub and a hall, only at weekends with no chance of anything better than a dance with a sheila, and we’d be lucky to get that most of the time as in many places we were regarded very much as a “lock up your daughters and wives for the barbarians are in town” crew.
It never occurred to me or anyone else to take a gallop up the tan track (or, for Americans, a gallop up the Hershey Highway) for a bit of sexual relief.
Anyone who was caught at that would have been booted out immediately.
The same for millions of men in various exclusively male occupations in remote areas and in the military in the West.
There is nothing in my national culture, nor in any English speaking and probably Western cultures of which I am aware, which is even vaguely equivalent to the ancient Pathan (Afghan) lament which includes the lines:
Oh, there is a boy across the river
With a bottom like a peach.
But, alas, I cannot swim.
A bit of male, preferably boy, bum has long been an entrenched aspect of male sexual orientation and activity in much of the Arab, Persian and related world areas and it’s still alive.
Kandahar Journal; Shh, It’s an Open Secret: Warlords and Pedophilia
CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: February 21, 2002Back in the 19th century, ethnic Pashtuns fighting in Britain’s colonial army sang odes talking of their longing for young boys.
Homosexuality, cloaked in the tradition of strong masculine bonds that are a hallmark of Islamic culture and are even more pronounced in southern Afghanistan’s strict, sexually segregated society, has long been a clandestine feature of life here. But pedophilia has been its curse.
Though the puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture, now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.
‘‘During the Taliban, being with a friend was difficult, but now it is easy again,’’ said Ahmed Fareed, a 19-year-old man with a white shawl covering his face except for a dark shock of hair and piercing kohl-lined eyes. Mr. Fareed should know. A shopkeeper took him as a lover when he was just 12, he said.
An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.
‘‘At that time boys couldn’t come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked,’’ said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar’s currency bazaar.
Most men here spend the vast majority of their time in the company of other men and rarely glimpse more than the feet of any woman other than their mother, sister or wife. The atmosphere leaves little room for romantic love, let alone recreational sex between men and women. But alternative opportunities are not hard to find.
Muhammad Daud, 29, says he first spotted Mr. Fareed seven years ago at an auto repair shop owned by Mr. Fareed’s father and pursued the boy for months.
‘‘If you want a haliq’’ – a boy for sex – ‘‘you have to follow the boy for a long time before he will agree,’’ said Mr. Daud, smiling at Mr. Fareed in a hostel in Kandahar where the two consented to give an interview.
‘‘At first he was afraid, so I bought him some chocolate and gave him a lot of money,’’ said Mr. Daud, laughing. ‘‘I went step by step and after about six or seven months, he agreed.’’
‘‘At that time, I had no beard,’’ Mr. Fareed said, smiling.
The Taliban took care of that problem by resorting to an ancient punishment prescribed by the Shariah, a compendium of Islamic laws: they pushed a wall on top of anyone found to be homosexual.
Odd as the punishment sounds, it resonates with many Afghans who live in a world of mud-and-wattle walls, many of which have long since lost their usefulness. There are plenty of 12-foot-high, 2-foot-thick earthen walls around waiting to be toppled.
On the outskirts of Kandahar, Mr. Fareed pointed to a mound of rubble and described how he had watched the Taliban lay a man there in a shallow pit in front of a high wall and then ram the wall with a tank from the other side, knocking it over on top of him.
‘‘When the wall fell, people said he was dead, but later we heard that he wasn’t dead,’’ said Mr. Fareed.
The man was Mullah Peer Muhammad, a former student of the Koran who had become a Taliban fighter and was later put in charge of boys then incarcerated at Kandahar’s central prison. He was convicted of sexually abusing the inmates.
After the wall fell on him, his family dug him out and took him to the hospital. He spent six days there and another six months in jail, but according to the punishment, survivors are allowed to go free. He now lives in Pakistan, his former neighbors say.
A man who said he owns the wall that fell on Mr. Muhammad said he had seen the Taliban knock successive sections of the wall on another man seven times, digging him out each time and moving him along the remaining wall before he died. The man had been convicted of raping and killing a boy.
‘‘We had to be very careful then,’’ said Mr. Fareed, shrinking instinctively from the crowd that had gathered around the site during a reporter’s visit. He said he and his lover could meet only at night in each others’ homes, but that they tried to refrain from physical contact for fear that the Taliban’s extensive intelligence network would discover them.
Now the Taliban are gone and the commanders have returned, some with their predilections. The problem is so widespread that the government has issued a directive barring ‘‘beardless boys’’ – a euphemism for under-age sex partners – from police stations, military bases and commanders’ compounds.
While men are courting boys once again, few do so openly.
‘‘Still, we feel ashamed in front of our older brothers or parents,’’ said Mr. Fareed.
But he insisted that he does not regret being lured into a relationship by his older friend. When asked if he would do the same to a young boy, Mr. Fareed said, yes.
‘‘I’m looking for one now,’’ he said with a smile.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DEFD6143EF932A15751C0A9649C8B63&scp=1&sq=warlord%20homosexuality%20afghan&st=cse
See my post above.
Be careful if you’re on a tight budget which makes you think about bumming your way through such parts of the world.
The bayonet was an effective weapon but it was only useful in hand to hand combat.
And the Sherlock Holmes Prize goes to this post ^^^
And the Sherlock Holmes Prize goes to this post ^^^ :D[/QUOTE]
But he’s correct.
I know people that have been badly injured when using bayonets in hand to gland combat.
I like rocks, because you can throw them at people and crush their heads while sleeping.
I was joking, but certainly they did. I read of a US Marine pilot that was shot down over Guadalcanal and spent the following week making his way back to US lines near Henderson Field.
He encountered a sleeping Japanese soldier (or maybe Korean laborer) and smashed his head with a rock and then stole his equipment…
Is there special training that teaches you how to throw rocks while you’re asleep?
The best I’ve ever managed is getting my rocks off while I’m asleep, but they barely leave my body.
Wouldn’t it be cheating to use a bayonet in hand to hand combat?
I think a hand would be the correct weapon to use in hand to hand combat.
Anyway, WWI and WWII bayonets were a lot longer than Vietnam and subsequent era bayonets, so I think the older bayonets were designed for long range work.
The old bayonets were created for defense against cavalry. In 16th - 19th century combat, the Musket/Arquebus Infantry often had to withstand cavalry charges. For that reason, the formation of ‘Pike and Shot’ was used in the 16th & 17th century warfare. Rows of Muskets were covered by rows of Pikemen to the front and side. By the 18th century the Muskets had become accurate (and long) enough to remove the pike, instead adding long bayonets to the rifles. That way, if a cavalry charge was imminent, the musketeers could simply switch their role to Pikemen and fend them off. In WW1 trench warfare, however, the infantry lost the need for any melee cavalry defense, but gained the need for effective close encounter weaponry.
Many German soldiers believed bayonets were too unwieldy, and preferred using sharpened shovels for any melees, which gave them a significant advantage regarding mobility and speed.
Subsequent Bayonets were likely shortened because the designers realized that a bayonet had become a melee infantry vs infantry weapon, and not a cavalry-defense weapon, and they were adjusted for this new role…
But wasn’t the Panzerfaust made in reaction to shortening recources on the part of the german army, not that it wasn’t still an effective weapon…
I would have to say the Garand or Thompson myself, the late war variants or maybe the PPSH. MG42 is also a terrific weapon, though they weigh a tonne!
Stuart