Taliban Gets Punked By Female Soldier

Muslim fanatics get owned by a woman. That's gotta hurt.

A California Army National Guard group was attacked Saturday by a "complex double ambush" from Taliban fighters along a treacherous mountain road in eastern Afghanistan while the unit was returning from helping farmers in isolated villages, the Army reported today.

The Californians' slow-moving six-vehicle convoy was attacked by two groups of Taliban militants firing medium machine guns and AK-47s. Most of the vehicles were hit and one was slightly disabled with a flattened tire and a bullet hole in the windshield, the Army said. The Guard soldiers, from the 40th Infantry Division, returned fire at the groups, one in a cave in the mountain, the other hiding across the Kunar River. The U.S. estimates that 15 to 20 Taliban fighters were engaged in the ambush.

Spc. Kathy Tanson, the only woman among the soldiers, raked one of the ambush sites with fire from a 50-caliber machine gun mounted atop one of the U.S. vehicles. Tanson, 20, from Corning in Northern California, volunteered to be part of the unit because of her expertise in farming techniques and managing livestock. All 64 members of the team are volunteers.