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U.S. Special Operations raid rescued "numerous" Iraqis who were held captive by ISIS, a senior defense official confirms to Fox News. The official said the hostages were not Kurds. He would not comment on reports of U.S. deaths.

It’s not that the truth about bin Laden’s death is unknowable; it’s that we don’t know it. And we can’t necessarily console ourselves with the hope that we will have more answers any time soon; to this day, the final volume of the C.I.A.’s official history of the Bay of Pigs remains classified. We don’t know what happened more than a half-century ago, much less in 2011.

1.) Progressive Ideology ‘Dehumanizes The Population’ Anthony Daniels, who uses the pen name, Theodore Dalrymple, says the West is “too weak-willed,” “accepts obvious untruths” and “treats people as objects.” In a 28-minute video interview with The Daily Caller, he says “the intellectual dishonesty of the West is the greatest threat – we can’t say what we really think.” Dalrymple, based on his work in British prisons, is a critic of “determinism” — the dominant progressive theory that minimizes personal responsibility and portrays people as forced, by their circumstances, to behave as they do. This theory, Dalrymple says, “dehumanizes the population.”...

U.S. Special Operations Forces had to fight “hand to hand” in Friday night’s raid that killed the Islamic State terrorist group senior commander Abu Sayyaf, several defense officials told The Daily Beast Saturday. Troops from the U.S. Army Delta Force landed near a multi-story building with Ospreys and Blackhawks and were met with resistance when they entered, including “hand to hand” combat, one official told The Daily Beast. There was some resistance from armed guards and from the terrorist commander himself, but the troops were well prepared to handle that, another official said.

U.S. Special Operations forces killed a senior ISIS commander during a raid intended to capture him in eastern Syria overnight Friday to Saturday, sources familiar with what happened on the ground in Syria told CNN. The ISIS commander, Abu Sayyaf, who was in charge of ISIS' oil and gas operations and directly and increasingly involved in ISIS command and control, fought capture and was killed in the raid, the sources said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Surveys find that men in U.S. special operations forces do not believe women can meet the physical and mental demands of their commando jobs, and they fear the Pentagon will lower standards to integrate women into their elite units, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press. Studies that surveyed personnel found "major misconceptions" within special operations about whether women should be brought into the male-only jobs. They also revealed concerns that department leaders would "capitulate to political pressure, allowing erosion of training standards," according to one document.

The U.S. Army has deleted a tweet that used the term “chinks” in armor after people freaked out that the same word can be used in a completely different context as a racial slur against people of Chinese descent. “Chinks in special ops’ digital and physical armor poses challenges, experts say,” the tweet read, followed by a link to a news release about how terrorists’ using social media has left a hole — dare I say, a chink in — our country’s defenses.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.) is a CIA-trained former senior intelligence officer and he says that the rescue operation for American journalist James Foley wasn’t successful because President Obama “dragged his feet”. "Thursday morning, Shaffer appeared on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ISIS execution of American journalist James Foley earlier this week. He told me and co-host Brian Wilson that the recently revealed rescue attempt led by Special Forces earlier this summer failed because President Obama was slow to give the go-ahead: I’m hearing from my friends in the Pentagon, they are giving him every single option...

Senior Obama administration officials say the U.S. military launched a secret mission earlier this summer to rescue a number of Americans held captive by militants in Syria but failed to find them.

Asymmetric Solutions is a Division of Applied Defense Technologies. The St. Louis-based company is staffed by combat experienced SpecOps vets, including: Army Green Berets, Army Delta, Navy SEALs, SEAL 6, and Agency SOF. The company offers a real-world training environment with exceptional instructors on self defense from criminal violence.On Tuesday Assymetric Solutions tweeted out that they were being deployed to Ferguson, Missouri.

Obama administration hiding costs, names of decision-makers from publicA planning document uncovered by WND reveals that the Obama administration is hiding certain details from the public – including costs and the names of decision-makers – regarding “special projects” governing the federal government’s global deployment of U.S. and ally drones. The document indicates the government is extending support of unidentified Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCOs, for up to 15 additional months. A break in service also could have affected what was, as of January, the “imminent release” of armed MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones to new Foreign Military Sales,...

America’s Black-Ops Blackout Unraveling the Secrets of the Military’s Secret Military By Nick Turse“Dude, I don’t need to play these stupid games. I know what you’re trying to do.”  With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014?  Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year?  How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013?  Basic stuff.And...

Navy SEALs ordered to remove ‘don’t tread on me’ Navy Jack from uniforms 10:44 AM 11/01/2013 Carl Higbie Author, 'Battle on the Home Front' The Navy Jack is the ‘don’t tread on me’ flag, one that has earned a revered place in America’s naval history and a beloved place in sailor’s hearts, through its use for over two centuries. This symbol of America’s naval ferocity has spanned our country’s entire existence, flying from the masts of the Continental Navy during the war of independence, to today’s War on Terror. In fact, an amendment to the Navy code called SECNAV Instruction...

The team of less than two dozen Navy SEALs from Seal Team 6 huddled in one fast boat and headed toward the Somali shoreline under the cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday morning. Three more small boats with additional SEALs flanked the assault team’s craft, to provide back-up and assist with the planned extraction of an al Shabaab warlord named Ikrima. According to multiple U.S. military sources, the lead boat landed, and the assault team hit the beach near the Southern Somali town of Barawe, headed for the fortified seaside compound of their target. U.S. intelligence had...

Demand comes hours after separate failed US military raid on terrorist target in Somalia ibya has demanded an explanation for the "kidnapping" of one of its citizens by American special forces, hours after a separate US military raid on a terrorist target in Somalia ended in apparent failure and retreat. In Tripoli the US army's Delta force seized alleged al-Qaida leader Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby and wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people. The New York Times reported that Liby was being...

Past US strikes on Al Shabab leaders, even successful ones, have not diminished the group.A commando unit from the US Navy’s Seal Team Six launched an amphibious raid on a Somali town, but failed to confirm a capture or kill of their Al Shabab target, suspected to be linked to Nairobi’s Westgate mall terror attack. The operation could have opposite its intended result of discouraging further attacks. Analysts warn that even earlier successful targeted strikes against Al Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamist militant group, failed to curb the group's capacity to carry out international terror attacks, and that failed missions could...

A Congolese army battalion that received its formative training from the U.S. military went on to commit mass rapes and other atrocities last year, a U.N. investigation has found. Members of the 391st Commando Battalion, a unit created in 2010 with extensive support from the U.S. government, joined with other Congolese soldiers to rape 97 women and 33 girls as they fled a rebel advance in eastern Congo in November, according to the United Nations. U.S. Special Operations forces had spent eight months training the 750-member battalion in a bid to professionalize Congo’s ragtag military, which has a long history...

Chuck Todd has defended the Obama admin's decision not to send more special ops to Benghazi. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, NBC News political director Todd claimed that the decision to send only two special ops to Benghazi was "very rational." He also literally laughed off the notion that Benghazi could boil into a major scandal. View the video after the jump.

NAVY SEAL TEAM VI FAMILIES TO REVEAL GOVERNMENT’S CULPABILITY IN DEATH OF THEIR SONS IN FATAL HELICOPTER CRASH IN AFGHANISTAN FOLLOWING SUCCESSFUL RAID ON BIN LADEN’S COMPOUND DATE: MAY 9, 2013 PLACE: NATIONAL PRESS CLUB (HOLEMAN LOUNGE) TIME: 9:30 AM-11:30 AM (Washington, D.C.). Three families of Navy SEAL Team 6 special forces servicemen, along with one family of an Army National Guardsman, will appear at a press conference on May 9, 2013, to disclose never before revealed information about how and why their sons along with 26 others died in a fatal helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011,...