Posted on 01/04/2004 7:36:28 PM PST by Archangelsk
Military Split On How to Use Special Forces In Terror WarBy Gregory L. Vistica Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 5, 2004; Page A01
With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pressuring the Pentagon to take a more aggressive role in tracking down terrorists, military and intelligence officials are engaged in a fierce debate over when and how elite military units should be deployed for maximum effectiveness.
Under Rumsfeld's direction, secret commando units known as hunter-killer teams have been ordered to "kick down the doors," as the generals put it, all over the world in search of al Qaeda members and their sympathizers.
The approach has succeeded in recent months in Iraq, as Special Operations forces have helped capture Saddam Hussein and other Baathist loyalists. But in other parts of the world, particularly Afghanistan, these soldiers and their civilian advocates have complained to superiors that the Pentagon's counterterrorism policy is too inflexible in the use of Special Forces overall and about what units are allowed to chase down suspected terrorists, according to former commandos and a Defense Department official.
In fact, these advocates said the U.S. military may have missed chances to capture two of its most-wanted fugitives -- Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and Ayman Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden -- during the past two years because of restrictions on Green Berets in favor of two other components of the Special Operations Command, the Delta Force and SEAL Team Six.
They said several credible sightings by CIA and military informants of Omar entering a mosque this spring in Kandahar, Afghanistan, were relayed to U.S. forces at nearby Firebase Gecko, where a Green Beret team was ready to deploy. But rather than send in the Green Berets, who were just minutes from the mosque, commanders followed strict military doctrine and called on the Delta Force, the team of commandos whose primary mission is to kill and capture targets such as Hussein.
In the several hours it took the Delta unit, based hundreds of miles away near Kabul, to review the information and prepare for the raid, Omar vanished, said the sources, all of whom advise Rumsfeld's senior aides.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Clinton and his SecDef Les Aspin wanted to eliminate 2 Army Special Forces Groups (1st and 3rd), one Ranger Battalion, and an Air Force Special Operations Wing and the overall AF SO headquarters which at the time was (I think) 21st Air Force. (I'm not sure how they planned to downsize the SEALs). The Pentagon fought them on this and they wound up disbanding 2 Army Reserve SF Groups (11th and 12th) instead of active ones, and only 2 squadrons (IIRC) and the HQ instead of a wing. The USAF stopped training some special ops insertion and extraction capabilities because of funding cuts. Training funds were also cut to support increasing peacekeeping & domestic law enforcement missions. We had fewer people and took it out of hide in optempo.
Special ops guys weren't alone. Numerous conventional units were cut from the reserve components at the same time, and the active duty units of all services were just about on bread and water.
Aspin had to resign in disgrace after the Somalia operation went down the tubes in October 1993, but new SecDef William Cohen carried out all of the Aspin cuts.
One thing that isn't often mentioned, but devastated the military, is the Democrats' fecklessness on foreign policy, almost foreign-policty-by-TV-headline, that was poison for morale. Two things in particular hurt here: the tail-between-the-legs bugout from Somalia (this was instrumental in handing us 9/11) and the futile, risky, exhausting adventure in Haiti, where we knocked off one strongman and put another who was just as bad (maybe worse) in his place. SF lost people in Haiti, both to being KIA by the local creeps, and to having their careers destroyed for saying the wrong thing to Administration suits.
Then there was all the COO and social engineering. Bill Clinton's first initiative as president was to force-feed gay activists to the military, on which he ultimately had to back down, but it illustrates that he still was the immature youth who "loathed" the military.
What do you expect from the administration that sold space in Arlington for campaign contributions?
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The Army actually has policy in place where a subset of SF units is trained in certain tasks that are normally the province of other units. The point of this is in war or peace to give the combatant commander a handy tool that's right there in his toolbox.
The guys doing specialised direct action as the main thing on their dance card are way better at it than the guys doing UW, but the UW guys can put on quite a firepower demonstration when required, and everybody comes to each other's help when the fit hits the shan.
Incidentally, a lot of the SEALs are working in very small teams, sometimes with a NSW EOD guy, and they tag on an op when it looks like fun, and go somewhere else if that's where the action's gonna be. They are having a freelance war! And everybody is glad to get them, and sorry to see them go (if only because you're down by three long guns and it probably means the hunting is better somewhere else).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The conventional units in the field have little trouble with SF's informality... it's the rear echelon guys that cause the problem, the many loggies hanging around the rear area, who are all bummed out cause you can't shine desert boots, and shining boots, to them, is what being a soldier is.
This is exacerbated by the Army's NCO "education" system, which produces pathetic barrack lawyers who obsess about regulation minutiae, and calls them sergeants major.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The threat posed by in-country muslim terrorists far exceeds the threat of all other terrorists combined. There are *thousands* of them; they are well-funded and sophisticated.
Termination of terrorists does not mean indiscriminate killing.
Agreed.
In other words, there must be incontrovertible evidence they are actively committing terrorist acts
When achmed is dispersing bio or opening the contact, it's too late.
Furthermore, using the military, or paramilitary teams (CIA, etc.) can only be allowed for foreign targets (not that it is existing law, but it is a bad idea running assassination teams in your own country).
We can start doing what is required or continue dying.
Half-assing some lame *criminal* investigation years after an attack, against *supporters*, is folly.
You say...
"Incidentally, a lot of the SEALs are working in very small teams, sometimes with a NSW EOD guy, and they tag on an op when it looks like fun, and go somewhere else if that's where the action's gonna be. They are having a freelance war! "
This is very interesting to me. I've heard this on other military type forums. That the Seals have played a very interesting role in this war on terror (as have all the SOF guys) but in a much more active way.
So, from your knowledge this is true. The Seals have been very active and given much clearence on OP's they can go in on.
Oh God, you know it...
No more "Hostile Intelligence Services (HOIS)" only "Foreign Intelligence Services (FIS)" and no more "Rogue States" only "Nations of Concern"--the State Department declared we had no enemies and peace had broken out all over and if there was a war, nobody would come.
"Nations of Concern" Baaaaarf...
Between other organizations and chains of command, well, that's a whole different story. The friction generated between the (often misinformed or misguided) expectations of our own chain of command, the attached unit, civilian agencies and the conventional Army intel channels can be absurdly political and mercilessly petty. That DOES result in bad blood.
It may just be that intel work inherently involves more backstabbing, and that only intensifies when everyone is under pressure to produce gold out of lead. Plus, the 'barracks lawyers' of the regular Army are small time compared to the 'Johnnie Cochrane / ACLU / Mark Geragos' level legal hit men of the MI community. People who will come at you with Leavenworth in one hand, and your genitalia in the other, if they suspect (no matter how baseless) that you've been cutting corners or not following the absolute letter of the law.
So, yes, I am a little bitter. I know a lot of guys that have given untold amounts of effort and done some truly amazing work, only to see it disappear into a cloud of infighting and politics. I suppose this may not be an across the board phenomenon, but I when I hear of similar stories, I don't discount them right away.
I would think Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down author) who made some very good contacts within Delta and DevGru units has to be getting some raw info on whats happening in the war on terrororism.
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