It is unfortunate in this case that there was a small group of soldiers with "quick reaction" forces 15 minutes away.
Because Al Qaeda can blend with civilians and probably get good intel from civilians, any sort of opening they will take advantage of.
There is a need to run "War Game" scenarios here in the United States on possible things that Al Qaeda might do.
And, unfortunately, Al Queda seems to be able to get very good information - probably even from loyal Iraqis - without the "good" Iraqis knowing they are deceived. (Or even taking relatives as prisoners and forcing Iraqis in positions of authority to give them information.)
In short, our military needs to be even more protective of our troops.
Two or three members of a Delta force unit might be able to act alone, but not normal military.
The lesson in Afghanistan of the 6 member Seal Team should be something our military should be very conscious of.
Even a 6 member Seal Team was very vulnerable in an operation in Afghanistan.
So small unit operations need to be scuttled or carefully observed (using UAV's to monitor such small unit operations).
Even a 6 member Seal Team was very vulnerable in an operation in Afghanistan.
With all due respect - You have no idea what you are talking about regarding the SEAL RT in Stan and their Op that went bad (because of simply Mr. Murphy showing himself several times in freakish ways). - Furthermore the type of Op those SEALs were on has been done virtually hundreds and hundreds of times throughout both Stan (and Iraq) and done with 100% success (often leading to even further successes) with 99% completely unaware of these successful Ops - And that is just the RT type OPs....not the DA Ops
As for this situation in Iraq - We don't know all the facts - It is that simple - It is also simply a reality that bad things happen in a war zone -
It also appears that there was some type of diversion which left these 3 momentarily vulnerable (as others soldiers stationed there responded to this event) - Though I still have a hard time swallowing that 2 non severely injured soldiers could be captured -