Posted on 10/06/2001 11:57:29 PM PDT by jerod
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — For all the emphasis that Pentagon planners have put on Special Operations forces in a war against the network of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government, at the moment relatively few of these secretive soldiers are within striking distance of the heart of Afghanistan, officials at the Pentagon say.
As the military's mobilization accelerated this week, a Defense Department official (Clinton Hack/or Disinforment Informent) said that "only a few dozen" members of the military's Special Operations forces had deployed into the region so far. Short of an intelligence coup disclosing Mr. bin Laden's location, that is scarcely enough to scour the caves and canyons of the country looking for him and his captains.
But an additional 500 or so members of Special Operations units will be laced among the 23,000 United States troops now landing in Egypt for a monthlong military exercise, "Bright Star," which begins next week, Pentagon officials say.
"They could easily swing over toward Afghanistan," one Pentagon official said. And other Special Operations forces will most likely deploy with many units bound for the region.
With so few of them there so far, the initial mission of these fighters has focused on the more conventional of their many specialized roles. These include scouting targets and standing by to illuminate them with laser beams that precisely guide missiles and bombs to the most important ones.
Recalling the Persian Gulf war of a decade ago, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said this week that the "most effective means for finding Scud missiles, Iraqi Scud missiles, was putting very brave special forces people on the ground in western Iraq."
But he conceded that their daring sometimes went to waste. "When they got there and they found targets, we didn't have the kind of integration with our air capability to make that bravery effective," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
Special Operations forces are also the most likely soldiers to carry out another strategy that Pentagon officials have spoken of: assisting resistance forces of the Northern Alliance in their campaign against the Taliban's military.
"Assisting forces that are in opposition to the government of a hostile country — now, that is a classic special forces mission," said one veteran of the Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. The hope has been both to dislodge the Taliban regime and to flush out members of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network.
And counterterrorism generally is another of the particular missions of Special Operations units. Wayne A. Downing, a retired four-star Army general who headed the United States Special Operations Command, has joined the National Security Council as the president's new director for counterterrorism.
American commandos are capable of much more than hiding for days on end and working in the dark of night to locate targets, or propping up indigenous rebels to do the fighting. These forces receive the most intense training in the military, and some of its most sophisticated radios and weapons, so they can wipe out targets on their own.
Special forces wage their corner of the war with intense and concentrated violence that can be important tactically to the broader mission, and disruptive psychologically to an enemy, current and past members of these units say.
In the words of one former Special Operations officer, "They fight fast and they fight furious, and then they get out."
They can be secretly inserted into enemy territory in pitch darkness by Pave Low and Pave Hawk helicopters that skirt the terrain. For heavier loads and longer distances, there is the Combat Talon, a modified cargo plane that needs only 750 feet of rudimentary runway to land.
So secret are the Special Operations forces' missions that their movements into and around the region are blacked out of slide presentations about the war effort shown to some of the most senior military leaders at the Pentagon.
Their importance to that effort, though, is no secret. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has made it clear that in this campaign, "a lot of it will be Special Operations."
As the Air Force readies high- altitude food drops over Afghanistan, an operation aimed at filling the stomachs as well winning the hearts of the Afghan people and undermining the Taliban's legitimacy in their minds, special forces could stealthily search for, identify and help destroy Taliban anti-aircraft systems, whose capabilities remain an unknown, Pentagon officials say.
That mission would become even more critical if President Bush orders a sustained bombing campaign to squeeze the Taliban by attacking command posts, arms depots, airfields, training camps and storage sites for the heroin that has underwritten the Taliban, officials say.
Special Operations forces do everything from coordinating refugee relief to training foreign soldiers to reconstituting a water purification system to preparing leaflets urging surrender in dialects that few American soldiers have ever heard spoken.
There are 40,000 members of United States Special Operations units, budgeted at just over $3 billion, or about 1.3 percent of all military spending, said Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman for the Special Operations Command. (Most Special Operations personnel who work in civil affairs are in Reserve units, as are many of those trained in psychological operations.)
Units vary in size and specialty, from the top-secret Delta Force, which specializes in counterterrorism, to Navy Seal teams that specialize in coastal reconnaissance, infiltration and demolition, to the larger units of Army Rangers, perhaps the best-trained infantry in the world.
But spectacular failures still haunt these forces. There was the aborted hostage rescue in Iran in 1980. During the 1989 invasion of Panama, the forces had a disproportionate number of casualties. The disastrous attempt to kidnap a Somali warlord, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, in 1993 certainly ended public support for involvement there.
NOT !
That statement couldn't be further from the truth. In Somalia, tha failure was 100% political, 100% Clinton's unwillingness to take the mission seriously, and reluctance to act.
This isn't a Clintoon operation. We're taking our time. We're preparing. We'll do it right, with as little loss of life as possible.
Tall order, no matter how many specops troops you have.
The political will for this operation is 100%, and the will of the American people is certainly high.
The question is this.
How many liberal loving nay-sayers, like Thom Shanker, will write opinions under the guise of News, (like the above story) in an effort to demoralize and disillusion the public? And will their efforts be successfull?
But I recall going personally to Beirut in January of 1983 as a young officer with great optimism and high hopes and the best intentions.
Beirut, (with our fleet anchored within rifleshot), was a pimple on Afghanistan's camel, and we know how Beirut turned out. And Somalia later.
Great intentions are not worth crap in the middle east.
Read "Blackhawk Down" about the operation to snatch Aidid's lieutenents THREE MILES from the US Army Ranger/Delta compound.
Again: big as Texas, 18,000' mountains, 500 to 1000 miles from our fleet.
Catching Osama is going to be no piece of cake unless he's real stupid. And we know he ain't stupid.
Not a chance. The administration is the only force that could demoralize the people now.
I know absolutely no one who isn't determined to come out of this victorious. Even people I normally would consider political enemies are unanimous in their support of wiping these terrorists out.
A lot of people I know are a bit jittery about the unknowns of the "how" and the "where" of the next attack, but they are all firm in their resolve.
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