I cut my teeth getting Reagan elected and I remember my disbelief at the Iran-Contra affair.
Loyalty is a virtue, but blind loyalty is a fault.
Those who say this is war are right. We are going to take casualties and there are going to be some serious screw-ups.
Let's keep pushing foward, fix what is wrong, and win this war. We don't have any other options.
"Delta Force, which prides itself on stealth"...if it was an assault or raid, it wasn't quiet, so what was it?" had been counterattacked by the Taliban" I doubt in the time on sight that the enemy had time to rally from the initial assault and fightback. Furthermore any goups of enemy forming in any land feature for any attack would of become target No. 1 for site area security teams and supporting aircraft. Bunk again. , "and some of the Americans had had to fight their way to safety." And pray tell where was that? All those Special Opps craft and their supporting gunships, AC-130's, ect??? Triple Boob Bunk. Hersh has filed his report for the November 12, 2001 issue of the NEW YORKER, on sale Monday. Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously. The intensity and ferocity of the Taliban response "scared the crap out of "everyone,"Everyone? Everyone? Most? Some? Two out of three? What, was there a survey? Maybe some shrinks for the boys? I bet a bunch of the guys were high as a kite, excited, thrilled. What bunk. a senior military officer( like some Delta NCO gives a rats ass and would even tell a paperpushing general the time of day.) tells Hersh. The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar's complex, but found little of value, Hersh reports, and then(scary music insert here), "as they came out of the house("Hey, help me with this t.v., boys, Oh, look! Coppers!), the shit hit the fan," one senior officer says. "It was like an ambush. The Taliban were fighting with light arms and either [rocket-propelled grenades] or mortars."(Proved lie right here, big difference in the sounds and effects of rpg's vs. mortars. Even a straight leg private know the difference. Also, again, the supporting security units, ground and air, must of been on break, maybe watching the stars twinkle.) The team immediately began taking casualties and evacuated. "The Delta team was forced to abandon one of its objectives:(Why? A fight is good cover for insertions. But then again, this is a stinky pile of wordy pap) the insertion of an undercover team into the area and the stay-behind soldiers fled (I can see it now, throw down your weapons, run fer da hill boys, they're on to us but good! Ya,right.)to a previously determined rendezvous point, using a contingency plan known as an E. & E., for escape and evasion," Hersh writes.
Just because a source happens to be a liberal source, does not mean it is wrong. The New Yorker is a liberal, sometimes disgustingly biased magazine. It also happens to be a serious and well written magazine. Conservatives have nothing like it, alas.
Not long before 9-11, the New Yorker published two articles which were brilliantly written and memorable, altho I have thrown out my copies and cannot recount them exactly. But the gist of the first one was, the brutality and hypocrisy of Islamic clerics. The second one was, how Clinton refused to act on unquestionable information regarding the death of our soldiers at Khobar; that article pretty much called him a coward and a liar.
Free Republic conservatives constantly reflect a shallowness which makes conservatism look ridiculous. Why do you think that both Drudge and Rush have dissed you, and foresaken you? Because they are liberals? Or because they are rational?
I admire Jim Robinson, and am in awe of him. He has done something I could never dream of doing. But the constant ass-kissing of him, and his apparent acceptance of it, degrades this site and makes it look cult-like. If that is what this site is about, so be it, but then it is not about conservatism.
For conservatives to question the good faith of Seymour Hersh for saying our special forces were scared, or some were injured, demonstrates the shallowness of those conservatives. Have they ever been scared before? I see no inconsistency with bravery, courage, duty, honor, and being scared. Nor do I think it out of the realm of possibility that some of our soldiers have been injured by the enemy.
Hersh may be wrong. But if I were a 22 year old special forces soldier, I would not be insulted if someone suggested I was scared. Nor would I consider it un-American.
This website has seen many people driven away from here, because ridicule and imputations of bad faith were freely thrown. This website has had the potential to be extraordinarily influential ... but many many folks, supposed conservatives, seem more interested in pulling out their FR credentials and tinning their way to satisfaction.
A few posters so far have one thing pegged for sure- I find it difficult to believe that the reporter actually talked to a Delta Force member. I was 8 years US Army Infantry. I'm here to tell you- almost nothing is known about Delta Force. I would expect the knowledge level about Spec Ops to be higher in the Army than in the civilian life (or "the world/real world" as it's refered to). Long time soldiers don't even know anything about Delta- and I mean nothing. So it is very difficult to believe that someone outside of that world could know anything about what Delta Force is about, has done or is about to do.
I would like to put this into context. As an Infantryman who has deployed more than once, I can tell you, we were given classes on the media, reporters and how to react to an interview. The Army (in contrast to the Air Force and Navy) is deeply suspicious and wary of the media. Before I was sent to Bosnia we were explicitly trained in what we could, could not and what we were "expected" to say to the media. Any reporter would be accompanied by a liason officer who would know when to shut up a dumb private if he said the wrong thing- that's a fact. In addition, think about this:
You have to have a security clearance before you can be Delta Force. If the ordinary Joe (with no security clearance) can't talk to the media, do I really think that someone who is the elite of the "secret society" would blab to a reporter who exposed one of the Army's uglier skeletons?
I also want to shed some more light on something from a former Infantryman's perspective. This regards the public conception of "Special Forces" and how the media reports on them. When you hear the terms "Ranger", "Special Forces" and "Delta Force" you are hearing about three distinctly different animals.
To start with, Rangers (at the risk of upsetting any Rangers out there) are NOT Special Forces. These two "tabs" are the most highly respected in the Army and it is the rare soldier who has them both. If you are Special Forces you wear that tab and you know who you are. If you are a Ranger, you wear THAT tab and you know who you are. Also, there's a difference between "wearing the tab" and "being in a Ranger Bat (battalion)". If you made it through the "school" you are a Ranger and wear a Ranger "tab". Soldiers with a Ranger tab are HIGHLY respected in the Army by their fellow soldiers. They are "special" and the first thing one soldier does when he meets a new soldier is to check out his uniform. He scans the left breast and shoulder for "badges and tabs". Airborne, Air Assault, EIB, CIB,Ranger, Special Forces- and the very rare "Pathfinder" and "Scuba".
But any Infantryman makes a distinction between someone with a Ranger tab and a Ranger who was in a Ranger Bat. This is much the same as the epiphany a soldier has when he realizes he really became a soldier "downrange" or in in the "real Army" and not in Basic Training. That's where you really learn your job and how to do things. The same for a Ranger. Someone in a "bat" trains with Ranger tactics a great deal of the time where as the more mundane Infantryman spends a great deal of time maintaining equipment and doing sh*t work. It's all about funds. Rangers are better soldiers physically and mentally and they rightly get more funding. But Rangers are still Infantry and they still fight in Infantry sized compliments (platoon, company, battalion).
Special Forces go through the "Q" course and wear the famous "green beret". They are very smart soldiers who have displayed a very good ability at working as part of a team (in addition to their physical prowess). To go through the "Q" course a soldier first has to make it through SFAS (SF assessment). This drops most candidates (including Tim McVeigh). SF is no f*cking joke. An SF medic is basically trained to do surgery and his is the hardest training of all at approx. 12 months. There are four job specialties (weapons, commo, medic and engineer) An 18B (SF Weapons Spc) is the LOWEST job specialty and if you are a former mortar man (like me :-) you have already sussed a full 50% of 18B training which is mortar related (you gotta be a genius to be a mortar ;-)
But Delta? Nobody knows what those guys are up to, including this reporter. A couple of points ring true in his article. One- Pathfinders were the first in for the Ranger mission. Yes, that's what Pathfinders do. This doesn't make them more "special". They have a short school that teaches them all about indentifying and securing drop zones for Air Assault/Airborne missions. They can do "cool stuff" like build an air assault platform in the tops of trees for jungle Air Assault missions. There is a lot of inter-service rivalry and I could imagine some Pathfinders being POed about the Rangers taking "first in" honors.
The next is- I read this article to refer to two different missions (but perhaps related). This would account for a lot of the confusion about the Rangers getting beat up in their raid although they had video showing a "low stress" operation (please don't take me wrong on low stress). If one thinks on the Ranger drop as being a distraction and cover for the Delta mission- it makes sense.
But bottom line- I can't imagine the reporter got his info directly from Delta. Maybe third or fourth hand with some truth behind it but not directly.
Why doesn't Seymour investigate the Democratic party? Now that would be a book.
I would be comprimising my position by telling you how I cam by this information.
The rear end MFer's have little to fear. If life was fair the media that is reporting operational details would have everything to fear.
This is much harder than gassing & machine gunning children & religious nuts in Waco TX.