From: "Blackout" <blackout@404infomagic.net>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2001 4:11 PM
MAG: 12 U.S. DELTA MEMBERS WOUNDED ON RAID OF OMAR'S
COMPLEX, THREE
SERIOUSLY; PENTAGON RETHINKS 'SPECIAL FORCES OPERATIONS'
Seymour Hersh has filed yet another controversial report
for coming
editons of the NEW YORKER, publishing sources tell the
DRUDGE REPORT.
In ESCAPE AND EVASION, Hersh claims: In the wake of
a near-disaster
during the assault on Mullah Omar's complex during the
early morning of
October 20th, the Pentagon has been rethinking future
Special Forces
operations inside Afghanistan.
MORE
Delta Force, which prides itself on stealth, had been
counterattacked by
the Taliban, and some of the Americans had had to fight
their way to
safety. 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," a senior military officer tells Hersh.
The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar's complex, but found
little of value,
Hersh reports, and then, "as they came out of the
house, 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." The team immediately began taking casualties
and evacuated.
"The Delta team was forced to abandon one of its
objectives: the
insertion of an undercover team into the area and the
stay-behind
soldiers fled to a previously determined rendezvous
point, using a
contingency plan known as an E. & E., for escape
and evasion," Hersh
writes.
MORE
One Delta Force soldier told a colleague that military
planners "think
we can perform fucking magic. We can't. Don't put us
in an environment
we weren't prepared for. Next time, we're going to lose
a company."
One military man reports that Delta Force officers were
"still outraged"
last week as after-action arguments over how best to
wage a ground war
continued.
The Pentagon could not give details of what really happened
near
Kandahar "because it doesn't want to appear that
it doesn't know what
it's doing." Another senior officer says, "I
don't know where the adult
supervision for these operations is. Franks -- the general
in charge of
the U.S. Central Command -- is clueless."
Speaking of Delta Force the officer adds, "These
guys have had a case of
the ass since Mogadishu. They want to do it right and
they train hard.
Don't put them on something stupid. We'll get there,
but it's going to
get ugly."
Officers also criticized the Army Rangers' sameday parachute
jump into a
Taliban-controlled airbase because "it was a television
show. The
Rangers were not the first in -- an Army Pathfinder
team had already
confirmed that the area was clear of Taliban forces."
One senior official Hersh spoke to acknowledged that
there were serious
problems in the war effort thus far, but said, "It's
like reading a
six-hundred-page murder mystery. It's solved on the
last few pages, but
you have to read five hundred and ninety-eight pages
to get there."
Developing...
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash33.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: military planners "think we can perform
fucking magic. We can't"
From: nu-monet <nothing@succeeds.com>
It's institutional knowledge, that's the problem.
Backinmyday, the waning years of the Vietnam vets still
in the ranks, I looked around at the interesting assortment
of my military peers:
Cutthroats, blackguards, fiends, mercenaries, bombers,
spooks, stalkers, psychics, bloodhounds, thugees, gamblers,
thiefs and assorted creeps. Officer material.
We were a fine lot--no two looked alike. There were
fat
ones, young ones, older ones, smokers, drinkers, druggies,
a fag or two (who shrugged if you mentioned it); those
you
would trust with your life, but never to hold your wallet;
and those who had already accumulated so damn much bad
karma
that they were destined for at least a millenia of payback.
But you put them in the field and you had the damn
deadliest assortment of apocalypse seal openers imaginable.
Led by talented, gifted and EXPERIENCED Special Forces
NCOs
they would take whatever resources were available and
accomplish the mission.
A few miserable years pass, and I returned to "the program".
All the soldiers look alike. They do not smoke or drink
or do drugs and believe that physical fitness, playing
by
the rules, going to church and following orders will
win
the day. They tend to look alike, think alike, act
alike,
and are of the mind that unless you look good in your
uniform,
you are not a good soldier. Drill & Ceremony define
leadership.
They are officers that would barely survive as privates.
Oh well, they will be bitch slapped for a while, and
then they
will wise up. As thus it has always been. By the time
all is
said and done, there will another generation much like
my peers.
Honorable villains, every one. Men worthy to be called
barbarians.
--
*
MILLIONS SURVIVE FLU EPIDEMIC
"A flu epidemic will strike in 2006.
Happily, a cure will be found before
there are any fatalities."
--Robert Schultz, psychic for "The Sun"
*
Original file name: military planners "think we can - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:31
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