Ho-GAAAAN!
Posted on 04/07/2003 11:55:29 AM PDT by anymouse
As U.S. air and ground forces blast into Baghdad, dozens of CIA paramilitaries and thousands of U.S. special operations troops are waging a hidden war in Iraq's shadows.
Under the cover of darkness, they're hunting and assassinating Baath Party members and Republican Guard leaders, rigging selected bridges to explode when suspected Iraqi leaders drive by in armored vehicles, and using viruses to disable computers at military command centers, power plants and telephone networks.
Their efforts, largely off-camera, burst into view with the dramatic rescue last week of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah where she was being held as a prisoner of war. Lynch, 19, had been captured March 23 in an Iraqi ambush of an Army supply convoy.
But most of what the special operations forces do has been conducted undercover. Their chief goal: finding and killing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and other top officials.
The commandos' efforts, seen and unseen, began in October. They have paved the way for the rapid U.S. advance on Baghdad, U.S. military and intelligence officials say. ''Special ops and the agency's paramilitaries are the secret weapons of this war,'' says a U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the operations. ''Our conventional forces would never have gone this far, so quickly, without them.''
Special operations forces -- the Army's secretive Delta Force, Green Berets and Rangers, the Navy's SEALs and select units from the Air Force and Marines -- have played a bigger role in Iraq than in any other war in recent history, officials say. Nearly 10,000 of the estimated 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are ''special ops.'' That's the largest number in any war since the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s and 1970s.
''As a percentage of (overall war) effort, they are unprecedented for a war that also has a conventional part to it,'' Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week in Doha, Qatar. ''It's probably the most effective and the widest use of special operations forces in recent history.''
Military officials say Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in the region, decided to deploy thousands of special operations forces in Iraq after the units proved successful in paving the way for the removal of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.
U.S. intelligence officials, who refuse to comment publicly about their operatives, say there are about two dozen CIA paramilitaries, mostly former military officers, inside Iraq. USA TODAY spoke with three senior intelligence officials and three military officials for this story. When provided with a description of the contents of this article, they made no request to withhold any of the story's details from publication.
Special ops 'playground'
CIA paramilitaries and special operations forces, joined by their British, Australian and Polish counterparts, have one mission in Iraq: to hasten the collapse of Saddam's government, U.S. officials say. If they can remove Saddam from power, U.S. officials say, support for his regime among Iraq's people and military will collapse. Officials hope that would force the Republican Guard to negotiate a surrender rather than fight U.S. forces that have encircled Baghdad and made forays into the capital.
''We're determined to crumble this regime from the inside out,'' a senior U.S. intelligence official in the region says. ''We're counting on special ops and agency paramilitaries to do whatever it takes.'' He and others refer to Iraq as a ''CIA and special ops playground.''
U.S. military and intelligence officials say the paramilitaries and commandos have operated throughout Iraq:
* In the north, special operations forces are credited with calling in airstrikes on Ansar al-Islam, a militant group operating near the border of Iran. The group has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. Late last week, U.S. special operations forces held a rare news conference with Kurdish fighters to announce their success against the militants. Special ops also are credited with clearing the way for the largest military parachute landing since World War II. The 173rd Airborne Brigade was flown to northern Iraq last week from Italy to protect the northern oil fields.
* In Iraq's western desert, U.S. special operations forces working with their British and Australian counterparts seized two airstrips that could have been used by Iraqi aircraft. They also destroyed Scud missile launchers Saddam had threatened to use against Israel and intercepted weapons that reportedly were being sent to Republican Guard forces from Syria.
* Special operations forces in southern Iraq helped secure oil terminals and gain control of the northern Persian Gulf to cut off any weapons shipments and prevent Iraqi officials from escaping.
* In the Baghdad area, they secured a dozen of nearly 1,000 suspected biological- and chemical-weapons sites and called in airstrikes on Saddam's palaces and Republican Guard headquarters.
* They took control of the Haditha Dam, which the Pentagon feared Iraqis might destroy to flood the battlefield. And they tapped into Iraq's Chinese-built fiber-optic communications lines, which allowed U.S. forces to intercept the conversations of Iraq's military and political leaders.
Nighttime raids
Most of the work done by the CIA paramilitaries and special operations forces is conducted at night to take advantage of U.S. night-vision equipment.
Thursday, hundreds of special operations troops were flown by helicopters into the Iraqi capital after Baghdad lost power at 9 p.m. local time, U.S. military officials say. The Pentagon denied reports that U.S. forces cut off power there.
The commandos are helping other special operations forces set up ambushes, search underground tunnel complexes and raid homes in hopes of killing members of Saddam's regime. They've also set up checkpoints to isolate Baghdad from the rest of the country.
The commandos remain in hiding in Baghdad, where they communicate with officials at Central Command in Qatar and at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
The commandos and CIA operatives appear to be working together with few, if any, of the territorial disputes that have plagued the Pentagon and CIA in the past, military and intelligence officials say. They cite the rescue of Lynch as an example.
An Iraqi lawyer tipped off U.S. Marines that Lynch was being held at the hospital in Nasiriyah. The paramilitaries tracked down the foreign contractor who built the facility and passed on the global positioning satellite coordinates and layout of the hospital to the Delta Force.
As Delta commandos and other U.S. forces moved in, Marines, who control most of Nasiriyah, created a diversionary attack that occupied most of the Iraqi troops in the city. Army Rangers set up a perimeter around the hospital to prevent any other Iraqi troops from attempting to join the fight. Then, Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos carried out the raid as an Air Force gunship and communication plane circled overhead.
Getting Saddam
CIA paramilitaries and special operations forces, in particular the Army's Delta Force, face perhaps their toughest job yet: capturing or killing Saddam.
Although the CIA says it cannot confirm whether Saddam is dead or alive, most intelligence officials say they believe he is probably hiding in an underground bunker or tunnel in the Baghdad area. But where is anybody's guess.
A CIA informant, whose tip led to a strike March 19 on a residential compound where Saddam had been staying, has been whisked out of Iraq for his own safety, some intelligence officials say. Other officials say the informant, along with two others, were unmasked and killed by Saddam's regime.
They say they believe Saddam began a purge of his inner circle a few days after the U.S.-led campaign began.
Since then, the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency say they have not received any credible information on Saddam's whereabouts.
CIA officials say they are still trying to determine when a video of Saddam, broadcast Friday by Iraqi television, was recorded. The footage showed Saddam greeting people in downtown Baghdad.
Other intelligence officials wonder how Saddam could walk freely in Baghdad and not be attacked by U.S. military forces.
Good hunting boys.
This is an interesting article, but stretches the truth. We don’t need to know anything about these dedicated warriors, suffice it to say they are deadly to the enemy.
Ho-GAAAAN!
That's news to me. I haven't read the book you suggested, but I did serve in a SEAL unit (logistics). As far as I know, DELTA includes Army Rangers, Green Berets, SEAL's, Marine Recon, and others (USAF and USCG), selected on both professional qualifications and for task-specific requirements. It might be commanded by an Army officer, and attached to an Army command, but it certainly isn't "Army only". It's "purple suit".
FReegards .. SFS
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