Posted on 09/29/2001 4:33:40 PM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar
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Special operation forces are spread throughout the military, an elite group of 29,000 troops among 1.4 million Americans in full-time uniform. Here's a closer look:
Army Special Forces:Commonly called the "Green Berets," Army Special Forces skilled in explosives and guerrilla warfare can train foreign troops and resistance fighters to overthrow hostile regimes. In 1967, 16 Green Berets and CIA operatives spent a summer training and equipping Bolivian soldiers to capture communist leader Che Guevara and his small band of soldiers. In October of that year, the Bolivian soldiers caught Guevara and executed him. More recently, Green Berets have trained Colombian troops to combat drug lords. Most Army Special Forces activity in the Gulf War is still classified, but missions included locating Scud missile sites and marking them with beacons or through radio contact for subsequent airstrikes.
Army Rangers:True to their motto "Rangers Lead the Way," these groups of highly trained troops are often the first Americans to meet combat, as was the case in World War II and most major conflicts since. They've also seen combat in smaller, specialized missions in Panama, Iran and Somalia. The name "Ranger" dates back to colonial Indian fighters, who would scout out frontier areas and mark the number of miles they "ranged" at day's end. In modern missions, Rangers are often called on to secure hostile airfields in enemy territory, either by landing in aircraft or, if resistance forces are present, parachuting onto the scene ready to fight. They often reinforce the smaller, more elite Delta Force. If called upon to fight in Afghanistan, the Rangers would possibly enter the country in Blackhawk and Cobra helicopters, launching quick raids against hide-outs in the mountainous terrain.
Delta Force:Anti-terrorism forces initially modeled after Britain's Special Air Service, Delta Force is considered one of the world's most effective units in close-quarters battle. Recruited mainly from the 82nd Airborne, the Green Berets and the Rangers, Delta Force members are specially trained at an elaborate facility at Fort Bragg, N.C., to fight terrorists, rescue hostages and perform reconnaissance in extremely dangerous places. They led an attempt to rescue American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1980. They suffered losses in Somalia, along with the Rangers, in a failed attempt to capture a Mogadishu warlord in 1993. Unlike most other traditional military units, Delta commandos are encouraged to be free-thinkers, some at times growing longer hair and beards in order to fit in with locals. Delta commandos customize their weapons and gear to suit particular missions and their own tastes.
Navy SEALs (Sea, Air and Land.):Famous for their aquatic and underwater explosives skills, SEALs can deploy from parachutes, travel up rivers underwater or in small rubber boats, and return from missions to submarines waiting many miles out at sea. Their history dates to World War II, when Naval Combat Demolition Units used explosives to clear obstacles for D-Day troops landing on Utah and Omaha beaches in Normandy. Though their aquatic skills may be marginalized in a land-locked target such as Afghanistan, SEALs also train in the desert, jungles, in cold weather and in urban surroundings.
Psychological Operations Groups:In Panama in 1989, psychological warfare experts accompanied Army Rangers on parachute drops to broadcast U.S. propaganda from bullhorns and blast rock music at the Vatican Embassy where Manuel Noriega was taking refuge, hoping to unnerve him. They also disseminated messages to adversarial forces as part of operations in Somalia and during the Gulf War. Psychological warfare experts armed with knowledge of local folklore in the late 1940s scared Philippine communist insurgents into thinking they were being chased by a ghost. Psych-ops experts participating in a mission in Afghanistan may study local superstitions and Islamic teachings.
Britain's Special Air Service:These commandos are widely respected around the world as perhaps the most effective special ops forces ever fielded. The SAS originally was created during World War II to attack Axis communication lines, airfields and military equipment deep within enemy turf. In the 1970s, the commandos turned their attention to terrorists and started training for hijackings and hostage situations. When Iraqi-backed terrorists seized the Iranian Embassy in London, the SAS took the building successfully. They were put to work in the Gulf War and, like the U.S. Army's Green Berets, they've been known to train Colombian anti-narcotics police. They've also worked with non-communist Cambodian guerrilla, hunted ivory poachers in Kenya, and taught foreign troops at NATO Special Forces schools.
SOURCES: Material came from various sources including Jane's, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Ranger.org, George Washington University, Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
You are being too bizarre even for you.
I lived in Rio Vista. I know these people. They would slit the throats of anyone who ...well...never mind. Santa Cruz was even worse. I moved out of state.I should hope not. But I do know the political situation. I saw the protests in DC today. I see the trial lawyers lined up to sue airports and the like because some poor person's feelings were hurt when they could not get on a plane.
So, the 1st post is a lie than.
One day Powell says this, then Bush says that, then somebody says we may use nukes or we may not. We're supposed to swallow the line this is all disinformation.
We will see, won't we?
Why not tell the truth for a change. You lose all creditabilty when you lie. Why do I get the feeling you're slimier than a leech?
Fighting fit for foreign Queen and country
Helen Rumbelow
January 2, 1999
A YOUNG boy sprinted up the mountain with the watchful encouragement of a retired Gurkha officer, his father.
Captain Budhikumar Gurung, who reached the prestigious post of Queen's Gurkha's Orderly Officer, one of a pair serving the Royal Family, returned to Nepal three months ago. He has the difficult task of adjusting from life at Buckingham Palace to living in the seventh poorest country in the world.
Like most of the 26,000 retired Gurkhas, he did not stay in Britain, instead settling next to the Pokhara base that gave him his chance in life more than two decades ago. As with all other Gurkhas, he had a course to help him to adapt to a homeland that he visited only briefly in his adult life.
Taught farming, banking and business administration, he is typical in managing to save enough to own businesses and property, supplemented by an officer's pension of more than £100 a month. Most Gurkhas serve a standard 15 years before recieving a soldier's pension of up to £40 a month, depending on rank and service.
On the slopes of the Himalayas, Gurkha homes are easy to spot, built out of brick, not mud, and with flowered gardens reminiscent of the English countryside. While working, the captain earned more than a Nepalese government minister. Now his pension earns him double a teacher's wage, and immense respect.
A former Gurkha can leapfrog the caste system that bars most of his kinsmen from the plum jobs in Kathmandu, and gives a great advantage in finding a second career. His son, Nabin, said it was a combination of riches and respect that made him want to follow his father and grandfather into the Second Gurkha Rifles. "When my father walks down the street, they look up to him."
Nabin, 19, has excelled in his recruitment tests, a testimony to the private boarding school education his father was able to give his son for ten years while serving in Hong Kong. "I once thought of being a doctor. For a normal Nepalese it's a very good salary. But being a Gurkha is better."
He is one of 36,000 competing for just 230 of this year's places with the British Gurk-has, a wing of the army made up of Nepalese hillmen, who are feared and respected as elite warriors. Among others is a skinny, 20-year-old orphan, Lakh Bahadur Gurung, who won the most dreaded and gruelling of the challenges that the would-be recruits face. In 31 minutes he managed to race two miles up a steep mountainside with two thirds of his body weight in rocks strapped to his back.
Now he is assured of a job fighting for Britain - a country he believes is punctual, clean and wealthy. Later this month, he will be at a damp army base in Hampshire, learning how to swim, use a knife and fork, and flush a lavatory, as well as handling weapons other than his kukri, an all-purpose knife for chopping firewood and, should the need arise, enemy necks.
When he returns for his first visit home in three years' time, his £538-a-month job will have made him a local hero, earning 12 times the average wage and with girls competing just as hard to catch his eye.
After foreign aid, tourism and carpets, Britain's trade in its fit young men is Nepal's biggest money earner, although this year the competition is even stiffer as the army is demanding brains as well as brawn.
Gurkhas have been recruited from the central and eastern mountain surrounding the town of Gorkha for 180 years, ever since a smugly invading British army was shocked by the ruthless opposition of the proud warrior tribe whose first principle is better to die than be a coward.
So much British blood poured down the run-off notches on kukris that a peace treaty was hurriedly drawn up, including a clause to allow the British to recruit from this short and tenacious stock of natural soldiers they had so painfully discovered.
Gurkha numbers have dropped from the 112,000 men who were fighting in the Second World War to around 4,000 today, depleted in the 1990s by the closure of their main base in Hong Kong and by army restructuring.
Although numbers are on the rise again, the army now wants supremely fit athletes and boys who must be able to speak good English and be able to solve complicated algebraic equations. Two thirds of the young hopefuls will be rejected by Colonel Richard Coleman, the officer in command of the base.
One of his problems is that the Basic Fitness Test used for all British recruits is too easy for the Nepalese. Instead of the 11 minutes allotted to an infantry applicant to run a mile and a half, a Gurkha recruit must run it a minute and a half faster.
Although hill boys find running on the flat unnatural and bizarre, this still proves effortless for boys brought up on constant physical exercise, whose legs have the knotted muscles of professional sprinters. So the infamous Doko race was devised, where the traditional wicker rucksack or "doko" supported by a forehead strap must be filled with 70lb of rocks and speeded up a small Himalaya in under 40 minutes.
Most Westerners find even walking up the steep shingle a breathless effort, and army officers say that if the test were applied at home British recruitment would drop to one or two men a year.
History of gentlemen fighters
GURKHAS began their long friendship with Britain in a bloody, year-long war. The British East India Company went to battle against the warrior tribes living around Gorkha in 1814, with an army outnumbering the locals by 21,000 to 16,000.
They quickly established their reputation for both bravery in battle and nobility, slaughtering many British with their trademark "kukri" while "in the intervals of combat, showing us a courtesy worthy of a more enlightened people", said one impressed British soldier.
A peace treaty hastily drawn up by the heavily hit East India Company (or "John Company") gave the British the right to recruit from the area, as well as the origin of the nickname "Johnny Gurkha". The Gurkhas quickly established a reputation for loyalty to Britain during the siege of Dehli in 1857, protecting the British under three months of continuous fire and losing three quarters of their 490 men.
More than 100,000 Gurkhas served in the First World War. A similar number served in the Second World War, when Nepal volunteered 20 extra battalions after France fell and Britain was vulnerable. After Indian independence, four of ten regiments in the Gurkha Brigade transferred to the British Army, the rest to the Indian Army.
Since 1947 they have defended British interests in Malaya, Borneo and Cyprus. The Victoria Cross has been awarded to Gurkhas 26 times.
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Correct me if I'm wrong in what I understand you to say:
You are calling the SF cowards and ready to wimp out and squeal when they are captured. You expect their parents or families to cry and fuss on international TV.
Is that really what you expect of our troops?
I'm sure they'd be crushed to know that if they gave a rats a**, but they don't waste their time worrying what non-hacking pukes like you think.
So being concerned about what the NEA does to kids is some sort of pathology? I had those bookmarks because Hollywood makes movies entitled "The Priest" but nobody hears about what goes on in government schools. If you have read my comments these last few years you might know that.
Until 911 that, yes was one of my major concerns. If you haven't noticed, I was right to be concerned. Many of the freaks who have been upset that America might defend herself, have turned out to be NEA teachers.
As far as Bush is concerned, yes I do think this is all BS. I saw his father do the same thing. Afriad to take the action needed. We had 5,000 of THESE PEOPLE march outside the White House today. Anyone in this admistration say anything? Oh no...politically incorrect to even mention where they get their funding or which countries they support. The Washington Post might call President Bush names. The New York Times might trash him everyday rather than every other day if he mentioned what we all know.
Sorry...but I was done playing nice just about a month ago.
You are calling the SF cowards and ready to wimp out and squeal when they are captured. You expect their parents or families to cry and fuss on international TV.
Is that really what you expect of our troops?
48 Posted on 09/29/2001 18:30:20 PDT by Eagle Eye
It will happen. We've seen it before.
When?50 Posted on 09/29/2001 18:35:18 PDT by LarryLied
hehehe INCOMING !:-)
(semper gumby...remember, I'm old and brittle, kick me softly)
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