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The Javelin Missile FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 16 — The low-slung ridgeline overlooking a strategic crossroads in northern Iraq offered scant protection for the small band of Green Berets, vastly outnumbered and under attack from four T-55 tanks, six armored personnel carriers and hundreds of infantrymen with artillery on call. "We all made a mental promise," Staff Sgt. Jeffrey M. Adamec recalled of that battle on Day 18 of the war. "Nobody had to yell out commands. Everybody just knew. We were not going to move back from that point. We were not going to give up that ground. We...

 Spectator.org Print Article         Close Window         Copyright © 2002 Spectator.org. All Rights Reserved. Inside Stories of the Transformed Armed Forces By Published 9/2/2003 12:02:00 AM Buy the Book Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.-- George W. Bush, Address to Congress, September 20, 2001 The back cover of The Hunt for Bin Laden, by Robin Moore (Random House, $24.95), shows Moore, an...

<p>COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Unconventional warfare in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq taught the U.S. Army it needed more unconventional warriors.</p> <p>To increase the pool of potential Special Forces members, officials have started selectively recruiting civilians straight into a program that could make them Green Berets in about two years. It is attracting hundreds more recruits than expected, and they are doing well, Army officials say.</p>

Floyd Holcom probed parched soil along Kuwait's border with Iraq in March, making sure it would support a tank's churning treads. Members of Holcom's U.S. Army Special Forces team watched Kuwaiti soldiers cut openings in the border's gleaming steel fence. The desert was eerily quiet. Then, for three days and nights, the Astoria man and his fellow Green Berets stared in awe as thousands upon thousands of tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and trucks shattered the desert silence. The most powerful fighting machine on Earth thundered toward Baghdad, trailing dust and smoke. Finally the desert grew tranquil again. The Kuwaitis sealed...

The U.S. Special Operations Command is looking for “leap-ahead” technologies that can give its troops a decided advantage over their adversaries in wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced in January that the command—made up of elite, unconventional warfare units from the Army, Navy and Air Force and headquartered at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base—is being strengthened so that it can play a bigger role in U.S. military operations. Currently, SOCOM consists of about 47,000 personnel, including Army Special Forces, Rangers and specialized helicopter, psychological operations and civil affairs units; Navy SEAL (sea,...

I was reading the new book just out by Robin Moore entitled, "The Hunt for Bin Laden" and came across some excerpts that I wanted to cite in honor of my NY friends. This book has been hard to put down and parts of it are simply hilarious. So, with the setting in Afghanistan early on in the conflict...quoting from pages 74-75 and 99: ----------------------------- Like it's Vietnam predecessor, "Puff the Magic Dragon," the Spectre is easily described by Special Forces troops on the ground as "raining death." With Chain guns, and autoloading 105mm cannon, a 25mm Gatling gun and...

IWANIYA, Iraq, April 17 — They were trained in the art of war and came to Iraq to fight. But now that the regime has been toppled, Army Special Forces soldiers in Diwaniya have found themselves on an entirely different and, in many ways, more difficult mission. They are trying to rebuild the city. It is a battle against chaos instead of bullets. The Green Berets have had to wade into angry crowds. They have mediated between rival tribes locked in blood feuds. They have tried to hold together the city's thin threads of social order, not always with...

<p>KUWAIT CITY - As U.S. air and ground forces blast into Baghdad, dozens of CIA paramilitaries and thousands of U.S. Special Operations forces are waging a hidden war in Iraq's shadows.</p> <p>Under the cover of darkness, they're hunting and assassinating Baath Party members and Republican Guard leaders, rigging selected bridges with explosives and detonating them when suspected Iraqi leaders drive by, and using viruses to disable computers at military command centers, power plants and telephone networks.</p>

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...

NO MAN’S LAND at night was a wondrous silver world of empty desert to the two teams of American Green Berets as they moved slowly towards their reconnaissance objective. The desert town near the Iraqi lines outside Kirkuk seemed abandoned, but there were other eyes scanning the wilderness. The men eased forward in two vehicles, acquired days earlier from their Kurdish peshmerga allies. “Then the engine block seemed literally to fall right out the bottom of the vehicle,” one of the lead team recalled. “We’re standing around trying to fix it when we hear a sound. The town isn’t empty...

WASHINGTON -- In the largest operation in their storied history, elite special operations forces are waging a shadow war in Iraq whose success could determine whether coalition forces can topple the regime of Saddam Hussein quickly or whether the conflict will drag on for months, say military officials and specialists. The military's ''silent warriors,'' as President Bush called them yesterday, were involved in the first operations of the war and are likely to conduct some of the last, including helping spearhead the birth of new civil institutions in a post-Hussein Iraq. Details of their activities in recent weeks -- from...

Canadians weren't always fools and cowards My father served with Canadians in the 1st Special Service Force. Here is a brief history: The "Devil's Brigade" While the origins of U.S. Army Special Forces date back to the French and Indian War and the formation of Rogers’ Rangers, the modern concepts of unconventional warfare were largely developed in World War II with the formation of several specially trained units. One of the these early Special Forces units was the First Special Service Force, also known as the “Devil’s Brigade.” The origins of the First Special Service Force (or the Force, as...

American Green Berets who launched yesterday's attack in Baluchistan's "devil's triangle" with their Afghan allies have for months been probing the frontier area in Nimruz province where Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet. They have been led by a man known to locals as "Captain Tony", and riding with heavy machineguns and in plain clothes in pick-up trucks. They have been forced to play by unusual rules in Afghanistan's "wild, wild west". The "devil's triangle" is a region where heroin dealers refine their product in clandestine factories and smuggle it into Iran with huge, heavily-armed convoys that can take out Iranian...

Document created: 3 June 02 Published Aerospace Power Journal - Summer 2002 What’s So Special about Special Operations? Lessons from the War in Afghanistan Col John Jogerst, USAF** Colonel Jogerst is the Special Operations Chair to Air University, on the faculty of Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.Watching the war in Afghanistan and listening to speculation about future US moves, one hears a lot of discussion about US special operations forces (SOF). The consensus seems to be that these forces are tailor-made for the unconventional nature and uncertainty of this war. Every war is unique, but if the uncertainty and...

The U.S. military dominates the globe, but increasingly faces an enemy it cannot see. In the third in a series on U.S. power, Peter Goodspeed chronicles efforts to build a secret army for the covert war on terrorism. - - - The United States is building an elite, secret army to carry the war against terrorism into the world's darkest corners with a new wave of covert pre-emptive operations. For the first time since the Vietnam War, U.S. defence officials are undertaking a massive mobilization of their elite special operations command, pouring billions of dollars in new funding into high-tech...

Maj. Christopher Miller lay awake on a cot in a filthy room, no larger than a prison cell and cluttered with weapons and ammunition. He couldn't sleep. It was a cold January night at the Special Forces base in Kandahar, and Miller was on the verge of commanding an assault against six Qaeda fighters barricaded inside a nearby Afghan hospital. So many things could go wrong, Miller realized, and it could be disastrous if any of them did. For the first time in his life, Miller would be engaging in C.Q.B. -- a military abbreviation for ''close-quarters battle.'' After years...

<p>December 6, 2001 -- The three Green Berets felled yesterday by a stray bomb in Afghanistan grew up in small towns in different corners of America, and were brought together by a dedication to the military.</p> <p>Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Petithory, 32, was raised in Cheshire, Mass., a New England mill town in the Berkshire Mountains. He went into the Army immediately after high school.</p>

Remarks by President George W. Bush at the White House ceremony for the presentation of the Medal of Honor to the late Capt. Humbert R. Versace USA July 8, 2002 THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House. It's a - this is a special occasion. I am honored to be a part of the gathering as we pay tribute to a true American patriot, and a hero, Captain Humbert "Rocky" Versace. Nearly four decades ago, his courage and defiance while being held captive in Vietnam cost him his life. Today it is my great privilege to recognize...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush presented a posthumous Medal of Honor Monday to Army Capt. Rocky Versace, a Green Beret who defied his Viet Cong captors and was executed in 1965. "He was fluent in English, French and Vietnamese and would tell his guards to go to hell in all three," Bush told a group of about 200 in the East Room of the White House. The audience included Versace's friends and family members, including three brothers. The president gave the framed medal to the captain's brother Steve, who was applauded as he held it over his head and turned...

A flag, a yellow ribbon for a fallen Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Peter P. Tycz II was killed in crash of U.S. military plane in Afghanistan.Terry Harnden, center, is comforted by loved ones after learning that her son, Sgt. 1st Class Peter P. Tycz II, had been killed while on duty. Their phone was ringing off the hook Thursday. Cars choked the street in the City of Tonawanda neighborhood and a crowd of family and high school buddies spilled from the house into the yard, where a small American flag is staked near a tree ringed with yellow ribbon....