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SAN DIEGO - The Pentagon released the name Wednesday of a 30-year-old Camp Pendleton-based Marine Corps officer killed in combat in Afghanistan. Capt. Joshua Meadows of Bastrop, Texas, died in Farah Province on Saturday, according to the Department of Defense. Meadows was a member of 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — The Army has identified four soldiers killed in a helicopter training accident in Colorado. Those killed in Wednesday's crash were 40-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Terrance Geer, 41-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Robert Johnson, 33-year-old Staff Sgt. Paul Jackson and 28-year-old Staff Sgt. Chad Tucker. The soldiers identified Friday were all members of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell. Army Special Operations Command officials say their MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed while conducting mountain and environmental training near Colorado's second-highest summit, Mount Massive -snip-

LEADVILLE, Colorado — Four soldiers died after a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training mission on Colorado's second-highest mountain, the Army's Special Operations Command said Thursday. The helicopter crashed Wednesday afternoon near the summit of 14,421-foot Mount Massive. The Army initially said two were killed, one was injured and one was missing. The missing man was found dead late Wednesday, and the injured man died on the way to the hospital Wednesday, said Lt. Col. John Clearwater, a spokesman for the command at Fort Bragg, N.C. All were male soldiers from Fort Campbell, Ky., he said. Their names haven't...

In this file photo, a Soldier with the 9th Battalion, Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducts a fast rope training exercise in Al-Asad, April 22. The Iraqi Security Forces established the 2nd ISOF Brigade, Aug. 4, to better serve and protect the citizens of Iraq. Photo by Eric Lippmann, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Arabian Peninsula. BAGHDAD — Over the last couple of months, much has changed here, and the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) are certainly no exception. Brick by brick and layer by layer – the elite fighting force has been laying down the foundation of the...

Retired Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, winner of the Navy Cross for heroism in Afghanistan, says he doesn't sleep well at night. So when the trained Navy Seal heard a gunshot go off near his ranch in Walker county Texas at 1:30 in the morning, he immediately sprang into action. After first checking in on his mother, Luttrell made his way out to the tree line of his property. There he saw the headlights of a car with a handful of young men loudly joking, standing outside of it. "I could see my dog lying in the ditch," Luttrell said

Special Operations and Covert Operations to the Rescue Most Americans desire an effective change in current Iraq war strategy and the wider global war against Islamic extremists and nations supporting them. President Bush and the new U.S. Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, could deliver it by placing experienced unconventional warfare leaders in charge of the war effort. Since forcibly removing Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, the U.S.-led coalition has been unable to quell insurgent, terrorist and sectarian generated violence concentrated mostly in four of 18 provinces and Greater Baghdad which are dominated by majority Sunni populations. About 150,000 Iraqis and...

An American engineer held hostage by Islamic militants in Afghanistan was freed in a daring nighttime raid by a Special Operations team last month, a rare move in a country where hostages often pay ransoms — or don't come home at all. A team of about 30 special operators composed mostly of Navy SEALs flew into the mountains outside Kabul on October 14 to retrieve the 61-year-old American businessman, killing his captors and returning him to safety after nearly two months in captivity, according to an account in the Army Times. -snip-

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Bush secretly approved orders allowing American Special Operations forces to undertake ground assaults inside Pakistan this summer without getting prior Pakistani government approval, a former intelligence official said Thursday.

A Fort Bragg soldier who crawled 200 feet while being fired upon to save a wounded colleague and then led a group of besieged soldiers to safety has received the Distinguished Service Cross. Master Sgt. Brendan O'Connor received the cross in a ceremony Wednesday at Fort Bragg for his actions in Afghanistan. The cross is the Army's second-highest award for combat valor, behind only the Medal of Honor. O'Connor was honored for his actions during a battle in 2006 in southern Afghanistan. He is assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group. The unit is based at Fort Bragg, a massive...

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan, March 17, 2008 – Special operations Marines deployed to Afghanistan’s Helmand province operate at a fast pace. A special operations Marine examines a poppy plant handed to him by an Afghan National Army soldier (right) in Afghanistan’s Helmand province during a patrol through a village in which they were looking for Taliban fighters. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Luis P. Valdespino Jr.  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Accompanied by a small group of Afghan National Army soldiers, the Marines are constantly on the go: visiting villages, distributing humanitarian aid and always searching for...

Marines with a Marine Special Operations Company secure an area of a Helmand Province village in which they were under attack by Taliban fighters, while a Chinook CH-47 pulls in to provide support for the Marines. Afghan National Army soldiers and MSOC Marines were visiting the southern Afghanistan village when they were attacked by Taliban fighters in late February. A Marine Special Operations Company’s leatherneck examines a poppy plant handed to him by an Afghan National Army soldier (right) during a late February patrol through a Helmand Province village in which they were looking for Taliban fighters. An Afghan...

WASHINGTON -- A Marine company involved in the shooting of civilians in Afghanistan last March responded appropriately to an ambush against them, and should not have been pulled out of the country, the commander of Marine Corps special forces said Thursday. Marine Maj. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, head of Marine Corps Special Operations Command, also told reporters that a legal tribunal investigating the incident has been postponed until mid-January at the request of one of the officers involved. "Obviously it was not my decision to bring the company out of theater," Hejlik said. "It was the theater commander's decision. I...

By Sharon Behn - Charges will no longer be pursued against a company of Marines who were yanked out of Afghanistan by a three-star general on suspicion of criminal wrongdoing, a lawyer involved in the case said yesterday. Defense attorney Mark Waple said he was informed late Wednesday that the case was being referred to a court of inquiry, which would limit itself to examining the actions of three Marine officers. A court of inquiry, the Navy's highest-level administrative investigatory body, is rarely convened and "is not a criminal proceeding," said a spokesman for the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central...

A crusading three-star general has sparked outrage within the Army Special Forces and Marine Special Operations Command by publicly condemning and twice bringing legal actions against members of their forces. None of Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney's actions has resulted in a conviction, but they have roiled the military community, led to the resignations of several top-trained Marines, and sparked accusations of improper command influence. Rep. Walter B. Jones, North Carolina Republican, worried about the effect on the military, has asked Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to investigate Gen. Kearney, who currently heads the Special Operations Command. The case also has...

ON NEW YORK'S EAST RIVER -- For more than 200 years, the U.S. Coast Guard has been a force in high-seas rescue missions. Now, the service branch is aiming to be a greater force in the war on terrorism. A new group of more than two dozen Coast Guard teams is being given broader responsibilities to travel anywhere in the world to deal with maritime threats and emergencies. The teams have 3,000 members that can raid and search cargo ships, drop onto threatening boats from helicopters, search for underwater bombs and use bomb-sniffing dogs to help them look for explosives....

Bin Laden may have just escaped U.S. forces August mission in Tora Bora almost snared 'high value target' A little more than a month ago, with the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and fears of a new al Qaeda attack rising, some U.S. intelligence and military analysts thought they had found one of the world’s two most wanted men just where they last saw them six years ago. For three days and nights — between Aug. 14 and 16 — U.S. and Afghanistan forces pounded the mountain caves in Tora Bora, the same caves where Osama Bin Laden had hidden...

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 17 — From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sgt. Troy Anderson had a clear shot at the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a village near the Pakistan border last October. When Capt. Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Sergeant Anderson fired a bullet into the man’s head, killing him. In June, Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson were charged with premeditated murder. On Tuesday, in a rare public examination of the rules that govern the actions of Special Operations troops in Afghanistan, a military hearing...

In the summer of 2003, an Air Force pilot named Greg Harbin was doing desk duty at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Day in and day out, Harbin sat in front of five computer screens, scanning photographs and video sent by unmanned planes flying 1,200 miles away, over Iraq and Afghanistan. His job was to take that information, along with reports from ground troops, and identify fresh targets -- Taliban fighters or Iraqi insurgents. But one thing puzzled him. When regular units called for an attack by a Predator drone, the request went to Harbin, and then, if...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military was forced by Afghanistan to scrub some secret counterterror missions after killing innocent civilians caught in a crossfire with Al Qaeda fighters, the Daily News has learned. In one previously undisclosed case last April, angry Afghan officials ordered a month-long temporary halt to U.S. kill-or-capture raids in Nangarhar Province after civilians died in a battle, a U.S. military source in Afghanistan told The News. The victims were women and children used as human shields by Al Qaeda militants inside a compound where a firefight broke out with an elite Navy SEAL team, a source told...

Kiwi wins medal in Iraq The Nelson Mail | Wednesday, 25 July 2007 A Kiwi soldier who returned to Iraq on a second tour of duty has been awarded one of Britain's highest military awards for bravery under fire. Corporal Terry Knights - a former territorial solder in New Zealand - has been honoured with the Military Cross for bravery and leadership. The recognition is bitter-sweet for the soldier, who serves with the British Royal Marines. He returned home this month for his mother's funeral. His father John Knights, of Motueka, said he was very proud of his son. "When...

Iraqi Special Operations Forces capture twelve suspected insurgents Tuesday, 10 July 2007 Multi-National Corps – Iraq Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory APO AE 09342 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RELEASE No. 20070710-5 July 10, 2007 Iraqi Special Operations Forces capture twelve suspected insurgents Multi-National Corps – Iraq PAO DIWANIJAH – Iraqi Special Operations Forces detained twelve insurgents linked to a rogue Jaysh al-Mahdi militia during two separate intelligence driven operations in Baghdad June 8. These insurgents are allegedly responsible for attacks against Iraqi and Coalition Forces. With Coalition Forces along as advisors, ISOF detained the targeted individuals without incident. In the first...

WASHINGTON, July 3, 2007 – If Tiger Woods weren’t a professional golfer, he’d probably be a member of the military’s special operations community, Woods told reporters today at the Congressional Country Club here today. “I told Dad if I didn’t make it (as a golfer) in the first few years, that’s probably where I’d go,” he said. “I’d probably end up going into the military – and I don’t know what branch – but I’d certainly want to be in the special operations community.” Indeed, Woods underwent four days of Army special operations training at Fort Bragg, N.C., in...

A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military's new frontier outpost. The word came down suddenly in early January to the fifty or so U.S. troops stationed inside Camp Simba, a Kenyan naval base located on that country's sandy coast: Drop everything and pull everyone back inside the compound wire. Then they were instructed to immediately clear a couple acres of dense forest. Task Force...

Most Americans desire an effective change in current Iraq war strategy and the wider global war against Islamic extremists and nations supporting them. President Bush and the new U.S. Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, could deliver it by placing experienced unconventional warfare leaders in charge of the war effort. Since forcibly removing Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, the U.S.-led coalition has been unable to quell insurgent, terrorist and sectarian generated violence concentrated mostly in four of 18 provinces and Greater Baghdad which are dominated by majority Sunni populations. About 150,000 Iraqis and nearly 3,000 Americans have died during continuing hostilities....

This is a "headsup" for a couple of books being covered on BookTV (C-Span2 weekends). I'd say these two books fall in the general category of "fighting the savages". The Night Stalkers is written by Michael Durant, the downed helicopter pilot held captive by Aideed during the "Blackhawk Done" incident. The "Becoming Charlemange..." book sounds like it might be an interesting coverage on how Europe was stictched together.

Spotted by Predator drone aircraft and sprayed with high-calibre bullets by an U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, the U.S. military is hunting al Qaeda operatives in the southern toe of Somalia, according to CBS News. Special Forces Command (or SOCOM) has yet to confirm that the terrorists responsible for the August 7, 1998 embassy bombings—which killed 12 American diplomats and some 211 Africans—were slain in today’s strike. If the gunship’s rounds were on target, it is a major setback for al Qaeda in Africa. Following last year’s sweep by the Kenyans and activities in the Coromos Islands (off the coast...

January 3, 2007: Ethiopia plans to get its troops out of the country with a month. Somalis don't like foreigners, and love to attack and rob outlanders, even if the prey is heavily armed. Meanwhile, captured foreigners, suspected of being Islamic terrorists, are being brought in. The Transitional Government is going to try and disarm the population, or at least collect "excess weapons" and stuff not needed for personal protection (machine-guns, mortars and other heavy weapons.) Kenyan border guards have arrested at least a dozen men, suspected of being Islamic Courts officials, as they tried to cross the border. Years...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.special24sep24,0,3228806.story MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- So many of America's special operations commandos have been thrown into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan that only a handful of the elite troops are available for the quiet but critical work of training local security forces and stabilizing governments elsewhere -- raising worries about al-Qaida and related terrorist groups expanding in other parts of the world. The demand for Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other highly trained units in battle, which senior military commanders expect will last for the foreseeable future, is a tough problem for the military and for its...

BALAD, IRAQ-One little-known aspect of the U.S. military operation in Iraq is that it involves the largest ongoing deployment of special operations forces since Vietnam. A total of 3,768 Special Forces,Navy SEALs, and Air Force combat controllers are scattered across the critical Euphrates and Tigris river valleys, from the Syrian border to Hilla and Kut in the south. They are partnered with one third of the Iraqi Army battalions and 13 SWAT-type police units. Speaking to U.S. News at his headquarters in Balad, Kenneth Tovo, the colonel in charge of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula, said his...

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld turned to special operations forces to take the lead in the hunt for Osama bin Laden five years ago, he no doubt had in mind the kind of kill-or-capture operation mounted to go after Pancho Villa, or, more recently, the Balkans' war criminals. The problem was that those manhunts came up empty. Finding a single individual intent on hiding, it turns out, is a very tall order, even for a superpower. In a rare interview, Lt. Gen. Dell Dailey, who has helped lead the hunt for al Qaeda's founder, explained why. "Our manhunting skills are...

Ground has been broken in Jordan to begin construction on one of the world’s most comprehensive anti-terrorism training facilities. The $99 million project is being funded by the U.S. government through a 2005 Defense Department supplemental budget request. “We strongly support Jordan’s offer to establish a special operations center of excellence to boost regional special operations forces capacity,” testified Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, before the Senate Armed Forces Committee last year. “Jordan’s very capable [special operations force] makes this a natural site for a high caliber regional training and cooperation center,” he added. The target audience...

As we celebrate the 230th birthday of the United States of America, our president joined the ideological, and perhaps biological, descendants of those who fought to give us our freedom by creating this new nation. The president went to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, to speak to and eat with the troops and their families (who gave him a birthday cake). He will return to the White House for a July 4th celebration with family and friends. That will also serve as a birthday party for the President.

Cannon Air Force Base, threatened with closure after its three F-16 fighter squadrons were ordered elsewhere, will become a special operations base, the Pentagon announced today. The base will become the Air Force's 16th Special Operations Wing within the next two years, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said. ''It will change rather dramatically in character,'' he said. The base will have several different kinds of airplanes and more of them, Domenici and Gov. Bill Richardson said. ''It means the new focus of the special operations wing is the war on terrorism,'' Richardson said. ''The best news is that it looks like...

April 28, 2006 Just nine days before al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released his latest video, a special operations raid killed five of his men, captured five others and apparently came within a couple of city blocks of nabbing Zarqawi himself. Then, the day Zarqawi's video debuted, special ops forces killed 12 more of his troops in a second raid in the same town. The raids in Yusufiyah, 20 miles southwest of Baghdad in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, were the latest battles in a small, vicious war being waged largely in the shadows of the wider...

LONDON - The humble prune is set to be recognized as one of the secret weapons of World War II. A London auction house, Spink, is selling two grizzled prunes that it says were destined to be stuffed with maps or other documents and smuggled to prisoners of war. The prunes were part of the memorabilia collection of a British spy. "They are very dry and hard and it's amazing that they have survived," Spink spokeswoman Emily Johnston said Tuesday. The prunes are part of a collection of World War II memorabilia collected by a British woman, the late Doreen...

The military's elite special operations community convened its annual meeting last week in Washington to discuss countering the terrorist threats facing America and its allies. Beginning with the working assumption that the United States faces a protracted, generations-long insurgency by loosely affiliated extremist Islamic groups led by al Qaeda, this community assessed how to proceed. Time and again the message was: Be prepared for lethal acts of terrorism, always keeping in mind that the war has three fronts -- on the ground, in cyberspace and in ideology. (snip) A comprehensive, focused and determined counteraction is essential to defeat this diffuse...

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist,...

A Bush administration proposal to fold a civilian office tasked with oversight of the Pentagon’s special-operations forces could face stiff resistance in Congress. Sources tell The Hill that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering a proposal to eliminate the office of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (ASD SO/LIC) and spreading its responsibilities across other Pentagon offices. The proposal comes from Ryan Henry, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, according to a source familiar with the plan. It is unclear whether Rumsfeld would sign off on such a suggestion or would reject...

Camp Pendleton veteran is ready to lead the Marine Corps' inaugural band of "snake eaters." Fresh from a tour there as deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik is forming the Marine Corps' first-ever special forces command. "We're being pretty aggressive, pretty ambitious," Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik said of plans for the Marine Corps' first special forces command. In five years, he said, the unit will include about 2,600 Marines. Hejlik was at the San Diego Convention Center yesterday to speak at the Naval Institute's West 2006 conference, which was expected to draw at least...

WASHINGTON - While Secretary of State Rice fends off questioning in Europe over CIA-run air flights of prisoners in the war on terror, some analysts outside the CIA are asking how the flights were exposed so easily. The CIA's legendary capacity for stealth, celebrated in so many cloak-and-dagger books and films, seems to have been all but absent as hooded prisoners were zipped from one airport to another by agency airplanes, a journalist who helped prepare one of the first detailed reports on the air transfer program said. "I would say they didn't give a damn," Fredrik Laurin, a producer...

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials. Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said three U.S. officials. In recent months, Cheney has been the force...

War: We expect our government to go all-out to prevent another 9-11. So the news we're holding dozens of al-Qaida terrorists in secret overseas compounds where they can be interrogated effectively is good indeed....That the White House and CIA have successfully convinced Congress to help them keep the details of this program secret is a good sign we're getting high-quality information. It means the methods of interrogation used by American and foreign intelligence agency personnel at these sites — which some may consider borderline torture — are saving the lives of innocent Americans and others who live in democratic countries....The...

NEW YORK - The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three...

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a compound in Eastern Europe, U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement said, the Washington Post reported. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several countries in Eastern Europe, as well as a small centre at the Guantanamo Bay prison in U.S.-occupied Cuba, current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents said, the paper reported...

WASHINGTON — The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents. The hidden global internment...

Debate grows within agency about legality, morality of approach The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and...

former US trained elite corps offers threat assessment, safe transport, security training, etc.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A branch of the U.S. Navy secretly contracted a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 and 2002 by the obscure Navy Engineering Logistics Office for the ``occasional airlift of USN (Navy) cargo worldwide,'' according to Defense Department documents the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.Two of the companies - Richmor Aviation Inc. and Premier Executive Transport Services Inc. - chartered...

A brand-new Marine Corps special operations force is a project that has been in the conception and experimental stages since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It became an operational test unit following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and its official existence is now pending only the signature of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"We Had Atta." Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer in-studio MONDAY - TODAY with the G-Man. As deep as possible into Able Danger without compromising National Security. Shaffer on HUMINT data mining, and pattern detection aspects of the hunt for Al-Qaeda and the brooklyn cell, the whitewater rafting meeting, "extralegal barriers" set up as a matter of policy, disappearance of his charts, and interdepartmental information sharing shutdowns lest special ops steal the "thunder" of the CIA.