US Specials Forces stages raid in Somalia
 

Kick ass.

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When his family was crying about him being kidnapped and at the same time admitting he was a top al qaida.... the writing was on the wall as far as who was responsible. Whether or not it was seal team 6... (it's a good story) ... eh... who did it doesn't matter... what matters is that the team is safe and sound at a base like ramstein and he's heading to a black hole

Due to that shit we are all collectively headed to a black hole.

... think maybe we make apologies, shake hands like gentleman, give them 4 billion dollars US and they just leave us alone for 'ever after' because we are all BFF now?

Thumbs up. There should have been/should be...many more of these type of Operations in place of huge unwieldy forces like were used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Navy SEAL's...the Army's DELTA Force...the Army's Special Forces teams...the Army's Airborne Rangers..the Marine's Division Force Recon and the Airforce's CCT...are all highly trained small mobile units. All can operate on the land in the air and the sea.

You can blame Bush/Cheney for that.. After 9/11 we put about 300 CIA and SF's on the ground and they essentially created the Northern Alliance. They then coordinated attacks and were pretty much kicking the Taliban's ass with a small mobile force, combined with air power and Afghan forces doing most of the fighting. That was one of the good things Donald Rumsfeld did right.

We could have won Afghan in short order with that strategy, because we would have had backing of the Afghan people as it would be them fighting for their own land. Instead Bush/Cheney only saw dollar signs for big defense contractors and wanted to put on a big show with our armed forces.

President Bush...in my opinion...was a piss poor Commander in Chief and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was one...of several...piss poor Secretary's of Defense...we have had over the years.

The shock and awe show

The problem with Rumsfeld was he was of the Reagan Neo Con school of thinking and was also a power mongrel. Bush was just a puppet in his first 4 years and I've personally always felt Cheney was the guy pulling all the strings. Bush sort of woke up in his second 4 years but he was already played the fool.

I never supported the Bush admin, but the original planning and achievement of the CIA running the war at the start of Afghan is likely one of the most significant military achievements our SF has ever pulled off. Afghan would have likely been over years ago had the Bush neo cons not taken control of the war and dump a bunch of troops on the ground.

But you just named the exact reason this will never happen.

The forces are Highly mobile and often once on the ground do a number of things.

they get their own transportation. No Hummer or big US truck. They dont use Hell fire missiles or tanks or anything like that. They are fast hard hitting and a HUGE money savings. So the War machine would not be making 1/16th of what it is using only teams like this. They get in and out as fast and clean as they can. no prolonged gun battles.

I read some place and will try and find it that the soldiers on the ground in Iraq at the beginning would shoot more than 50K rounds ( do the math ) each between combat and training/ weapons work.