CNN story on US Special Forces

[rogwar]

I watched a CNN story this weekend on US Special Forces. You know when you are very knowledgable about a subject, the media's slant affect really hits one hard. Sometimes I wonder where the enemy is located.

Here is a summary of the story:

- failed resuce mission in Iran
- failed mission to capture Warlord in Somalia
- dead Seals in Grenada
- dead Seals in Panama
- SFs known as "cowboys" in Vietnam (shows someone shooting an M60 from the hip that I wish I could have recorded and studied because I don't even think it was a SF soldier)
- ended with SF soldiers in training with final clip of exhausted trainee not making up a rope on a course, and sort of falling back down to the ground.

END OF STORY

Why do they do this? What do they hope to accomplish? They made spec war look like a bunch of bumbling idiots in this piece. It was like a deliberate attack.

There are a lot of successes, some of which are public.

- SEALS unplanned initial rescue and evacuation of embassy in Somolia
- SEALS disabled Noriega's boat
- SEALS still took the Panama airfield even though that was not their thing and with limitations not to damage property. 6 man team could have disabled the planes from 500 meters with a Barret and suffered no loses. Political involvement (as in Iran).
- Successful Special Forces ops behind lines in Gulf war
- Delta force rescues American prisoners in Panama jail at the start of Just Cause.
- SEALS protect the governor on Grenada against overwhelming ods
- SEALS fake out Iraqis in Kuwait by making them think a landing is underway
- SEALS took down x number of armed Iraqi oil platforms in the gulf
- SEALS blew up a chitload of sea mines in the gulf
- SAS at Iranian Embassy (remember that one!)
- SAS and US trained and "helped" Peru in retaking Japan embassy

There is a lot more public and quite a few still classified. It is accepted and desired in the business that most of the successful missions are never heard about.

However, this type of slant is, for lack of a better word, unamerican. On the whole I'd rather them not say anything at all regarding spec war, good or bad.

Rogue out...

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: rogwar ]

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: rogwar ]

[easymo]

News flash folks.  You cannot trust the American press.  You never could. A newspaper owner STARTED the Spanish American war.  After we decimated the NVA in the Tet offensive, Walter Cronkite went back home ant told the American people we were losing.

  The newsweenies are in the business of getting rich and famous. The more outrageous the story, the more attention that reporter gets.  He always has the word objectivity to bail him out. So he has nothing to lose.

[CptTrips]

Yep, Its like cops...its only news when they screw up.  

[funkedup]

Don't forget that the Communist News Network is run by Hanoi Jane's hubby.  And don't think that they don't have an agenda.

Honestly, since it seems a lot of foreigners form their opinions of the USA by watching CNN, I think that story might be OK.  Let the enemy think that US special operations units are not up to snuff... right up until the 9 mm slug hits them in forehead.

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: funkedup ]

[john9001]

this war will not be like the "live, made for TV war " that nam was , i think the govt learned their lession, the press is being blanked out on this one and they are mad

[weazel]

Consider the bad press the CIA gets as an example:

You learn about their screw-ups but never hear about the operations that work, it plants a seed in the mind of adversarys not to take them seriously - often to their own demise. <psy-ops>  

I was an MP on Ft Benning,Ga in the early 80's and had the opportunity to meet US Army Rangers and watch them train, they ARE some bad mother fu@kers, SEALS and Green Berets are the cream of our Armed Forces, I pity anyone on the sharp end of them.

[AKDejaVu]

I worked quite a bit with Army SF down in South America.  They seemed to be a generic sampling of soldiers.  

Of the 3 I worked with:

• Two were pretty well built and slightly 8-up... but still personable.  
• The other was wirey and pretty smart.  2 had extensive second language training and were near fluent in Spanish.  
• The other was raised speaking Spanish.  One was a trained medic and would assist with the AF medic with the shot Colombian soldiers.
• All were trained in use of the latest communication gear.  Basically the same as the stuff I set up, though they were running on their own network.
• All were pretty damn proud to be SF

The Army SF boys were trained to go somewhere and observe or lend aid.  They did a stellar job where I was at.  They were more professional than most military personel I've met, but they weren't remarkable.  They're in-depth training was apparent, and they'd remind you about it at a drop of a hat.

Basically... I wanted to hate them, but I couldn't help but like them.

The funny thing is when they tried to sneak up on me, or I tried to sneak up on one of them at night.  Neither of us successfully pulled it off... though we would frequently sneak up on the Colombian soldiers and steal their weapons.  Another fun thing was to stand deathly still by a path <at night> that went from the camp to a remote operator sight near shift change.  When the officer/operator meandered by, one of us would reach out and touch him on the shoulder... never saying a word.  Its fun to see an officer/operator wet themselves... even if its through NVGs

AKDejaVu

[easymo]

Let me tell a story here.  I think there is a lesson in it.

  One day when I was in high school a couple of collage kids, calling themselves protesters, showed up. The placed themselves at the front door of the school.  There they were passing out pamphlets.    I had never heard of a "protester" So like dozens of my class mates I went out to see what was going.  The local news cameras were there, circling these two people like buzzards.  This attacted even more students.

 Now, at the time  Americans were still trying to recover from Kennedy getting his head blown off.  For most of them, if they thought about Viet Nam at all, it was with sense of "oh hell here is another mess we have to clean up". It was looked on as just another facet of the cold war.  There was no flag waving going on, on the other hand people just took it for granted that we would go in and meet another threat.  The WW2 generation was running things then.  And War was nothing new to them.

  That night I watched T.V., mostly to see if I was in one of the shots.  To my amazement what I saw was a story about how hundreds of local High school students had staged an anti war protest. They had include us in the shot of the two protesters.  And it did indeed look like we were all protesting.  This story was immediately followed by some very graphic footage of combat in 'Nam.

  As the years went by this one, two punch became a formula.  Show some protesters, then stick the camera into the open wound of Viet Nam.  Americans were hammered with this EVERY night on the six o,clock news. In time the number of protesters grew. And the American resolve weakened

  I belive, with all my hart, that the news media lost that war for us.

  The irony of this for me was based on that original high school experience.  You see, one of the protesters was a very pretty girl.  On the pretence of being interested in what she was selling (what can I say? I was a horny kid.) I cornered her, and question her about the war.  She did not have a clue what was going on over there, or even why we where there.  She didn't even know where it was. I ask her to show it to me on a world map, that I happen to have for geography class.  She couldn't find it.  In the end, what it came down to, was she was against! war.  Thats like saying your against earth quakes.  Who the hell is for them?

  Anyway, make no mistake.  As this thing with the terrorist drags on,  The news weenies will go in whatever direction sells advertising.

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: easymo ]

[Dinger]

heheh.  For once I agree with easymo against funked.  These news sources aren't run by folks with ideas and an agenda; they're run by idiots interested only in audience share.  When you train people to communicate anything to anybody without having to know what they're actually communicating, you get crap like this.
In Vietnam "protestors" were associated naively with the war in a manner that tore this country apart.  Now, if some group protests any US military action, regardless of its merit, the nightly news tagline inevitably mentions Vietnam and college students.  So the messages of the protestors were very powerful in Vietnam, and for the same reason, they are completely marginalized today.  In no case, however, does their failure or success depend on the message.

the same can be said for every other case.
The SF: lessee: that Iran thing failed, but pretty much created the Delta Force; Grenada: many hastily planned operations, many which did exceedingly well; Panama: SF conducted all kinds of operations, and yet the one that was inappropriately set up due to interservice rivalries gets all the attention?

Bottom line: don't trust the media.  It isn't liberal or conservative: It's just evil.

[Tac]

"The funny thing is when they tried to sneak up on me, or I tried to sneak up on one of them at night. Neither of us successfully pulled it off... though we would frequently sneak up on the Colombian soldiers and steal their weapons.  Another fun thing was to stand deathly still by a path <at night> that went from the camp to a remote operator sight near shift change. When the officer/operator meandered by, one of us would reach out and touch him on the shoulder... never saying a word. Its fun to see an officer/operator wet themselves... even if its through NVGs"

You bastard   The poor sobs you were scaring must have been 18 year old conscripts serving their 1 year or paid regulars.Heeheee.

Did you ever get to work with the Lanceros (our Special Forces) or with the Contra-Guerilla police (the ones with the hats with 1 side rolled upwards)?

Those guys are terrifying.

[AKDejaVu]

You bastard  The poor sobs you were scaring must have been 18 year old conscripts serving their 1 year or paid regulars.Heeheee.

They were 17 year olds  The regulars were pretty much in charge of them.  They all had weapons though.  BTW.. sneaking up on them and suprising them paled in comparison to sneaking up on them and catching them asleep.  

 

Did you ever get to work with the Lanceros (our Special Forces) or with the Contra-Guerilla police (the ones with the hats with 1 side rolled upwards)?

Actually, we were the ones with one side of the hat rolled upwards  I had offers of a hand grenade and a berreta 9mm in trade for the hat.  Damn that customs

I wasn't really involved with the assault teams.  Our special forces guys weren't either... except for debriefings from the Colombian commandos.  The weren't wearing hats at all.  They were very short and built like brick toejam-houses.  Men of few words

Funny story:

The commandos said they had encountered some people at a site in the hills.  There was a pretty extensive shootout where the commandos and the druggies traded small arms fire for some 10 minutes.  Then the commandos started in with the M60.  Not a single trace was seen or heard from the druggies after that.  They high-tailed it instantly.  Its a very distinct sound, you see

AKDejaVu

[Tac]

LOL!

A friend of mine worked in ammo supply with the 3rd Brigade in Cali when he was serving his 1 year... the stories he used to tell me were incredible. Did u know that some guerillas dont take prisioners at all? When the Lanceros and the Contra police knew they were to face them, they would carve an X on the tip of the bullets... I think you know what that would do

One of the officers in 3rd Brigade owned a paintball field in the outskirts on a hilly terrain, and connections, connections... my friend talked to this officer and he got my paintball team (a bunch of high school guys from 14 years to 18 year olds and we had won the last 2 tournaments) some guys from the 3rd Brigade to play against us. We were elated!

On that day the fediddleer appears with 2 Lanceros and 3 Contra guys... and beat the crap out of my 12 man team in less than a minute. Ive never been hit so many times in my life. Then we watched them play each other... *gasp*. My friend had watched both games, we decided to try again (yeah, we young and extremely stupid) now that we "had seen them play".. and asked my friend if he would join us. He just smiled and backed off saying he was not THAT stupid.

That time it only took them 30 seconds to wipe us out. Brrrrrr!!!!!!

[batdog]

SF doesnt equate with RAMBO. They are highly trained, highly motivated soldiers who will act in such a fashion while under extreme duress. They are not super human... they are simply willing to go harder than most.

  The various units that comprise Special Operations all have special roles as well.
The Ranger Bats typical secure such things as Airports, perhaps specific buildings, they make raids behind lines and operate up to 1 week w/out resupply. The SF guys infiltrate and train as well as other "shadowy ops". The Seals are our true commandos. They move in, kill and leave. Delta of course is the ultimate. Its standards exceed all the others and typical draws its members from the former.. including such eliet units as Recon and some Air Force units.

 DO NOT allow the press to fool you. Our Special Ops Units are VERY good. You give them the intel and support needed and THEY WILL complete the mission. Even if others fail them they still might complete the mission.

 XBAT

[funkedup]

Nope sorry Dinger, Turner most definitely has a personal agenda that is expressed through his network.  The guy sponsors eco-terrorist groups for crying out loud!

[Eagler]

Originally posted by Dinger:

Bottom line: don't trust the media.  It isn't liberal or conservative: It's just evil.

more leaning left than anything, even with all the patriotic hoopla today - you can still see their agenda if ones eyes are even half open..
Do agree, they want eyes for their advertisers. eyes = more $$$ they can charge, that's the bottom line - facts, who needs facts - they need to come across as the info good guy for the average dumbarse who wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit him in the arse...who is too lazy or stupid to do any research on anything or read - READ, no way as that requires effort, they'd rather have it spoon fed to em, no matter the flavor..