Word: commando
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This isn’t controversial stuff. Democracy, human rights and civil liberties are good. North Korea selling missiles is evil. Iran arming Palestinian terrorists: evil. Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, making anthrax and training commando teams to hijack planes (as he did in the Salman Pak neighborhood of Baghdad): very evil. And there is a great big Evil, with a capital “E,” common to all three nations: weapons of mass destruction. Each of these countries is building weapons that, were they to fall into the hands of terrorists or hostile regimes, would threaten...
...proud of what it had done in this tiny hamlet tucked among orchards and snowcapped ridges north of Kandahar. In what appeared to be a perfect sneak attack, U.S. special-operations soldiers on Jan. 24 stormed Sharzam High School in Uruzgan. That same night, another unit conducted a similar commando raid at a military compound a mile away. In all, the soldiers killed 21 Afghans, who the U.S. claimed were Taliban, captured an additional 27 and destroyed troves of weapons and ammunition. All that, and only one U.S. soldier was hurt--and just barely. It was the most dramatic ground...
...every year of the past decade, hundreds of young militants who have undergone intensive commando training and countless hours of indoctrination by jihadi groups have been picked up in unmarked vehicles from towns around Pakistan-administered Kashmir and ferried to the border. There, after they have had a day or two of rest, military officers have briefed them, handed them rifles, explosives and wads of Indian currency, and introduced them to guides like Ilyas, who lead them to probable death...
...Pentagon, military strategists are mulling the possibility that the Afghan battle will be a template for a revolution in warfare against rogue nations. In the future, precision air attacks and bombs much smarter than the ones dropped during Desert Storm will be guided to their targets by small commando contingents on the ground. The air-commando force will destroy strategic centers of gravity with few U.S. casualties. There won't be a need for so many conventional Army divisions, particularly the heavy ones with tanks that take forever to get to foreign battlefields. The Army, as you can guess...
...psywar schemes have worked. During the 1993 intervention in Somalia, a leaflet urging support for peacekeepers mistranslated "United Nations" so Somalis thought it said "Slave Nations." A Pentagon study concluded that Commando Solo's broadcasts during NATO's 1999 air war over Kosovo were largely ineffective. In Desert Storm, psyops soldiers held focus groups among Iraqi POWs to determine what messages resonated. Afghanistan is still too unsettled for the 4th Group to survey prisoners or civilians on whether they've been swayed by the pitch. "I think we're making a difference," says Treadwell. The proof will...