Word: commando
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...soon flutter over Afghanistan, wishing villagers below a happy end to Ramadan "from the people of America." Near the print plant, a giant satellite dish beams a radio program with anti-Taliban messages to an air base in Oman, where crewmen rush a compact disk of the program to Commando Solo, a converted Air Force EC-130 plane packed with broadcasting gear. Commando Solo flies over Afghanistan, blanketing the country with the radio show for ten hours...
...truth can be used selectively. To get Iraqi soldiers to listen to its program during the 1991 Desert Storm War, Commando Solo broadcast the targets U.S. warplanes would strike each day. To win its market share in Afghanistan, bombers knocked out Radio Sharia, the Taliban station, and Commando Solo began broadcasting on a frequency near Sharia's. The CIA sent in radios for villages and Commando Solo played popular Afghan music the Taliban had banned from the airwaves...
...eclectic organization like no other in the U.S. Army, made up of 1,200 special ops soldiers, academics, linguists and marketing experts, whose weapons are words and images. Since the U.S. bombing began Oct. 7, Air Force planes have dumped 18 million of the psywarriors' leaflets on Afghanistan, and Commando Solo has broadcast more than 800 hours of their radio shows...
...Psywarriors have found that "the truth is the best propaganda," says Col. James Treadwell, the 4th Group's commander. Otherwise, "you lose credibility," he explains, and the audience tunes out. Leaflets have explained how to use relief food packets and warned civilians to stay away from combat zones. Commando Solo's broadcasts mix world news stories with sales pitches. A recent show, for example, reported on United Nations efforts to organize Taliban opposition groups and ended with the plea: "this must happen for there to finally be peace in Afghanistan...
...last week?as rebel forces seized control of at least two-thirds of the country from the Taliban?made bin Laden's demise seem imminent, even if the Pentagon could not say precisely where he was. With Taliban forces ditching their guns and switching sides by the thousands, American commandos spent last week picking up bin Laden's scent?and nudging the six-week conflict toward a decisive climax. The Taliban faced devastation in its southern strongholds, and that shrank bin Laden's theater of operation. Pashtun operatives showered Western and Pakistani intelligence agents with information about bin Laden...