Yesterday’s New york Times has a very interesting article on the role of Special Forces in the war. According to some estimates, there are about 10,000 Special Ops troops in Iraq, more than in any other conflict. And in many ways their actions, which are unseen and unnoticed by the public, have probably done more to prevent the doomsday scenarios than anything else.
According to the article, they have destroyed command and control facilities for deploying weapons of mass destruction, they have hunted down Ba’ath Party leaders and other regime officials, saved the oil wells from destruction, prevented an environmental disaster in the Gulf by keeping an oil terminal from exploding, found and neutralized the Scuds in the western desert, and more. Consider that last one. In Gulf War I, we had a hard time tracking down and stopping the Scud launchers, but this time we prevented a single launch at Israel or Jordan. The Special Ops warriors probably spent the last decade figuring out how to do just that.
Read the article. It’s very good.
