Mr. Trump’s claim that he delivered a prescient warning about Bin Laden is hyperbolic. His book, “The America We Deserve,” which was published in January 2000, contains one reference to Bin Laden in 304 pages:
“One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the U.N. inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis."
Mr. Trump continued:
"Dealing with many different countries at once may require many different strategies. But there isn’t any excuse for the haphazard nature of our foreign policy. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every new conflict.” This fleeting mention of Bin Laden was not exactly ahead of its time.
Figures. His lips moved, and he was not reading from a script: he was lying.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
MeDotOrg wrote:Very proud of those who planned and executed the operation, and ashamed of our President's ill-considered narcissistic gloating.
I suspect that is a majority reaction in the US today.
It was a good intelligence job, followed through by the efficient application of sufficient force to achieve the objective with minimum loss. Money well spent.
(Sorry about the dog, though.)
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
I think it could be helpful to, perhaps, understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of a special operations assault. I'll try to capture some of my perspective on the issue, but only because it's just unknowable and incomprehensible if someone doesn't have exposure to this particular reality.
So, it’s going to be in the middle of the night. If you're the target of a mission it's likely you have some inkling of what's coming your way. It's very, very rarely a complete surprise to anyone who's actively trying to avoid being killed or captured in a combat zone because chatter goes both ways. There are so, many, leaks. It's probably chilly in Syria right now during the evenings, and if you're al-Baghdadi's security you're wearing some form of jeans, boots, a jacket, gloves, and you're very, very nervous and cold. You're acutely aware you have no protection and your weapon is essentially useless. Word has gotten back to you that the Americans are prepping for something big. Everyone is basically on edge and scared. This is serious and you're not sure when if this time the chatter is going to be true and the dread that's in your heart will manifest. For some reason, tonight you're scared. Something feels very real this time.
Most likely you're standing there alone on a rampart, in a courtyard, or some part of some building in a compound. The cold has penetrated your pants, shoes, gloves, and face. You're stiff, and you wonder if an assault happens how you'll react since you can barely move right now. All you can think of are the stories of the the quick, violent action which has to happen. For whatever reason your leadership has gone silent. They're inside one of the buildings and no one is talking. This is not good. The other men have taken up their positions, they all talk about what they're going to do with the Americans arrive, and you can just see it, they're all swallowing their fear. They do pray, though. What else do you do when all you hear is your own breathing, your feet shuffling around on the ground, and your own heartbeat throbbing away in your ears?
And then after about an hour of standing there by yourself, freezing and alone, you hear it. It’s a distant thpt-thpt-thpt-thpt of the little bird’s rotary blades. Your heart jumps into your throat, all the men start chattering at each other, and you double check your gear. Some of your guys make their way inside to let their leadership know it's going down, and to figure out what to do with the families.
You might see dozens of ground vehicles arrive and cut off egress points. And then if you're outside along the perimeter or in the courtyard you get hit with all sorts of crap. In fact, you don't even hear it coming. It just hits you and everything turns to death, heat, chaos, and noise. Holy “F” the noise. If for some reason you make it through the 'softening' you're deaf, disoriented, probably concussed, and beyond scared.
And then a few minutes later the little birds arrive. They'll probably have multiple entry points; in the courtyard, on the target's building, it just depends. The Rangers have primary responsibility to secure the assault area. Nothing, and I mean nothing is getting in or out. It's impossible. They kill anything approaching the site if their terps can't intervene first (say civilians are idiotic enough to make their way to the site).
Anyway, so you're a dude on the inside. You literally watch the little birds approach. At this point you sack up, knock out a window pane or take up a firing position, and then you just shoot at the operators while they’re in mid-air, or shoot at the courtyard, or maybe there's someone breaching your doors or gate, so you empty a magazine. It doesn’t matter anyway, a couple of operators return fire hitting your weapon and hands. It’s remarkable to see those men mark an enemy, you in this case, and target your weapon while moving in the air, and actually land rounds on it and your hands. This is of little consolation since each round that makes contact with you feels unlike anything you could ever comprehend. Cold fingers explode or your weapon is knocked out of your hands. If they didn't shoot you or just got your hands and arms you move further inside the building. The inevitable has begun. This is it. You know you're not getting out of this alive. How do you make peace with that when every ounce of your soul is drowning in terror? I don't think you do. I think fear consumes you until you're found and shot dead.
So, you link up with someone who has a weapon. He can't give you aid, and you're in shock anyway. The first thing you hear once the operators dismount is a bit of chattering, then silence, and then a loud bang as they blow the doors off the entrance to the building. Your shaking is uncontrollable at this point. You can't even damned pass out.
And then it starts.
You hear them clearing each room. It’s pretty methodical as they take up a position, throw in a concussion grenade (it’s called a 9-banger since it’s designed to explode nine times; think of cherry bombs and a metal device that flies around the room as it explodes, it’s akin to taking a hard punch when one of those makes contact with you. I caught one on the chin once during a training exercise and if I hadn’t been wearing a mask I think it would’ve broke my jaw), they then release their dogs, and then clear the room. You hear yelling and someone is there the dog already got to him. They then shoot anyone who is armed or doesn't comply. But that’s not really the end of it. Not only does the enemy combatant gets shot multiple times, after having been concussed and pounced then upon by a dog, they’re subsequently dispatched by the operators. This means getting punching, or violently manhandled, slammed to the ground with knees to the neck, back, legs, sometimes the groin, and then cuffed. They'll most likely bleed out if a medic is right there to triage them, but then again the medic isn't really there for them, he's there for the operators until crap calms down.
The operators move to the next room, and then the next, and then the next.
This is what you’re waiting for as you hear them clear room after room. It’s absolutely terrifying when they make their way up the stairwell to your position, removing all the debris you placed there to slow their progress down, hearing them cuss angrily as one of your booby-trapped grenades go off, or the rounds your buddy fires their way, and they begin to clear your building.
And then it’s your turn.
It’s frankly a bizarre mix of heightened senses, a feeling of complete and utter helplessness, and then you just give up because you're wounded. It’s lightning quick, violent, and defeating in a way that is hard to describe. You feel utterly helpless and just dehumanized. Your buddy is shot dead, and if you weren't shot for whatever reason you quickly find yourself there on the ground, face down, breathing in the dust, sweating and in pain, thinking of your family who is probably far away, in a warm bed, asleep, and safe.
And that's just beginning of a long, long, long time in custody getting interrogated over, and over, and over again. Perhaps some day you can make your way home, wounded, crippled, but alive. Maybe you become a minor celebrity in jihadi circles, or maybe you just go home broken. I dunno. But if you lived through that it's a damned miracle because they weren't coming for you. Al-Baghdadi had the right idea. Much better to blow yourself up than to disappear forever.
- Doc
Last edited by Guest on Mon Oct 28, 2019 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
This very well written account clearly sets out the reasons why it is extremely unpleasant to be part of a weak defending group subjected to an attack by overwhelmingly superior forces.
The experience described is one which has been shared by soldiers of pretty well every nationality (including Americans) at various times and and in various places.
***** Some civilians who have never been in combat, and never will, relish reading such accounts, and perhaps imagine themselves taking part (on the winning side, of course), despite the fact that their lack of training and experience makes it pretty well impossible for them to enter into the thoughts and feelings of those who actually execute the operation, however clearly it is described. Mostly, I suspect, they just replay in their head some scenes from old Rambo movies with themselves in a lead role.
Some don't relish reading such accounts, despite the fact that they are pleased that the operation was carried out successfully. Their reasons for that are various. One reason may be that they have learned that the empty fantasies of legitimated violence that can follow from such reading without the context of experienced reality may affect the way they react in more banal life situations. Another may be that they are aware that the group that reads such accounts repeatedly and with excited relish includes people whose company they would not wish to share, such as Cadet Bone Spurs himself.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Yeah, the perspective we end up having regarding military action, whether you're a state actor or non-state actor is interesting because it begins with indoctrination, is supplemented through marketing, and firmed up through zeitgeist. When men and women find themselves on one side or the other it's really just a long series of phenomenon that brought them there. The parallels between the two sides are uncanny, and it really just boils down to the will of the people that determines who owns the space and then how long you keep it.
As far as the action itself goes, most people (again through no fault of their own) don't really understand just how long it takes to get someone into that space. The years, both pre-military and in-service, it takes to select, train, select again, and then train again people who have the mental, emotional, and physical bones to be a part of an assault is astounding. I can tell you this much. It's not fun. It's not romantic in the Hollywood sense. It's not cool. There's nothing glorious about it. It's work, repetition, methodical, uncomfortable, and for the most part deliberately obscured. It's a necessary extension of politics, I suppose. The history of humanity is warfare unfortunately, and if your tribe is going to impose its will it's the sad reality you need men who've been indoctrinated throughout their lives willing to play the part of soldier.
Whatever the case may be, this is why it's so important to have competent people in the executive roles of government. The thoughtful person can see that one political decision leads to another which inevitably leads to military action if the decisions weren't carefully considered. One iteration of a government can have lasting effects that other iterations must then confront, which lead them to make decisions which continues a cycle of diplomacy and violence. Al-Baghdadi wasn't just the third order effect of the Iraq war. He was the result of decisions made decades before him, and then those decisions were the result of decisions made in generations past.
I get that your average citizen can't and shouldn't be expected to have their finger on the history of every region, but this is why it's so astounding to me that there are so many people who are willing to gut our government institutions. They're necessary to avoid or minimize our own nature through engagement and problem solving. Failure to do so will just result in catastrophic warfare rather than low-level military action. It's just unfortunate the ease with which we fanboy military actions. It seems to be the default setting, a setting that's the result of an impossible task for your average citizen - to untangle the complex and thick context that took place prior to that action.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: [warfare is] a necessary extension of politics, I suppose. [...] it's the sad reality you need men who've been indoctrinated throughout their lives willing to play the part of soldier.
[...]
... it's so important to have competent people in the executive roles of government. The thoughtful person can see that one political decision leads to another which inevitably leads to military action if the decisions weren't carefully considered.
I doubt whether any sane poster on this board will disagree either of with those two key statements. The first one hopes might in some distant future become less true than it currently is. The second is an enduring fact about all complex human societies.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Footage of the US special forces raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian compound reportedly consisted of overhead surveillance footage and no audio, prompting questions over the extent of the dramatic licence taken by Donald Trump in describing the final moments of one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
US officials who also watched the feed have declined to echo details of Trump’s macabre account of the Isis’s leader death on Saturday, including that Baghdadi was “whimpering, crying and screaming all the way”.
Revelling in a major national security accomplishment in his press conference on Sunday morning, Trump said Baghdadi, 48, had “spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread” as a US military dog pursued him and three of his children down a dead-end tunnel.
Cornered, Baghdadi detonated his suicide vest, killing himself, his children and injuring the “beautiful” and “talented” dog, Trump said.
The White House monitored the Syria operation through video feeds that Trump said was “as though you were watching a movie”.
The footage piped into the situation room would have consisted of overhead surveillance shots of the dark compound with heat signatures differentiating between US fighters and others, intelligence and military officials told the New York Times.
Those cameras would not have been able to peer into the tunnel where Baghdadi died, nor provide audio proof of his conduct during the last minutes of his life.
The soldiers involved would have been wearing body cameras, but that footage was yet to be given to the White House at the time of Trump’s press conference, the Times report said.
The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, declined to endorse aspects of Trump’s cinematic account in an interview with ABC’s This Week programme on Sunday morning.
“I don’t have those details,” Esper said, when pressed on how Trump knew Baghdadi had whimpered and cried. “The president probably had the opportunity to talk to commanders on the ground.”
So maybe the Cadet simply deduced the “ in utter fear, in total panic and dread ... whimpering, crying and screaming all the way” stuff from how he knows that he would have behaved himself, if he was trapped in a situation from which he could not escape?
Figures. Or perhaps the dog was so 'talented' that it was able to report directly to the President on what it heard as it chased al-Baghdadi down the tunnel?
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Chap wrote:Or perhaps the dog was so 'talented' that it was able to report directly to the President on what it heard as it chased al-Baghdadi down the tunnel?
It’s being reported the dog is fine and has returned to duty. That’s oddly a relief for some reason. :)
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Yeah, the perspective we end up having regarding military action, whether you're a state actor or non-state actor is interesting because it begins with indoctrination, is supplemented through marketing, and firmed up through zeitgeist. When men and women find themselves on one side or the other it's really just a long series of phenomenon that brought them there. The parallels between the two sides are uncanny, and it really just boils down to the will of the people that determines who owns the space and then how long you keep it.
As far as the action itself goes, most people (again through no fault of their own) don't really understand just how long it takes to get someone into that space. The years, both pre-military and in-service, it takes to select, train, select again, and then train again people who have the mental, emotional, and physical bones to be a part of an assault is astounding. I can tell you this much. It's not fun. It's not romantic in the Hollywood sense. It's not cool. There's nothing glorious about it. It's work, repetition, methodical, uncomfortable, and for the most part deliberately obscured. It's a necessary extension of politics, I suppose. The history of humanity is warfare unfortunately, and if your tribe is going to impose its will it's the sad reality you need men who've been indoctrinated throughout their lives willing to play the part of soldier.
Whatever the case may be, this is why it's so important to have competent people in the executive roles of government. The thoughtful person can see that one political decision leads to another which inevitably leads to military action if the decisions weren't carefully considered. One iteration of a government can have lasting effects that other iterations must then confront, which lead them to make decisions which continues a cycle of diplomacy and violence. Al-Baghdadi wasn't just the third order effect of the Iraq war. He was the result of decisions made decades before him, and then those decisions were the result of decisions made in generations past.
I get that your average citizen can't and shouldn't be expected to have their finger on the history of every region, but this is why it's so astounding to me that there are so many people who are willing to gut our government institutions. They're necessary to avoid or minimize our own nature through engagement and problem solving. Failure to do so will just result in catastrophic warfare rather than low-level military action. It's just unfortunate the ease with which we fanboy military actions. It seems to be the default setting, a setting that's the result of an impossible task for your average citizen - to untangle the complex and thick context that took place prior to that action.
