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seal team deaths 8/06/11

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Wade

FeralNormal master
Re seal team 6

probably a tragic situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time BUT...

i guess molecular biologists and nuclear scientists aren't the only ones that should worry about traveling in groups. it may turn out to be yet another puzzle attached to the osama bin-laden assassination. crackpot theory? sure, but then there are people who thought the whole pat tillman story smelled a little rotten i suppose they were crackpots up to a certain point
 
In some periods the knight on his horse, the cavalryman in his tank, the SEAL in his helicopter are invulnerable. But we now are in a time when a peasant with a bow, a guerrilla with a bomb, or an insurgent with a rocket has the upper hand. No big mystery.
 
Well i agree in a war zone that death can come from anywhere but when the obl thing went down in the immediate aftermath i kept reading about how specialized the seal teams were. I.E. extraction team recon team assassination team etc. That team 6 was especially picked not to extract bin laden but to take him out so unless these guys were just thumbing a ride or they were about to take another guy (a possibility) then maybe it wasn't just another unfortunate incident. I was just about to post the above when i spotted this in a news brief "No member of the Bin Laden raid team was among the dead, "So i guess nothing to see here folks
 
yup, they had to take out the rest of the team because they were about to talk.
 
There are several questions that seem to be hanging in the air.

Why so many in that helicopter?
Why were Navy Seals on a National Guard helicopter instead of a Navy helicopter?
Do they normally send in one special op team to rescue or assist another special op team?
How come we heard about this so quickly? Are special ops suddenly not so secret anymore?
 
I personally believed President Karzai and his loyal band of tribal penny boys , along with other pissed out freedom fighters got information on seal team 6's movements in afganistan from the CIA and whacked them.

RIP
 
No, but seriously. Since when do special operations get immediate press release? I'm not putting on my conspiracy hat or anything (actually its more of shroud) I'm just wondering since when do deaths in special operations teams get such immediate and spectacular press coverage? Aren't they supposed to be on the down low?
 
No , the media does report on other casualties from different US or Coalition forces units. What the media has jumped on is their a new type of weapons in use and who supplying the A-Pak Taliban, Lashka E Tobai etc them which is stating blood O^&((((). Media did the same in reporting in other conflicts for example mass excution of special forces in WW2 , members of some Hawkeye teams in Nam mind you it was awhile after but now in Afganistan its modern media and eyewitness with direct access to main stream media and properganda from the Taliban etc. History repeating. War is horrible but you rather have the shit in your street?
 
War is horrible but you rather have the shit in your street?

I don't want it on any street. I don't think there is any real valid reason for Americans (or anyone else for that matter) to be dying in foreign wars right now. None whatsoever. The whole "we have to fight 'em over there so we don't fight 'em over here" argument doesn't work. Getting entangled in the tribal wars in foreign countries doesn't help us now, never has, and never will. We wouldn't tolerate such interference by a foreign power. I'm of the old school of thought that if a country attacks you, you blow the hell out of it and go back home. In my perfect world there would be several large glassy areas in the Middle East where the governments of countries harboring terrorists used to be. Admittedly, there are complications to that, but I'd be damned if we'd be sending billions to Pakistan while they harbor the head jackass we'd been looking for all these years. I'd have the damn ETs coming out of the woodwork shutting down nukes. Luckily, cooler heads prevail.
 
I'll put my conspiracy hat on for the whole damn thing ... all the way from they got Osama and buried him at sea so nobody gets to examine the body, to the faked deaths of the seal team that never actually got him ... either that or the assasination of the seal tem that pretended to get him for the media and has now been silenced ... or whatever ... the whole damned thing has a bad smell.

j.r.
 
There are several questions that seem to be hanging in the air.

Why so many in that helicopter?
Why were Navy Seals on a National Guard helicopter instead of a Navy helicopter?
Do they normally send in one special op team to rescue or assist another special op team?
How come we heard about this so quickly? Are special ops suddenly not so secret anymore?

From what I've read is that Army helicopters are generally used for special ops. Chinook is supposedly the fastest helicopter with the largest cargo capacity for this type of operation. However it is a major mistake to put all eggs in one basket and from what I understand this is rarely if ever done. I don't know if somebody at the top running this operation had majorly fucked up or they just didn't have any other support aircraft available (which I highly doubt), we'll never know.

Something smells afoul here. I have an inkling that the Taliban knew they were coming from some inside sources in the Afghan government and they positioned themselves to shoot it down. Pure speculation, but I think it's a valid one since they recently boasted that the Afghan government ( as corrupt as it is) was penetrated by Taliban - we'll never know.

Anyway, God Bless the SEALS and all those perished fighting this war.
 
I won't make any political comments about the war. I will say that each and every Airman, Sailor, Soldier, and Marine take a little bit of me with them. I am grateful to them for what they do. I feel profound loss when any of them falls. Whether or not I support the decisions that take them into combat, I will always support them fully.

Thank you for your sacrifices.
 
No, but seriously. Since when do special operations get immediate press release? I'm not putting on my conspiracy hat or anything (actually its more of shroud) I'm just wondering since when do deaths in special operations teams get such immediate and spectacular press coverage? Aren't they supposed to be on the down low?

Also, how did the illiterate peasants (also known as the Taliban) know the whereabouts of this chopper...that was carrying some of the most elite U.S. soldiers in history. The fact that they were able to shoot this chopper down is in itself shocking.
 
Also, how did the illiterate peasants (also known as the Taliban) know the whereabouts of this chopper...that was carrying some of the most elite U.S. soldiers in history. The fact that they were able to shoot this chopper down is in itself shocking.

You're making two assumptions here that fall into the category of underestimating of one's enemy. 1) the taliban are illiterate and 2) the taliban are peasants.

Intell is easy to get for a guerrilla force fighting a war of occupation. An overheard conversation at work, watching a few helicopters fly over one's field early in the morning.... Little snippets of information are ALWAYS being gathered, collated, interpreted and reported by enemies. (Heck when I was in the Phillipinnes the bar-girls knew more about where I was going than I did.) All it takes is a friend that works near the base, a cousin that cleans the general's house, or a well placed ear. Information gets out and is analyzed and reported to commanders. Thus at least some of the taliban are most definitely NOT illiterate.

As far as peasants go, guerrilla warfare thrives on frugality. Look at what a well placed hole filled with sharpened bamboo did to our troops in Vietnam. (Thank you to all who served in that hell.) IEDs aren't expensive and they do a damned good job at putting holes in our troops and taking them out. A war of occupation is often fought on the cheap...and very effectively. But there is money involved, otherwise there would be very little or no small arms ammunition, small arms, mortars, gasoline, or a myriad of communications devises.

As far as destroying a lightly armored helicopter? Revisit the history of the Taliban. They were trained how to take out heavy attack choppers: Russian Hinds and such- by some of the best military advisors that the Pentagon could assemble during the Reagan years. Taking out a transport helicopter is a great deal easier...especially when it's not firing back at you.

Just a few thoughts here.
 
You're making two assumptions here that fall into the category of underestimating of one's enemy. 1) the taliban are illiterate and 2) the taliban are peasants.

Intell is easy to get for a guerrilla force fighting a war of occupation. An overheard conversation at work, watching a few helicopters fly over one's field early in the morning.... Little snippets of information are ALWAYS being gathered, collated, interpreted and reported by enemies. (Heck when I was in the Phillipinnes the bar-girls knew more about where I was going than I did.) All it takes is a friend that works near the base, a cousin that cleans the general's house, or a well placed ear. Information gets out and is analyzed and reported to commanders. Thus at least some of the taliban are most definitely NOT illiterate.

As far as peasants go, guerrilla warfare thrives on frugality. Look at what a well placed hole filled with sharpened bamboo did to our troops in Vietnam. (Thank you to all who served in that hell.) IEDs aren't expensive and they do a damned good job at putting holes in our troops and taking them out. A war of occupation is often fought on the cheap...and very effectively. But there is money involved, otherwise there would be very little or no small arms ammunition, small arms, mortars, gasoline, or a myriad of communications devises.

As far as destroying a lightly armored helicopter? Revisit the history of the Taliban. They were trained how to take out heavy attack choppers: Russian Hinds and such- by some of the best military advisors that the Pentagon could assemble during the Reagan years. Taking out a transport helicopter is a great deal easier...especially when it's not firing back at you.

Just a few thoughts here.

I agree and don't intend my statement to sound as if I know exactly how everything transpired. However, there is a good chance they were poor low class citizens and/or illiterate whether they are from Afghanistan or another Islamic country. This is how some these young middle eastern men are taken advantage of when they are recruited by Al Queda and other terrorist organizations. So, I was basing my assumptions on that fact which certainly doesn't have to be the case (as you pointed out). The rich sheiks recruit poor lower class men who essentially have no future and these terrorist "commanders" are commonly educated.

I have to think it is harder to shoot down a chopper full of seals than it is to take down a chopper full of national guard troops. Maybe this is because I have no familiarity with military operations, but it just seems illogical to me that these seals were shot down right after the portions of their group took out Bin Laden by veterans of the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan (aren't most of them dead by now?). It could certainly be coincidence and good independent intel by the Taliban, but I am wondering if there was some help from the Afghan army, government, or Pakistani intelligence (which wouldn't surprise anyone at this point).

P.S. has anyone read Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars"? It is a fascinating historical narrative of CIA involvement in Afghanistan from our initial involvement in the Soviet area to the present day. However, I'm afraid there is nothing paranormal about it.
 
I agree and don't intend my statement to sound as if I know exactly how everything transpired. However, there is a good chance they were poor low class citizens and/or illiterate whether they are from Afghanistan or another Islamic country. This is how some these young middle eastern men are taken advantage of when they are recruited by Al Queda and other terrorist organizations. So, I was basing my assumptions on that fact which certainly doesn't have to be the case (as you pointed out). The rich sheiks recruit poor lower class men who essentially have no future and these terrorist "commanders" are commonly educated.

I have to think it is harder to shoot down a chopper full of seals than it is to take down a chopper full of national guard troops. Maybe this is because I have no familiarity with military operations, but it just seems illogical to me that these seals were shot down right after the portions of their group took out Bin Laden by veterans of the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan (aren't most of them dead by now?). It could certainly be coincidence and good independent intel by the Taliban, but I am wondering if there was some help from the Afghan army, government, or Pakistani intelligence (which wouldn't surprise anyone at this point).

P.S. has anyone read Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars"? It is a fascinating historical narrative of CIA involvement in Afghanistan from our initial involvement in the Soviet area to the present day. However, I'm afraid there is nothing paranormal about it.

I wonder why our "enemy" is not using their trusty box cutters anymore... they are pretty effective in crippling and confusing our Air Force and Pentagon.
 
Your record is skipping dude.

yup i am well aware of that. other people here do not seem to realize how damn dangerous those are to our national security and how beneficial they could be to our armed forces. i am thinking a carbon fiber handled, ceramic bladed box cutter could be the weapon of the future. we have the technology right now to implement such incredible weaponry.
 
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