{"article":{"id":12747,"heading":"Escape and Evasion: What really happened to US Special Forces in Afghanistan","author":"Seymour M Hersh","created":"2001-11-08 08:41:47","modified":"2005-08-15 00:42:57","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:42:57","article":"

ESCAPE AND EVASION

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

What happened when the Special Forces landed in Afghanistan?

Early on the morning of Saturday, October 20th, more than a hundred Army Rangers parachuted into a Taliban-held airbase sixty miles southwest of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. A military cameraman videotaped the action with the aid of a night-vision lens, and his grainy, green-tinted footage of determined commandos and billowing parachutes dominated the television news that night. The same morning, a second Special Operations unit, made up largely of Rangers and a reinforced Delta Force squadron, struck at a complex outside Kandahar which included a house used by Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.

In a Pentagon briefing later that day, General Richard B. Myers, of the Air Force, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported that the Special Operations Forces \"were able to deploy, maneuver, and operate inside Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces.\" He stated that the soldiers did meet resistance at both sites, but overcame it. \"I guess you could characterize it as light,\" he said. \"For those experiencing it, of course, it was probably not light.\" He concluded, \"The mission over all was successful. We accomplished our objectives.\"

Myers also told reporters that the commandos were \"refitting and repositioning for potential future operations against terrorist targets\" in Afghanistan. But at a second briefing, two days later, he refused to say whether commando operations would continue. \"Some things are going to be visible, some invisible,\" he said.

Myers did not tell the press that, in the wake of a near-disaster during the assault on Mullah Omar's complex, the Pentagon was rethinking future Special Forces operations inside Afghanistan. Delta Force, which prides itself on stealth, had been counterattacked by the Taliban, and some of the Americans had had to fight their way to safety. Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously.















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\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"From the legendary war correspondent... After General Myers dismissed this report (surprise, surprise), I saw Hersh on TV saying he expected as much and so did the military officers involved in the mission, which is exactly why they came to him with this information.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/11\/escape_and.txt","filesize":"11.9 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/11\/12747.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":12755,"heading":"Brass Have To Learn","article":"What this tells me is the same thing that was said earlier. The senior officers have no experience fighting this type of war. They must learn. In the meantime, I suggest they say what they want. Let the people doing it tell them how they're going to do it. Without that experience, we're looking at avoidable tragedies.","author":"GFAFBLIFR","parent_id":12747,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-11-08 23:06:25","modified":"2001-11-08 23:34:00","fileurl":""}]}