Special Operations

Fully-Loaded Magazine

TIME published its report on Osama bin Laden’s death three days after it happened. It has taken bin Laden’s allies nearly three months. The latest issue of Inspire, the English-language jihadist magazine allegedly published by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, hails his sacrifice:

While we lament the loss of a great leader, we also

What? They Don’t Like the MREs?

Our friends over at Danger Room have posted an item about the U.S. Special Operations Command’s search for someone to turn U.S. troops into Afghan cooks. But not just any kind of Afghan cooks. As the contract solicitation explains:

This training shall encompass instruction on; Slaughter techniques, cultural diversity, equipment

Inside the Battle for Kandahar

Army Major Rusty Bradley was commanding a Special Forces unit in Afghanistan that served as Taliban bait during 2006’s Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in NATO’s history. In his new book, Lions of Kandahar (co-written with journalist Kevin Maurer), Bradley takes the reader into battle. His goal: a patch of high ground called …

Droning On To a New Way of War

So the U.S. government — if not the military, then the CIA — is now using drones to kill suspected terrorists in at least six different countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Congress — the entity charged with declaring war, according to the Constitution — has basically green-lighted only the attacks …

A New Chinese Threat

Some crazies are going to have fun with this:

LOS ANGELES — An El Monte, Calif., man was sentenced to three years in state prison Wednesday in connection with a scheme to recruit 200 Chinese nationals and charge them for joining a phony Army Special Forces unit that he led as “supreme commander,” Los Angeles County prosecutors …

Cousin Itt Joins Special Forces




This pair of special-forces snipers from the Dominican army readies for an event at last week’s Fuerzas Comando 2011 near San Salvador at Shangallo Range in Ilopango, El Salvador. Fuerzas Comando, established in 2004, is an annual U.S. Southern Command-sponsored, special-operations skills competition and leader seminar among the …

Haunted by Homicide: Federal Grand Jury Investigates War Crimes and Torture in Death of ‘the Iceman’ at Abu Ghraib, Plus Other Alleged CIA Abuses

Former colleague and TIME contributor Adam Zagorin breaks news here on Battleland with exclusive reporting on the latest federal action over the infamous death of “the Iceman” at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003:

By Adam Zagorin

It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for …

The Gearbox

The U.S. military is the world’s pre-eminent military force — by far — and most of that is because of its people and the way they train and led. But they’re none to shabby on the hardware side of the house, either. I just cobbled together a menu of the weapons systems used in recent U.S. military actions for Time.com and it has …

Why Businesses Lack a SEAL Team 6

Contrary to Stan McChrystal’s SEAL-hiring spree, there aren’t many businesses run like the famed special-forces team that killed Osama bin Laden last month. This piece from the Harvard Business Review explains why. “Most organizations can’t grow the professionalism of elite special forces units because they are constantly shifting …

Booted Army Gen. Stan McChrystal Has Lessons to Teach

Rolling Stoned and former Army General Stan McChrystal is now leading the McChrystal Group, and has replaced defeating the Taliban with a new assignment: “McChrystal Group’s mission is to bring world-class leadership solutions to public and private organizations to help them solve problems, manage risk and be more effective,” …

Why So Few Medals of Honor?

The White House has announced that President Obama will award Sergeant First Class Leroy Arthur Petry the Medal of Honor on July 12th. SFC Petry, a Ranger, lost a hand and received other significant wounds during a firefight in Afghanistan during which he tried to throw a hand grenade back at the enemy. (See my colleague Mark Thompson’s …

The TV-Terrorism-Lawmaker Industrial Complex

OK…so the House Homeland Security Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday morning on “Threats to the American Homeland after Killing Bin Laden: An Assessment.” The list of those testifying includes Peter Bergen, identified in the witness list as a “CNN terrorism analyst;” Evan F. Kohlmann, ID’d as an “MSNBC terrorism analyst;” and …

Loose Lips

When I read through the Washington Post yesterday, I stumbled across this Greg Jaffe article highlighting an odd bit of irony that just might get people killed. Jaffe’s article (which you really should read) notes that SecDef Gates and JCS Chief Mullen are trying to get the rest of the world to refrain from discussing facts, and from …

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