Fifth Group Special Forces Pulled From Afghanistan to Fight Iraq War

[dahunan]

The fact that the Pentagon pulled the fighting force most equipped for hunting down Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan in March 2002 in order to pre- position it for Iraq cannot be denied.

Fifth Group Special Forces were a rare breed in the US military: they spoke Arabic, Pastun and Dari. They had been in Afghanistan for half a year, had developed a network of local sources and alliances, and believed that they were closing in on bin Laden.

Without warning, they were then given the task of tracking down Saddam. "We were going nuts on the ground about that decision," one of them recalls.

"In spite of the fact that it had taken five months to establish trust, suddenly there were two days to hand over to people who spoke no Dari, Pastun or Arabic, and had no rapport."

Along with the redeployment of human assets came a reallocation of sophisticated hardware. The US air force has only two specially-equipped RC135 U spy planes. They had successfully vectored in on al-Qaida leadership radio transmissions and cellphone calls, but they would no longer circle over the mountains of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

The Bush White House has banked on all who were privy to these details keeping the code of silence. But too many people outside the White House sphere of influence are too well informed, be they commandos on the ground or career civil servants at the state department and CIA.

Some have come forward, risking the ire of the Bushies. Many more are considering it, weighing their conscience alongside their sense of self-preservation. Several who are talking are doing so on the condition of anonymity.
Iraq was a distraction in the war against terror.

 

[Buttzilla]

great story man

 

[JackStorm]

This is just one of many examples of how resources that could have been used in Afganistan was wasted in Iraq. No big surprice there.

 

[glenn1]

Fifth Group Special Forces Pulled From Afghanistan to Fight Iraq War

I used to serve in 5th Group. And this is IMHO an oversimplification of how things probably took place. Let's go over how 5th Group is structured to explain. 5th Group is a brigade sized unit, organized into three batallions each with a geographic emphasis. Taken as a whole, 5th Group is meant to cover North Africa, the Horn of Africa, SW Asia (all of the "classic" Middle East less Israel, which is covered by 10th Group), the 'Stans (the central Asian former Soviet Republics whose names ended in -stan, e.g. Tajikistan), and South Asia west of India. However, that does not mean that every single part of 5th Group is an expert on all of those regions. No, it's even more specialized than that, so let's break it down further.

5th Group consists of three battalions, and each battalion of three companies. Each company typically consists of six or seven ODA teams (Operational Detatchment - Alpha) who are the shooters/operators, and one ODB (Operational Detatchment - Bravo) which is basically HQ for the company and where the CO (company call sign "actual") normally is. The group has about 60 organic ODA's, of which 40-45 or so would normally be deployable at any given time.

Individually, 1st batallion's primary AOR covers North Africa and the Horn. 2nd (my old batallion) has responsibility for the "classic" Middle East and assists with the Horn and the 'Stans on an ad hoc basis, and 3rd has primary coverage for everything east of Iraq and the 'Stans. This alignment is complimented by the language training and TOE, which are tailored for each batallion (3rd gets the Pashtun and Urdu linguists, 2nd gets the Syrian dialect Arabic speakers, 1st gets Coptic speakers, etc).

So to say that 5th Group got pulled out of Afghanistan is probably not correct. Most likely, certain ODA's were likely redeployed to the Iraqi theater. As I stated, the important part is whether the ODA's with organic Urdu, etc. speakers were the ones redeployed. If you had an attached team from another batallion in theater that was comprised of Arabic speakers, they would not have been as effective a force as an organic ODA team from 3rd who did speak Pashtun. Basically, one would have to know which ODA(s) got redeployed to know if it was a misuse of assets or not.

 

[etech]

Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

 

[SuperTool]

Originally posted by: etech
Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

It says so in the story.

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: SuperTool

Originally posted by: etech
Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

It says so in the story.

Why yes, yes it does. Strike one.

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

 

[burnedout]

Originally posted by: etech

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

Careful etech.

Based on my observations, merely mentioning the "Guardian" with a negative tone around here usually results in resident hordes of aspiring pseudo-sophists, detached freaks, associationally bereft intraverts, etc., binding together into a sort of obnoxiously defensive collective. Barrages of crass insults generally precede vehement denial of any and all inaccuracies contained within this supposed bastion of journalistic integrity.

One might compare the phenomenon to either a Cold War-era Soviet defense of Pravda or perhaps the unyielding Nazi attitude towards Der Stürmer. In fact, it ranks among the damndest things I've ever seen.

Anyway, moving right along......

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: SuperTool

Originally posted by: etech
Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

It says so in the story.

Why yes, yes it does. Strike one.

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

A strike to etech is a home run.

Check your fallacious argument page and tell us which one we used here.

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: glenn1

Fifth Group Special Forces Pulled From Afghanistan to Fight Iraq War

I used to serve in 5th Group. And this is IMHO an oversimplification of how things probably took place. Let's go over how 5th Group is structured to explain. 5th Group is a brigade sized unit, organized into three batallions each with a geographic emphasis. Taken as a whole, 5th Group is meant to cover North Africa, the Horn of Africa, SW Asia (all of the "classic" Middle East less Israel, which is covered by 10th Group), the 'Stans (the central Asian former Soviet Republics whose names ended in -stan, e.g. Tajikistan), and South Asia west of India. However, that does not mean that every single part of 5th Group is an expert on all of those regions. No, it's even more specialized than that, so let's break it down further.

5th Group consists of three battalions, and each battalion of three companies. Each company typically consists of six or seven ODA teams (Operational Detatchment - Alpha) who are the shooters/operators, and one ODB (Operational Detatchment - Bravo) which is basically HQ for the company and where the CO (company call sign "actual") normally is. The group has about 60 organic ODA's, of which 40-45 or so would normally be deployable at any given time.

Individually, 1st batallion's primary AOR covers North Africa and the Horn. 2nd (my old batallion) has responsibility for the "classic" Middle East and assists with the Horn and the 'Stans on an ad hoc basis, and 3rd has primary coverage for everything east of Iraq and the 'Stans. This alignment is complimented by the language training and TOE, which are tailored for each batallion (3rd gets the Pashtun and Urdu linguists, 2nd gets the Syrian dialect Arabic speakers, 1st gets Coptic speakers, etc).

So to say that 5th Group got pulled out of Afghanistan is probably not correct. Most likely, certain ODA's were likely redeployed to the Iraqi theater. As I stated, the important part is whether the ODA's with organic Urdu, etc. speakers were the ones redeployed. If you had an attached team from another batallion in theater that was comprised of Arabic speakers, they would not have been as effective a force as an organic ODA team from 3rd who did speak Pashtun. Basically, one would have to know which ODA(s) got redeployed to know if it was a misuse of assets or not.

good to have someone who realy knows here

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: SuperTool

Originally posted by: etech
Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

It says so in the story.

Why yes, yes it does. Strike one.

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

A strike to etech is a home run.

Check your fallacious argument page and tell us which one we used here.

Ok, but you first moonie, what sort of lying obfuscation is your comment?

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: burnedout

Originally posted by: etech

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

Careful etech.

Based on my observations, merely mentioning the "Guardian" with a negative tone around here usually results in resident hordes of aspiring pseudo-sophists, detached freaks, associationally bereft intraverts, etc., binding together into a sort of obnoxiously defensive collective. Barrages of crass insults generally precede vehement denial of any and all inaccuracies contained within this supposed bastion of journalistic integrity.

One might compare the phenomenon to either a Cold War-era Soviet defense of Pravda or perhaps the unyielding Nazi attitude towards Der Stürmer. In fact, it ranks among the damndest things I've ever seen.

Anyway, moving right along......

I think somebody got a new thesaurus. :gift:

 

[charrison]

In other news, 2000 marines have been moved into afghanistan.....

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: SuperTool

Originally posted by: etech
Philip James is a former senior Democratic party strategist.

It says so in the story.

Why yes, yes it does. Strike one.

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

A strike to etech is a home run.

Check your fallacious argument page and tell us which one we used here.

Ok, but you first moonie, what sort of lying obfuscation is your comment?

Please, you are the expert and were so proud of posting that page. Won't you do the honors. I reckoned that by doing what you do it would be easier for you to see. Tell me more about my lying obfuscation, please.

 

[etech]

No, moonie, you are the master of the lie so you should by all means go first.

You are the one that has taken this thread off topic with you little comment.

"A strike to etech is a home run. "


So please moonie, spend a couple of hours coming up with one of your weighty tome messages that says how smart you are and how everyone else hasn't gone through what you have so they are just ignorant asses. Come on, you know you want to.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: glenn1

Fifth Group Special Forces Pulled From Afghanistan to Fight Iraq War

I used to serve in 5th Group. And this is IMHO an oversimplification of how things probably took place. Let's go over how 5th Group is structured to explain. 5th Group is a brigade sized unit, organized into three batallions each with a geographic emphasis. Taken as a whole, 5th Group is meant to cover North Africa, the Horn of Africa, SW Asia (all of the "classic" Middle East less Israel, which is covered by 10th Group), the 'Stans (the central Asian former Soviet Republics whose names ended in -stan, e.g. Tajikistan), and South Asia west of India. However, that does not mean that every single part of 5th Group is an expert on all of those regions. No, it's even more specialized than that, so let's break it down further.

5th Group consists of three battalions, and each battalion of three companies. Each company typically consists of six or seven ODA teams (Operational Detatchment - Alpha) who are the shooters/operators, and one ODB (Operational Detatchment - Bravo) which is basically HQ for the company and where the CO (company call sign "actual") normally is. The group has about 60 organic ODA's, of which 40-45 or so would normally be deployable at any given time.

Individually, 1st batallion's primary AOR covers North Africa and the Horn. 2nd (my old batallion) has responsibility for the "classic" Middle East and assists with the Horn and the 'Stans on an ad hoc basis, and 3rd has primary coverage for everything east of Iraq and the 'Stans. This alignment is complimented by the language training and TOE, which are tailored for each batallion (3rd gets the Pashtun and Urdu linguists, 2nd gets the Syrian dialect Arabic speakers, 1st gets Coptic speakers, etc).

So to say that 5th Group got pulled out of Afghanistan is probably not correct. Most likely, certain ODA's were likely redeployed to the Iraqi theater. As I stated, the important part is whether the ODA's with organic Urdu, etc. speakers were the ones redeployed. If you had an attached team from another batallion in theater that was comprised of Arabic speakers, they would not have been as effective a force as an organic ODA team from 3rd who did speak Pashtun. Basically, one would have to know which ODA(s) got redeployed to know if it was a misuse of assets or not.

You might be interested in this:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2002/t07192002_t717army.html

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: etech
No, moonie, you are the master of the lie so you should by all means go first.

You are the one that has taken this thread off topic with you little comment.

"A strike to etech is a home run. "


So please moonie, spend a couple of hours coming up with one of your weighty tome messages that says how smart you are and how everyone else hasn't gone through what you have so they are just ignorant asses. Come on, you know you want to.

OK, but just this once:

"Poisoning The Wells:
discrediting the sources used by your opponent. This is a variation of Ad Hominem."

Ad Hominem:
Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man):
attacking the person instead of attacking his argument. For example, "Von Daniken's books about ancient astronauts are worthless because he is a convicted forger and embezzler." (Which is true, but that's not why they're worthless.)
Another example is this syllogism, which alludes to Alan Turing's homosexuality:

Turing thinks machines think.
Turing lies with men.
Therefore, machines don't think.
(Note the equivocation in the use of the word "lies".)

A common form is an attack on sincerity. For example, "How can you argue for vegetarianism when you wear leather shoes?" The two wrongs make a right fallacy is related.

A variation (related to Argument By Generalization) is to attack a whole class of people. For example, "Evolutionary biology is a sinister tool of the materialistic, atheistic religion of Secular Humanism." Similarly, one notorious net.kook waved away a whole category of evidence by announcing "All the scientists were drunk."

Another variation is attack by innuendo: "Why don't scientists tell us what they really know; are they afraid of public panic?"

There may be a pretense that the attack isn't happening: "In order to maintain a civil debate, I will not mention my opponent's drinking problem."

Sometimes the attack is on intelligence. For example, "If you weren't so stupid you would have no problem seeing my point of view." Or, dismissing a comment with "Well, you're just smarter than the rest of us." (In Britain, that might be put as "too clever by half".) This is related to Not Invented Here, but perhaps it is more connected to Dismissal By Differentness and Changing The Subject.

Ad Hominem is not fallacious if the attack goes to the credibility of the argument. For instance, the argument may depend on its presenter's claim that he's an expert. (That is, there is an Argument From Authority.) Trial judges allow this category of attacks.
=========
You attacked his sources as if that had anything to do with whether machines can think as above, so I attacked you with the certain knowledge that anybody so foolish as to believe your attack on his sources would certainly agree with me that anything you say is similarly worthless. We were wrong weren't we? And, of course it was you who first tried to divert the thread from it's content to its source. You should try hard either to feel tremendously ashamed of yourself for your hypocritical accusations or try to stick to the issue yourself and cut people the slack you cut yourself.

 

[etech]

Moonie,that the author has a strong reason to author a biased piece is a justifiable criticism. dahunan used that slanted piece as the only verification of his contention.

That the Guardian's penchant for printing questionable articles seems to be accepted on these boards.

So, perhaps I was remiss in not tearing apart this biased piece but considering the two sources it didn't seem to be necessary to put that amount of time into it.

But kudo's to you moonie, you actually "used" a logical piece of writing for once.

 

[sMiLeYz]

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it.

The central allegation - that Mr Bush was so obsessed with going after Saddam Hussein that he openly challenged his counter-terrorism adviser to find a link between September 11 and Iraq the day after the attacks took place - is serious.

word

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: sMiLeYz

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it.

The central allegation - that Mr Bush was so obsessed with going after Saddam Hussein that he openly challenged his counter-terrorism adviser to find a link between September 11 and Iraq the day after the attacks took place - is serious.

word

It seems that a false and or malicious arguement would also be attacked with swiftness and ferocity. It's not like many of Bush's opponents care about the truth of the attack, only the attack itself.


Isn't "word" sort of an outdated juvi fad whos time has long passed?

 

[Mean MrMustard]

Fifth Group Special Forces Pulled From Afghanistan to Fight Iraq War

I don't know why since the 'Mission' has already been 'Accomplished'.

 

[sMiLeYz]

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: sMiLeYz

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it.

The central allegation - that Mr Bush was so obsessed with going after Saddam Hussein that he openly challenged his counter-terrorism adviser to find a link between September 11 and Iraq the day after the attacks took place - is serious.

word

It seems that a false and or malicious arguement would also be attacked with swiftness and ferocity. It's not like many of Bush's opponents care about the truth of the attack, only the attack itself.


Isn't "word" sort of an outdated juvi fad whos time has long passed?

False and malicious arguement? The administration wouldn't know anything about that, after all there are proven to be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and proven links to Al Qaeda!

Anyway, Condelezza Rice, Cheney and Co refusring to testify but no afraid to be on news outlets attacking Clarke, speaks volumes for itself.

As for the juvi fad... I aint as old as you, pops!

 

[Moonbeam]

e: Moonie,that the author has a strong reason to author a biased piece is a justifiable criticism. dahunan used that slanted piece as the only verification of his contention.

M: But equally worthy of consideration is that who determines an author's motivation and whether a likely motivation played a part in biasing a piece are evaluations very similarly influenced by the motivation of the critic making that judgment.

e: That the Guardian's penchant for printing questionable articles seems to be accepted on these boards.

M: That is the, "Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal to Common Practice)" argument:

"the claim, as evidence for an idea, that many people believe it, or used to believe it, or do it.
If the discussion is about social conventions, such as "good manners", then this is a reasonable line of argument.

However, in the 1800's there was a widespread belief that bloodletting cured sickness. All of these people were not just wrong, but horribly wrong, because in fact it made people sicker. Clearly, the popularity of an idea is no guarantee that it's right.

Similarly, a common justification for bribery is that "Everybody does it". And in the past, this was a justification for slavery."

e: So, perhaps I was remiss in not tearing apart this biased piece but considering the two sources it didn't seem to be necessary to put that amount of time into it.

M: It may not have been in your judgment and it was yours to make, but it did open you to this critique.

e: But kudo's to you moonie, you actually "used" a logical piece of writing for once.

M: Not to worry, I said I'd only do it once.

 

[Gaard]

Originally posted by: burnedout

Originally posted by: etech

And the story was in the Guardian. Strike two.

Careful etech.

Based on my observations, merely mentioning the "Guardian" with a negative tone around here usually results in resident hordes of aspiring pseudo-sophists, detached freaks, associationally bereft intraverts, etc., binding together into a sort of obnoxiously defensive collective. Barrages of crass insults generally precede vehement denial of any and all inaccuracies contained within this supposed bastion of journalistic integrity.

One might compare the phenomenon to either a Cold War-era Soviet defense of Pravda or perhaps the unyielding Nazi attitude towards Der Stürmer. In fact, it ranks among the damndest things I've ever seen.

Anyway, moving right along......

Of course, if any right-leaning member criticizes any other right-leaning member for linking to the likes of Ann Coulter we'd undoubtedly see such a catastrophe that Ragnarok itself would pale in comparison.

IOW, if you guys condone heartsurgeon and others linking to Coulter, etc, then you are in no position to criticize The Guardian. And if you don't condone it, would you mind telling us all why you don't mention your dissatisfaction with all the Coulter links but find the time to opine on Guardian links?

 

[burnedout]

Originally posted by: Gaard

Of course, if any right-leaning member criticizes any other right-leaning member for linking to the likes of Ann Coulter we'd undoubtedly see such a catastrophe that Ragnarok itself would pale in comparison.

IOW, if you guys condone heartsurgeon and others linking to Coulter, etc, then you are in no position to criticize The Guardian. And if you don't condone it, would you mind telling us all why you don't mention your dissatisfaction with all the Coulter links but find the time to opine on Guardian links?

Um, excuse me?!? My criticism of Ann Coulter's drivel on this forum is a matter of record. Apology accepted.