View Full Version : Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
Team Sergeant
02-07-2010, 09:53
OK, my question concerning this article, which SF MOS does "ASSASSIN" fall under??? And how many of you guys have had "Assassin" training? (Did I miss an advanced course?);)
Team Sergeant
Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Print ShareThisAmerican and British troops poised to assault the Taliban stronghold of Marjah have begun targeting insurgent leaders for assassination.
Military sources said special forces had been infiltrating the town on "kinetic" missions — jargon for armed attacks. "Special forces guys have been going in on assassination missions with the aim of decapitating the Taliban force," one said.
At the British base of Camp Bastion and the adjoining Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. Marine base, troops and munitions have been airlifted in by night to avoid enemy rockets. It is clear that international forces are on the brink of a big battle. All Saturday morning, the thud-thud-thud of heavy machine guns and the crump of mortars filled the air.
In a break from traditional military secrecy, American, British and Afghan commanders have announced that Marjah, the last town in Helmand under Taliban control, will be attacked.
Operation Moshtarak (“Together”) will be by far the largest offensive since General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, instigated his counter-insurgency strategy, backed by President Obama’s 30,000-troop "surge."
About 1,000 Taliban, mostly Afghans but with some foreign fighters in their ranks, are believed to be in Marjah, an opium centre and local headquarters for bomb-making and sending out homicide bombers.
Military sources described the use of publicity as a psychological tactic to intimidate the Taliban into laying down their weapons or fleeing.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585035,00.html
Utah Bob
02-07-2010, 11:13
Assassin's Creed is the big rage in video games this season. Assassin's are cool now.Guaranteed to get people's attention and read the article that way I guess.:rolleyes:
So that's what SFA stands for. Who knew?
rubberneck
02-07-2010, 11:16
According to Syemour Hersh the MOS for SF assassins is 18N(inja).:lifter
Team Sergeant
02-07-2010, 11:43
I especially like the cryptic "kinetic" missions line.:rolleyes:
Is that the new British media approved, politically correct term for shooting people? For gods sake I hope they're not profiling the taliban before they shoot them!
TS
I'm betting our next Special Forces Green Beret "fake/fraud" will have "Special Forces ASSASSIN course 3-10" in his online resume.
Interesting "choice" of wording in the Headline....
Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
....seeing as how the word Assassin originates from this area.
1: One who murders by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.
2: Assassin A member of a secret order of Muslims who terrorized and killed Christian Crusaders and others.
Word History: Active in Persia and Syria from the 8th to 14th centuries, the original Assassins were members of the Nizaris, a Muslim group who opposed the Abbasid caliphate with threats of sudden assassination by their secret agents. Other populations of the area regarded the Nizaris as unorthodox outcasts, and from this attitude came one of the names for the group, ḥaššāšīn, a word originally meaning "hashish users," which had become a general term of abuse. Reliable sources offer no evidence of hashish use by Nizari agents, but sensationalistic stories of murderous, drug-crazed ḥaššāšīn or Assassins were widely repeated in Europe. Marco Polo tells a tale of how young Assassins were given a potion and made to yearn for paradise—their reward for dying in action—by being given a life of pleasure. As the legends spread, the word ḥaššāšīn passed through French or Italian and appeared in English as assassin in the 16th century, already with meanings like "treacherous killer."
So I guess one could say, this has come "Full Circle" and that these "SF Assassins" are only to happy to "spread the word". :D
Chicks dig assassins.
And dead Taliban. :D
Utah Bob
02-07-2010, 15:24
I especially like the cryptic "kinetic" missions line.:rolleyes:
Is that the new British media approved, politically correct term for shooting people? For gods sake I hope they're not profiling the taliban before they shoot them!
TS
I'm betting our next Special Forces Green Beret "fake/fraud" will have "Special Forces ASSASSIN course 3-10" in his online resume.
If they're in profile, I suggest one above the ear canal.
OK, my question concerning this article, which SF MOS does "ASSASSIN" fall under??? And how many of you guys have had "Assassin" training? (Did I miss an advanced course?);)
Team Sergeant
Not unless you missed the part where you were taught the technique of bashing a head in with an E-tool.
But watching the entire 32 movies of James Bond weighs equally to an online correspondence course.
Dozer523
02-07-2010, 17:05
OK, my question concerning this article, which SF MOS does "ASSASSIN" fall under??? And how many of you guys have had "Assassin" training? (Did I miss an advanced course?);) 18A of course, what did you think the A stood for? (watch it. . . bub. )
ChickenMcFuggit
02-07-2010, 18:01
All of you steely-eyed killers are secretly trained to do those things we see in the video games, killin' folks with blowdarts and such, flying around in black helicopters from area 51.:)
Tomorrow, to counter the negative media-induced perception of 'assassin', I'm sure the PC White House will start referring to any Counter-terrorism unit as a Hostile Population Reduction Agency or some such. Getting to be as much a war with words as deeds.
I'm betting our next Special Forces Green Beret "fake/fraud" will have "Special Forces ASSASSIN course 3-10" in his online resume.
TS Sir,
IMHO, when that happens, I can only hope Ya'll smoke the tool's sorry ass!!!:mad: Posers be Damned!!!
Holly--->Your cheering section!!!:lifter
longrange1947
02-07-2010, 19:35
There has been complaints in the past that we teach assassination. :munchin :D
We're all PSYOP now.
US troops Won't Be Sent To Pakistan: Robert Gates
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — There are no plans to deploy U.S. ground troops to Pakistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday, despite concerns over increasing violence between Pakistani troops and Taliban militants.
Speaking to about 300 Marines at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, Gates assured them that they wouldn't be fighting in the neighboring sovereign nation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/07/us-troops-wont-be-sent-to_n_198759.html
School bombing exposes Obama’s secret war inside Pakistan
THE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.
Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.
US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. “We're quietly seeing a geographical shift,” an intelligence officer said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7017929.ece
Pak urged to acknowledge role in drone strikes
Further stressing the point, [Levin] claimed that Pakistani leaders “not only understand and acquiesce, but in many cases privately support the drone attacks”. The minimum the United States should expect from Pakistan “is a silence on their part rather than a public attack on us”.
Such criticism “creates real problems for us in terms of the Pakistani public and helps create some real animosity towards us — a sense of revenge, the implication that we’re violating Pakistan’s sovereignty”, he said.Senator Levin said he believed it was wrong to put all the blame on the US and “I’ve told them that to their face”.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/16-pak-urged-to-acknowledge-role-in-drone-strikes-hs-04
General McChrystal says we shouldn't believe him
If today's New York Times was reporting accurately, you should be very skeptical of anything that Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal says. Not because he's inherently dishonest, mind you, but because misleading everyone about the situation in Afghanistan may be part of his strategy for victory.
To be specific, today's Times also contains an article with the headline "Top U.S. Commander Sees Progress in Afghanistan." It quotes McChrystal as follows: "I am not prepared to say that we have turned the corner. So I'm saying the situation is serious, but I think we have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009, and beginning some progress, and that we'll make real progress in 2010."
This is nicely hedged, but McChrystal went to describe the war in a way that leads me to question virtually anything he might have to say now or in the future. According to the Times, the general also said that "The biggest thing is in convincing the Afghan people ... This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants".
On the one hand this statement is something of a truism, in the sense that resolve, morale, and expectations about the future can be critical factors (though what is actually happening on the battlefield is hardly irrelevant). But McChrystal's statement invites us to doubt anything he might choose to tell us about the progress of the war either now or in the months to come. Why? Because if he believes it is "all a war of perceptions," then spinning the war in the most favorable possible light has to be part of his strategy, in order to try to persuade both Afghans and Americans that we are winning. And that means we can't accept anything he says at face value, because we can't know if he's giving us an honest appraisal or just deploying a lot of blue smoke and mirrors in order to influence perceptions (which he thinks are key).
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/05/general_mcchrystal_says_we_shouldnt_believe_him
TOMAHAWK9521
02-07-2010, 20:37
Not unless you missed the part where you were taught the technique of bashing a head in with an E-tool.
But watching the entire 32 movies of James Bond weighs equally to an online correspondence course.
Hey, I remember "First Blood" when Rambo goes off about being able to drive a tank and fly a gunship but he couldn't hold a regular job. He probably couldn't hold a job because he kept assassinating his boss and co-workers. :lifter
Hey, I remember "First Blood" when Rambo goes off about being able to drive a tank and fly a gunship but he couldn't hold a regular job. He probably couldn't hold a job because he kept assassinating his boss and co-workers. :lifter
I like the ending version from the book, I think the COL shoots him in the head, 12 ga.
I like the ending version from the book, I think the COL shoots him in the head, 12 ga.
If you pick up the DVD (I know...I know...:rolleyes:), they actually filmed the alternate ending.
Troutman shoots Johhny with a .45, in the chest.
I think the COL shoots him in the head, 12 ga.
Correct. And the body count was much higher in the book.
If you pick up the DVD (I know...I know...:rolleyes:), they actually filmed the alternate ending.
Troutman shoots Johhny with a .45, in the chest.
I remember seeing the DVD change up, but I'm still thinking the book was a 12 ga to the head. While Rambo is holding the high ground, Col does the cool hero stuff. In the book, Rambo was a bum.
Ambush Master
02-07-2010, 21:14
If they're in profile, I suggest one above the ear canal.
AHH..Ye-Olde "Warning Shot" through the Left Temple!!!!!:D:munchin
Take care.
Martin
I remember seeing the DVD change up, but I'm still thinking the book was a 12 ga to the head. While Rambo is holding the high ground, Col does the cool hero stuff. In the book, Rambo was a bum.
Never read the book. You're probably correct.
I would think a 12 ga to the head would be just a little too "gruesome" for the film back when they made it. Now-a-days, it's in almost every action flick.......especially ones with ZOMBIES. :D
mark46th
02-07-2010, 22:23
We were called "Baby Killers" in the '60's and '70's. "Assassin" is a step up....
1stindoor
02-08-2010, 19:09
18A of course, what did you think the A stood for? (watch it. . . bub. )
Right...okay...who's going to take credit for thinking "18A$$. first?"
1stindoor
02-08-2010, 19:12
I remember seeing the DVD change up, but I'm still thinking the book was a 12 ga to the head. While Rambo is holding the high ground, Col does the cool hero stuff. In the book, Rambo was a bum.
It's been a great many years since I've read the original...but I believe Troutman killed him with a rifle (think counter-sniper) just before he was about to kill the sherrif.
PSYOP Rob
02-08-2010, 19:28
We're all PSYOP now.
Welcome!
Dozer523
02-08-2010, 22:33
All of you steely-eyed killers are secretly trained to do those things we see in the video games, killin' folks with blowdarts and such, flying around in black helicopters from area 51.:) I wanted to be one of these guys especially the guy at 1:40.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJIPToK_gs&feature=related
(except I know enough not to sit in a stalled truck on the bridge)
longrange1947
02-09-2010, 07:23
Right...okay...who's going to take credit for thinking "18A$$. first?"
How about 180A? They are 100 times more potent. :munchin :D
The British Tabloid, The Sun has this today:
Link: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2848942/SAS-men-and-Navy-SEAL-teams-take-out-top-50-Taliban-leaders.html
SAS TAKE OUT 50 TALIBAN
BRITISH SAS heroes have killed up to 50 Taliban commanders in daring raids behind enemy lines.
The joint attacks with US special forces over the past two weeks have helped prepare the ground for the biggest battle in Afghanistan yet - when 4,000 British troops will go into action.
Special forces dealt the deadly blow to the Taliban by taking out scores of their top field commanders in the build-up to the massive offensive.
SAS men and US Navy SEAL teams killed the 50 insurgent leaders in a series of dramatic covert operations deep inside southern Afghanistan's Helmand badlands.
Their objective was to destroy the Taliban command structure - and military sources labelled the daring raids "a great success".
Precise details remain a secret but it is known that the elite forces spearheaded a "shaping operation" to soften-up the enemy before the biggest offensive since the conflict began in 2001 is launched.
Other British units have also been heavily engaged in the operations to disrupt the Taliban.
Scots Guards uncovered a bomb-making factory and destroyed more than 20 deadly devices.
Grenadier Guards pushed south, hunting for insurgents.
But the Taliban fled rather than fight, leaving booby traps behind.
The Grenadiers left the way clear for dozens of local Afghan National Army and police to flood in and begin the process of bringing security to the district.
Major Jim Green, one of the Grenadier officers who planned the shaping operation, told The Sun: "This phase was all about putting the insurgents on the back foot.
"The lads down there have done some incredible things. This has been a great success. It was an operation to free the local people from the Taliban's grip."
Meticulous planning stretching back weeks would have gone into the SAS raids which struck the first blow against the Taliban - and put fear in their hearts.
Patrols of around four men would have used the tried and tested "find, fix, strike" method to locate and destroy their prey.
Their tactics are veiled in secrecy. But they would have moved by night, covering their tracks as they went. Then they would strike with lethal force before vanishing to seek new targets.
The full allied assault, labelled Operation Moshtarak, will involve up to 15,000 troops - at least 4,000 of them British.
Fighting in the Taliban- controlled Nad e-Ali area of Helmand is expected to be ferocious.
Insurgents have even hung from trees blood-stained uniforms discarded by British troops as a taunting warning.
Major Green said the presence of British troops alongside Afghan National Army soldiers in operations so far was welcomed by people living in the insurgent stronghold.
And when the big assault gets under way, a similar tactic will be used, with Our Boys and Afghan forces going in side by side.
This is the first time Afghan troops have been engaged with the international force on such a scale.
Commanders hope it will help reassure locals in Taliban hotspots that their ordeal is almost over.
The build-up to Operation Moshtarak continued at Britain's Camp Bastion HQ yesterday.
Surge
So many helicopters and transport planes are now using the air base there that it is officially busier than Essex's Stansted Airport, an RAF officer revealed.
Squadron Leader John Parfitt is Senior Air Traffic Control Officer at the base.
And when the generals give the order for the big push to start, he and his colleagues will co-ordinate helicopter movements in and out of Camp Bastion.
He said: "We currently have more than 550 movements a day.
"And during the op we will see a surge in movements. It will be the busiest day of our careers."
He described the mood as "businesslike but confident".
#
THE Taliban's leader in Pakistan did die of wounds received in a US missile attack on his stronghold in Waziristan last month, Interior Minister Rehman Mali said yesterday.
The ruthless and evil Hakimullah Mehsud, 28, was behind bomb attacks that have killed more than 600 people.
FirstClass
02-10-2010, 22:03
OK, my question concerning this article, which SF MOS does "ASSASSIN" fall under??? And how many of you guys have had "Assassin" training? (Did I miss an advanced course?);)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585035,00.html
SF assassins much cooler than Navy SEAL Pirates.
But the Taliban fled rather than fight . . .
Insurgents have even hung from trees blood-stained uniforms discarded by British troops as a taunting warning . . .
Major Green said the presence of British troops alongside Afghan National Army soldiers in operations so far was welcomed by people living in the insurgent stronghold . . .
And when the big assault gets under way, a similar tactic will be used, with Our Boys and Afghan forces going in side by side . . .
He described the mood as "businesslike but confident" . . .
The ruthless and evil Hakimullah Mehsud, 28, was behind bomb attacks that have killed more than 600 people.
This is great PYSOP! Why can't the American press give us some love like this?