[lksteve]

i recommend it...read the first part, as that was the period of time i was in Somalia...i would take issue with a couple of points, but my perspective, even as the Pol-Mil officer for the JPOTF, saw more of the grass than the lawn...

one thing i was a bit taken back by....we (the JTF and the JPOTF in particular) received alot of our cultural intel from 2/5 SF...the role SF played was really marginalized, while the role PSYOP played was documented nicely...my suspicions are that whoever the authors interviewed about the role of SO troops had a bias against SF or towards PSYOP...

there were alot of minor subplots in play at the time...there were problems with the understanding levels of conventional commanders regarding the use of PSYOP that while a nuisance, did not affect what we tried to do...one commander complained that we 'edited' the unit history out of an article about security around a relief supply point...my reply was that the Somali people didn't give a rat's ass if his units were Gimlets or giblets, what they needed to know was where supplies were being handed out, how to approach the feeding station in a manner that would insure their safety and the safety of the troops and NGO personnel running the point and that 'Rajo', the broadside we printed daily was not the Somali language version of the Paraglide...this sort of incident played out with every American unit we provided PSYOP support for...while PSYOP approval rests with the theater or JTF commander, LTG Johnstone felt it necessary for each subordinate commander to have a chance to review what was being sent out in his AOR...we wound up editing alot of products so that the American commanders had their units portrayed favorably...the truth be known, because Somali linguists were in scarce supply, we would include the Paraglide stuff in the English language version and delete it or at least diminish the unit history stuff in the stuff that was sent out to the folks who mattered (being the 11% of the Somali people who could read)...

one item i would take exception to...Ambassador Oakley put Somali casualties at 50-150 during the early phases of the operation...i'd say that number was somewhat conservative...we were not to keep a count (no body count math allowed) but as the guy who reviewed what was broadcast and printed on a near daily basis (when i wasn't out pre and post testing stuff, travelling the country side to get imput from supported commanders, etc), the number i seem to recall, at the time of my departure was 250-300...