In a National Security Emergency, Do You Call the Marines or the SEALs?

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by Richard

Yeah...and don't forget LTC Austin Travis (Steven Seagal)!

Richard

I love that movie, because his character gets killed off before it starts muttering jive.

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by Richard

Yeah...and don't forget LTC Austin Travis (Steven Seagal)!

Richard

I had mercifully forgotten all about that.

I can imagine him eating his team's entire supply of rations.
And then eating the team.

[Neophyte]

The legendary MacGruber. Former
navy seal, army ranger and green
beret. Served six tours in Desert
Storm, four in Bosnia, three each
in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda,
Mozambique and Sierra Leone.
Recipient of sixteen purple hearts,
three Congressional Medals of
Honor, seven presidential medals of
bravery, and starting tight end for
the University of Texas El Paso.

Now this guy gets around

[miclo18d]

A lot of great points were made here and I have an example to back it up.

My last mission was CNT down in Peru in 2007. My team was doing a split op mission. Half the team went to Ecuador and the other half (including me) went to Peru. I was an 18D and senior guy on the team, so I was the Team Daddy for the Peru side.

We were working out of a safe house near the embassy and "deploying" out to sites to work with units. We did some med training for the SUAT in Lima, then went to Iquitos for a month with the Marine Commandos, then back to Lima to train with DINOES (police commandos), then out to Pulcalpa to train with FOES (SEALS). When we got back we started to plan for our next trip (I don't even remember where we were going to go).

I went to dinner one afternoon with my 18C at Jockey Plaza. We were waiting for our dinner to come when the entire floor started moving under my feet, it felt like 3-5 inches back and forth. It was an earthquake. It happened to be the 8.0 Pisco Earthquake and the first time I had ever felt one! In Lima it was felt between a 5.0 and 6.0.

My 18C at the time had spent time in Italy and when he felt it he said it wasn't too bad. I only caught the beginning of what he said as I was on my way out the door so the entire mall didn't fall on my head! He came out about 30 seconds later saying that it was worse than he initially thought (the initial shock lasted minutes not seconds). Anyway, we went straight back to the safe house and started contacting the Milgrp (aka SGM(Ret) Frank H.) to get some info.

I immediately shifted from training mode to Humanitarian Aid mode. We started getting all our gear together (med and engineer heavy) and Frank called and gave us a warning order with info that the Epicenter was in Pisco, 90 miles to the south. We got our Warrant Officer and commo guy on an embassy flight with an assessment team within 24 hours. and within another 24 the embassy okay'd us to travel with the rest of the team by vehicle. We made it down there and set up in a chowhall loading bay (I told the 18C to "find us a place to live", it took him 30 minutes)

There wasn't much of C&C going on so we did what any good SF trooper would do, we went 'looking for work'. We went down to the Plaza Central and that was where most of the deaths had occurred. We linked up with the Fire Dept and asked what we could do. An English speaking Fireman (from Italy no less) said didn't have much at that location but he said he could use my help later. It turned out that he needed a recon to the west to gauge the damage and how far out it went which we did a day or two later.

About that time we received a medical team from Soto Cano, Hon. (JTF-Bravo), that brought a FST team, Docs, and Nurses. Next we reconned locations for them to set up shop and helped translate when we could (as they had few Spanish speakers). Most of the time we set up in the soccer stadium, which grew into a refugee camp within a few days (I'd like to think because the gringos were there). We did some other locations too and even went to some of the outlying towns that we had reconned with the Fireman. I actually bumped into the Cuban coalition and talked to one of the doctors. He looked scared to talk to me and I SWEAR, his eyes were asking me to take him away and give him asylum!

It was an interesting mission in the fact that I didn't need any permission from anyone to conduct any mission I saw fit, because there wasn't any C&C. I even got into it with the WO as he didn't see the need to go running all over the place. It came back and bit us when the Minister of Health blamed us for not coordinating efforts (just being political as we found plenty of gaps to fill). Frank H. gave me an ass chewing and I basically told him to eff off and that I was going to help as many people as I could and that he should play the political games if that's what he wanted. A détente ensued.

We did this for about a week and the JTF-B team went to do their primary mission after much of the initial shock was taken care of. We went back to Lima to start prepping for our next training mission.

All right, so all that long story so that I could say this. There wasn't ONE single Marine on the ground there. There were NO Navy SEALs there. There was 1 half of an SF team (with some augments) and a few Army Dr's and nurses (with a 2 or 3 AF security folks).

Why? Because there is only one unit in the entire Armed Forces of the USA that maintains a constant presence around the world that can speak the native language and do any and every kind of mission put before it with little to no supervision.

US SPECIAL FORCES

[MR2]

Originally Posted by miclo18d

Why? Because there is only one unit in the entire Armed Forces of the USA that maintains a constant presence around the world that can speak the native language and do any and every kind of mission put before it with little to no supervision.

That's why in a nushell.

[bassbuckeye]

Originally Posted by miclo18d

A lot of great points were made here and I have an example to back it up.

My last mission was CNT down in Peru in 2007. My team was doing a split op mission. Half the team went to Ecuador and the other half (including me) went to Peru. I was an 18D and senior guy on the team, so I was the Team Daddy for the Peru side.

We were working out of a safe house near the embassy and "deploying" out to sites to work with units. We did some med training for the SUAT in Lima, then went to Iquitos for a month with the Marine Commandos, then back to Lima to train with DINOES (police commandos), then out to Pulcalpa to train with FOES (SEALS). When we got back we started to plan for our next trip (I don't even remember where we were going to go).

I went to dinner one afternoon with my 18C at Jockey Plaza. We were waiting for our dinner to come when the entire floor started moving under my feet, it felt like 3-5 inches back and forth. It was an earthquake. It happened to be the 8.0 Pisco Earthquake and the first time I had ever felt one! In Lima it was felt between a 5.0 and 6.0.

My 18C at the time had spent time in Italy and when he felt it he said it wasn't too bad. I only caught the beginning of what he said as I was on my way out the door so the entire mall didn't fall on my head! He came out about 30 seconds later saying that it was worse than he initially thought (the initial shock lasted minutes not seconds). Anyway, we went straight back to the safe house and started contacting the Milgrp (aka SGM(Ret) Frank H.) to get some info.

I immediately shifted from training mode to Humanitarian Aid mode. We started getting all our gear together (med and engineer heavy) and Frank called and gave us a warning order with info that the Epicenter was in Pisco, 90 miles to the south. We got our Warrant Officer and commo guy on an embassy flight with an assessment team within 24 hours. and within another 24 the embassy okay'd us to travel with the rest of the team by vehicle. We made it down there and set up in a chowhall loading bay (I told the 18C to "find us a place to live", it took him 30 minutes)

There wasn't much of C&C going on so we did what any good SF trooper would do, we went 'looking for work'. We went down to the Plaza Central and that was where most of the deaths had occurred. We linked up with the Fire Dept and asked what we could do. An English speaking Fireman (from Italy no less) said didn't have much at that location but he said he could use my help later. It turned out that he needed a recon to the west to gauge the damage and how far out it went which we did a day or two later.

About that time we received a medical team from Soto Cano, Hon. (JTF-Bravo), that brought a FST team, Docs, and Nurses. Next we reconned locations for them to set up shop and helped translate when we could (as they had few Spanish speakers). Most of the time we set up in the soccer stadium, which grew into a refugee camp within a few days (I'd like to think because the gringos were there). We did some other locations too and even went to some of the outlying towns that we had reconned with the Fireman. I actually bumped into the Cuban coalition and talked to one of the doctors. He looked scared to talk to me and I SWEAR, his eyes were asking me to take him away and give him asylum!

It was an interesting mission in the fact that I didn't need any permission from anyone to conduct any mission I saw fit, because there wasn't any C&C. I even got into it with the WO as he didn't see the need to go running all over the place. It came back and bit us when the Minister of Health blamed us for not coordinating efforts (just being political as we found plenty of gaps to fill). Frank H. gave me an ass chewing and I basically told him to eff off and that I was going to help as many people as I could and that he should play the political games if that's what he wanted. A détente ensued.We did this for about a week and the JTF-B team went to do their primary mission after much of the initial shock was taken care of. We went back to Lima to start prepping for our next training mission.

All right, so all that long story so that I could say this. There wasn't ONE single Marine on the ground there. There were NO Navy SEALs there. There was 1 half of an SF team (with some augments) and a few Army Dr's and nurses (with a 2 or 3 AF security folks).

Why? Because there is only one unit in the entire Armed Forces of the USA that maintains a constant presence around the world that can speak the native language and do any and every kind of mission put before it with little to no supervision.

US SPECIAL FORCES

I know this is a dead thread but I was reading through here and this post reminded me (in a small way) of something that was said to me by an ODA commander I/we worked with in 03..............we had a radio station being used by Marines to play their music and address their morale needs...we asked if we could use it to broadcast to the Iraqi's and his response (the ODA OIC) was f yeah we can do that...he made it happen (the Marines were pissed cause it was their AO but on high saw the benefit) and we played locally desired music and mixed in some broadcasts we wanted to get out to the locals...I came up with a script and asked how we should send it up the chain and he looked at me and said "f it...broadcast it and ill take the heat"...told me, and I'm paraphrasing "soon as the Army tells us to not do the right thing its time for us to get out"....ill never forget that, and at that point (after doing psyop for 3rd ID and 2nd ACR) I realized this was the place to be...

which by the way i'm pretty sure he got his ass chewed for it and he never let it roll down to us

[miclo18d]

That was my last mission before starting my ACAP, so I could have cared less about any of the politics. I just wanted to help the people of Pisco as much as I could with the small amount of resources I had. The US planes that came in carried not much more than body bags (all the dead had already been taken care of by then)! I kept asking someone to get them to send MRE's, meds, and water (items that I could do things with). They never came.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was sending cans of tuna at least. However, he sort of messed up his little propaganda campaign because the cans had a picture of Chavez with the opponent of the current Peruvian president, on the lid. I tried to locate one of those cans and never found one so I never got a confirmation on the validity of that rumor. That would have been a great souvenir!

I waited for my ass chewing but never got it... They are never very effective when you are doing the right thing though.

Good job on doing your job. I always heard how hard it was to get PsyOp products approved!

[bassbuckeye]

Originally Posted by miclo18d

That was my last mission before starting my ACAP, so I could have cared less about any of the politics. I just wanted to help the people of Pisco as much as I could with the small amount of resources I had. The US planes that came in carried not much more than body bags (all the dead had already been taken care of by then)! I kept asking someone to get them to send MRE's, meds, and water (items that I could do things with). They never came.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was sending cans of tuna at least. However, he sort of messed up his little propaganda campaign because the cans had a picture of Chavez with the opponent of the current Peruvian president, on the lid. I tried to locate one of those cans and never found one so I never got a confirmation on the validity of that rumor. That would have been a great souvenir!

I waited for my ass chewing but never got it... They are never very effective when you are doing the right thing though.

Good job on doing your job. I always heard how hard it was to get PsyOp products approved!

That can of Tuna would be awesome...classic propaganda! We could have countered it with the classic American flag rice....but yes, it would take a year and a half to have approved rendering it useless

[Box]

In a National Security Emergency you don't call the Marines or the SEALs...
...call CNN and MSNBC to report human rights violations and acts of oppression against gay minority females that vote democrat.

That will get things rolling so fast that your head will spin.