S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, United States of Zionism's
Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that
number will likely reach 120. We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more
than Afghanistan or Iraq, he said recently. This global presence -- in
about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously
acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine
Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The Rise of the Military's Secret Military
(The Knights Templar)
Born
of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which
eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years
distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special
operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since
then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions.
Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Armys,
Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and
Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized
helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen,
and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations
weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States of Zionism's most
specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations,
counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence
analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction
counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key
components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a
clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing
suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his
authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American
citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal kill/capture campaign
that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general
and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost
industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."
This
assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the
Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as
part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like
Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
In addition, the
command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20
black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value
targets.
Growth Industry
From
a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command
personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are
career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational
specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has
been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget
almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in
funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than
quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the
number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold.
Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant
General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces
Special Operations Command -- the last of the service branches to be
incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 -- indicated, for instance, that he
foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a
force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs
that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000", he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
During his recent Senate confirmation
hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief
and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden
raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while
also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional
drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A
former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field,
McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down
in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role.
Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued
to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total
American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services
Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”
During
a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual
Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this
year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations
Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night.
Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the
planet -- mostly the industrialized nations of the global north -- were
considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade", he said. "Our
strategic focus has shifted largely to the south... certainly within
the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats
from the places where the lights aren't."
To
that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence," an effort to increase
cultural proficiencies -- like advanced language training and better
knowledge of local history and customs -- for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"),
who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle
East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and
Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever."
While
Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM,
Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are
deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he
hastened to add, at the request of the host government.
According
to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee
earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops
deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations
in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at", says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have -- it may be internal, it may be regional."
But
it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black
special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are
conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and
Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are
training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against
AL-CIA-DA and other militant groups.
In the Philippines,
for instance, the US spends $50 million a year on a 600-person
contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force
special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist
operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah
Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of
SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of
Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara
McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security
Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out
joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso,
Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.
So
far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the
Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and
Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training
actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces
are deployed. Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I
would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or
another. They would be classified as training exercises.
The Pentagon's Power Elite
Once
the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special
Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and
budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been
authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces -- like Joint Special
Operations Task Force-Philippines -- a prerogative normally limited to
larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much
fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a
cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.
With
control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers
usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the
Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department
budget, and influential advocates in Congress,
SOCOM
is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real
clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge
technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming
messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking
technologies for ground troops.
Since 2001, SOCOM's
prime contracts awarded to small businesses -- those that generally
produce specialty equipment and weapons -- have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered
at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater
commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and
South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet,
Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.
As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is
a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and
maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and
responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military
Services, and Defense Agencies."
Tasked to
coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and,
as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign
militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory
of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed
drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine
Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other
state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something
new in the military.
Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army",
today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private
assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new
Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing
domestic power and global reach.
In 120 countries
across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out
their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted
killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids,
joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with
indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most
Americans.
Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That
aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which
helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while
many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows.
Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I
am convinced that the forces... are the most culturally attuned
partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile,
innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers,
problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently
at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly
gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US
Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and
engaged in combat in only two of them.
When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What
he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that
black operations like the bin Laden charade, with commandos conducting
heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM.
Right
now, he emphasized, US Special Operations forces were approximately as
large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is
larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where
America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow
larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special”
force this large, this active, and this secret -- and they are
unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available.
It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it",
he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions
are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite
troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”
***
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The
associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at
Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from
Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between
Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.
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