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Africa Horn
The terrifying reality of Black Hawk Down
2018-10-25
  • The 18-hour Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 led to the deaths of 18 US soldiers
  • A new book seeks to describe the battle from ordinary soldiers' perspectives
  • It includes a photograph taken from one of the Black Hawks during the battle
  • It had started as a routine mission to seize the deputies of a Somali warlord
  • Two of the Special Forces' Black Hawk helicopters were immediately shot down
  • The dramatic operation was later turned into a blockbuster Hollywood movie
Posted by:Skidmark

#12  The way I understand it is GHW Bush got us in there, he sent a lot of Marines and troops with a simple mission to distribute food. MIssion somewhat accomplished most were sent home.

Then Clinton became President and with fewer military on the ground he increased the tempo and aggressiveness of their actions which eventually led to the Blackhawk Down incident.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2018-10-25 12:58  

#11  On hand-held, btwn reps on the tri-press. I blame SOF cockups like Mog on their country-team lip lock. There, I said it.

No, we don't work for CENTCOM, ARCENT, AFRICOM. Our C-2 comes from elsewhere. We've got a unique mission from 'downtown.' We've been doing it for 18+ years.... and as you can see, we know WTF we're doing. So scram !
Posted by:    2018-10-25 12:39  

#10  P2K, generally speaking your right. But in this instance their command structure was higher than 10th Mountain. 10th should have been subordinate to the TF. Even so, the SOCOM TF supports the AOR commander, but does not report to him. The TF commander is required to deconflict operations, which he did. He is under zero requirement to share any mission planning or execution. If we remember in the late 80's and early 90's conventional forced did not know how to work with SOF and did not want them in their AOR, Desert Storm is a great example of a 4 star not wanting SOF and then realizing he had to have it, and not control it. Times have changed and conventional forces commander have a better understanding of how the SOF missions work and who is pulling the trigger on approvals for those missions.
I hear all the time we did not need to be there. I think this crowd gets it, but that usually implies the guys got what they deserved for being there. These guy at TF Ranger went where the president directed them, they executed the presidential directives, its not their call if the war is just or not.
Lastly, what got them in trouble is they used the same approach, departure, and execution templates. That made their actions predictive. A mistake that will never happen again in SOF.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2018-10-25 11:42  

#9  Bill Clinton refused to let our troops have armor deeming it, to provocative.

Mark Bowden's book, "Black Hawk Down", goes into some detail about the stupidity and cascading fuckupedness of the whole situation. He also makes the unrecognized point that a small group of US soldiers stood off an entire city of full of armed crazies. A very readable book.
Posted by: SteveS   2018-10-25 10:18  

#8  blow job willie got these fine warriors killed. Something ELSE the JO needs to be locked up for, IMO
Posted by: ranture   2018-10-25 09:55  

#7  Les Aspin to the White Courtesy Phone!
Posted by: Frank G   2018-10-25 09:01  

#6  Dipshit Bill Clinton refused to let our troops have armor deeming it, to provocative. Bizzare day when our troops got rescued by Paki armor.

Then there was the White House announcing when and where the SEALS were landing. The Time photo of SEALs at night, crawling up in the surf, surrounded by reporters. The look on their faces was one big WTF.

Anyways Mogadishu and been moved to Minneapolis and all of Hennepin county.
Posted by: Woodrow   2018-10-25 08:21  

#5  I was watching TV news well before we went there. It was 'You to do something about this' coverage of the famine in Somalia. Manipulation, pure and simple. Great for ratings. They played the idiots in the Beltway as usual. I said then, they want us to get in there and then turn on us when we do. Soldiers got killed for nothing, but for the 'evening news'.

By law (Nichols-Goldwater Act) the Task Force was suppose to be under the senior military commander on the ground. That would have been the 10th Mtn Div commander, but instead the Delta People didn't operate that way. That left the 10th no opportunity to have a standby force ready when crap hit the fan. The only standby force were Paks who were UN and not necessarily there for their skill and proficiency.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2018-10-25 08:20  

#4  Herb certainly nails it about Somalia, and most of the other foreign engagements we've been involved in since the end of WWII as well. Globalism is absolute bullshit !
Posted by: Besoeker   2018-10-25 06:49  

#3  Herb - just set it as a Macro
Posted by: Frank G   2018-10-25 06:46  

#2  Amen, Herb...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2018-10-25 06:10  

#1  We should never, ever have been there in the first place. Nobody asked us, all we did is become another faction in tribal politics, and the famine was already over by the time we arrived.
Posted by: Herb McCoy   2018-10-25 05:27  

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