Oppose Any Foe

by Mark Moyar

  “… Your Daddy”: Eric Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan (New York: Harper, 2010), 53.

  Sand People in Star Wars: Stanton, Horse Soldiers, 100–101.

  kill the Americans at their first meeting: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 122.

  perpetrated in years past: Berntsen and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, 133–134; Stanton, Horse Soldiers, 109–122.

  knees sticking up near their ears: Stanton, Horse Soldiers, 121–125; Boot, War Made New, 354.

  after they dismounted: Robin Moore, The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger (New York: Random House, 2003), 71–72; Stanton, Horse Soldiers, 134–136.

  soldiers quipped: Stanton, Horse Soldiers, 346.

  “… very happy”: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 127.

  “Surrender or die!”: Schroen, First In, 138.

  working with the Northern Alliance: Dana Priest, “‘Team 555’ Shaped a New Way of War: Special Forces and Smart Bombs Turned Tide and Routed Taliban,” Washington Post, April 3, 2002.

  began marking targets: Donald P. Wright, with the Contemporary Operations Study Team, A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001–September 2005 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 2005), 97.

  “… requests for strikes”: Schroen, First In, 290–292.

  “from here on out”: Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, 13.

  “Children in Action”: Ibid., 18, 77, 249–250.

  found another spot: John Hendren and Richard T. Cooper, “Fragile Alliances in a Hostile Land,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2002.

  fighters in the kill zone: Robert L. Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 226–227; Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 157.

  “… leadership face-to-face”: Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, 159.

  “… friends, farmers, and shopkeepers”: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 173.

  liaisons with Northern Alliance leaders: Tommy Franks, with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 2004), 309.

  team’s tactical affairs: Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, 177.

  “… the movie, ‘Mad Max’”: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 173.

  most of them into his ranks: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 108.

  needed to be hit: Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, 264–274.

  device’s location: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 110.

  grenades and knives: Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002), 26–28; Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 107–108, 167; Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar, 275–283.

  holed up in the region: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 114–116.

  Cambone, an aide to Rumsfeld: Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld’s War: The Untold Story of America’s Anti-Terrorist Commander (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), 3–4, 20–21.

  proposal to a group of officers: Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of the Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 92.

  much of Delta Force: Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar, 169.

  “… targets he knows are empty”: Pete Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2008), 152.

  “… slipping away!!”: Berntsen and Pazzullo, Jawbreaker, 277, 290.

  needed no modification: Crumpton, Art of Intelligence, 258–259.

  enemy’s lair: United States Special Operations Command History, 1987–2007 (MacDill Air Force Base, FL: USSOCOM, 2007), 95.

  “… out of the trenches”: Dalton Fury, Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 113.

  obtain food and drink: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 117–118.

  destruction by strike aircraft: United States Special Operations Command History, 96–97.

  slipped out unhurt: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 118–119.

  recently deployed 10th Mountain Division and 187th Infantry Regiment: Lester W. Grau and Dodge Billingsley, Operation Anaconda: America’s First Major Battle in Afghanistan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 106; Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (New York: Berkley Books, 2005), 45–48; Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 137.

  No, said Blaber, Delta Force: Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 19–30.

  keep his men in the game: Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 80–81, 141–142; Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 227.

  satellite radio: Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 254.

  detect the glint tape: Ellen Crean, “Friendly Fire,” CBS News, March 12, 2003; Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 200–206; Call, Danger Close, 63–64.

  “… Where are the planes?”: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 286; Grau and Billingsley, Operation Anaconda, 138; Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 207–208.

  easiest method of escape: Grau and Billingsley, Operation Anaconda, 191–193; Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 214–215.

  evacuated by air: Headquarters United States Air Force, Operation Anaconda: An Air Power Perspective, February 7, 2005, 62–66; Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 143–154.

  familiar with the area: Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 273.

  withdrawn from the battlefield: Naylor, Not A Good Day to Die, 371–372.

  “… get in there tonight”: Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 277.

  detected nothing: Andrew N. Milani, “Pitfalls of Technology: A Case Study of the Battle on Takur Ghar Mountain,” US Army War College, 2003, 8.

  “Go! Go! Go!”: Malcolm MacPherson, Roberts Ridge: A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan (New York: Delacorte Press, 2005), 16–24.

  ten feet below: Milani, “Pitfalls of Technology,” 11–12; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 29–30.

  “… go back in!”: MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 30.

  Mack later described it: Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 314.

  taking no chances: MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 89–93.

  stopped breathing: Post-battle investigations found considerable evidence suggesting that Chapman was still alive when the SEAL team left him, and that he was killed in an ensuing firefight with hostile fighters. In August 2016, the Air Force concluded that newly refined analysis of grainy overhead drone footage showed that Chapman had indeed been alive and had continued to fight on alone until he was shot dead by an enemy machine gun. Sean D. Naylor and Christopher Drew, “SEAL Team 6 and a Man Left for Dead: A Grainy Picture of Valor,” New York Times, August 27, 2016.

  aborting the landing: Grau and Billingsley, Operation Anaconda, 247–248; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 144–145, 156–157.

  slopes of the mountain: Headquarters United States Air Force, Operation Anaconda, 75–76; Nate Self, Two Wars: One Hero’s Fight on Two Fronts—Abroad and Within (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2008), 176–179; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 184–189.

  “… watch Stebner get killed”: MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 237–239.

  “… don’t feel safe”: Self, Two Wars, 231–232; Grau and Billingsley, Operation Anaconda, 269–270; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 247–248, 256–257; Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 364–366.

  several others weeping: Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 367; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 262; Self, Two Wars, 239.

  cost any more men their lives: Briscoe et al., Weapon of Choice, 318; MacPherson, Roberts Ridge, 266–267; Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 367; Self, Two Wars, 245.

  dead or gone: Grau and Billingsley, Operation Anaconda, 293–330.

  death toll at 800: Wright et al., A Different Kind of War, 173.

  during the fracas: Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 375–376.

  any war in US history: Tim Dy
house, “‘Black Ops’ Shine in Iraq War: The Scope of U.S. Special Operations in the Iraq War Was the Largest in American Military History,” VFW Magazine, February 1, 2004.

  exclusively for the Rangers: Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), 653.

  don the black one: Bradley Graham, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 255.

  conventional forces would support them: Linda Robinson, Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 193–292; Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press 2004), 402–405; Thomas K. Adams, The Army After Next: The First Post-Industrial Army (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 155–156.

  keep Saddam from sabotaging them: Charles H. Briscoe, Kenneth Finlayson, Robert W. Jones Jr., Cherilyn A. Walley, A. Dwayne Aaron, Michael R. Mullins, and James A. Schroder, All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Army Special Operations Forces in Iraq (Fort Bragg, NC: USASOC History Office, 2006), 112, 211–219; Smith, Killer Elite, 250–251.

  not a single Scud was found: Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 335–336.

  ended up supporting conventional units: Briscoe et al., All Roads Lead to Baghdad, 142–148, 154–163; Robinson, Masters of Chaos, 253–259.

  without a single American casualty: Richard B. Andres, “The Afghan Model in Northern Iraq,” in Thomas G. Mahnken and Thomas A. Keaney, eds., War in Iraq: Planning and Execution (London: Routledge, 2007), 60–64; Briscoe et al., All Roads Lead to Baghdad, 194; Frank Antenori and Hans Halberstadt, Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006).

  sixth-floor office: Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 332–334; Briscoe et al., All Roads Lead to Baghdad, 292–304.

  come to know in Afghanistan: Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 329–330.

  final defense of the Iraqi capital: Kevin M. Woods, Michael R. Pease, Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray, and James G. Lacey, Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam’s Senior Leadership (Norfolk, VA: Joint Center for Operational Analysis, 2006), 131–132, 142–145.

  cross the airwaves: Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me, 8–12.

  CHAPTER 9: COUNTERINSURGENCY AND COUNTERTERRORISM

  formerly omnipotent man: Steve Russell, We Got Him! A Memoir of the Hunt and Capture of Saddam Hussein (New York: Threshold, 2011), 307–323; Eric Maddox and Davin Seay, Mission: Black List #1 (New York: Harper, 2008), 221–255; Phil Zabriskie, “Inside Saddam’s Hideout,” Time, December 15, 2003; “Candy Bars, Hot Dogs and Dirty Dishes in Saddam’s Hideaway,” Associated Press, December 15, 2003; Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama (New York: Pantheon, 2012), 38.

  pulled it down: Peter Maass, “The Toppling: How the Media Inflated a Minor Moment in a Long War,” New Yorker, January 10, 2011.

  “… way to freedom”: “Liberated Iraqis Cheer Troops,” Washington Times, April 10, 2003.

  “… face of Saddam Hussein”: William Safire, “Jubilant V-I Day,” New York Times, April 10, 2003.

  six months’ time: Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 458–460.

  erupted in the summer of 2003: Mark Moyar, A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 214–219.

  troops to attack: Rob Schultheis, Waging Peace: A Special Operations Team’s Battle to Rebuild Iraq (New York: Gotham, 2005); R. Alan King, Twice Armed: An American Soldier’s Battle for Hearts and Minds in Iraq (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2006); David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb, United States Special Operations Forces (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 28–36.

  CT for short: Charles H. Briscoe, Kenneth Finlayson, Robert W. Jones Jr., Cherilyn A. Walley, A. Dwayne Aaron, Michael R. Mullins, and James A. Schroder, All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Army Special Operations Forces in Iraq (Fort Bragg, NC: USASOC History Office, 2006), 423.

  gunning down terrorists: Interviews with SOF veterans, 2014–2016.

  elite Emergency Response Brigade: Kevin Wells, “Eight Years of Combat FID: A Retrospective on Special Forces in Iraq,” Special Warfare, January-March 2012; Dick Couch, The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Winning of Al-Anbar (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), 72–73, 96–97; Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Iraqi Security Forces: Special Operations Force Program Is Achieving Goals, But Iraqi Support Remains Critical to Success,” March 25, 2010, 1–4; Michael O’Brien, “Foreign Internal Defense in Iraq: ARSOF Core Tasks Enable Iraqi Combating-Terrorism Capability,” Special Warfare, January-March 2012.

  “… doomed to failure”: Sean Naylor, “More Than Door Kickers,” Armed Forces Journal, March 2006.

  “… can do manhunts”: Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of the Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 165.

  available to the regional combatant commanders: Jennifer Kibbe, “The Rise of the Shadow Warriors,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 2 (March/April 2004), 102–115; Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld’s War: The Untold Story of America’s Anti-Terrorist Commander (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), 22–23; Thomas K. Adams, The Army After Next: The First Post-Industrial Army (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 199–201.

  support SOCOM’s operations: Glenn W. Goodman Jr., “Expanded Role for Elite Commandos,” Armed Forces Journal, February 2003.

  large bedrooms: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 226–228.

  prima-donna character of special operations forces: Interviews with US Army and Marine Corps officers, 2004–2010.

  keeping watch over the battlefield: Mark Urban, Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret Special Forces War in Iraq (London: Little, Brown, 2010), 78–79.

  suffocate the insurgency: Donald P. Wright and Timothy R. Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008), 225–227.

  “… threat to our forces”: Rumsfeld, Bremer Pentagon Briefing, July 24, 2003, IIP Digital, US Department of State, http://iipdigital.usembassy.govl.

  “… terrorist acts in Iraq”: “Capture Should Speed Progress in Iraqi Politics,” Washington Times, December 14, 2003.

  relieve his own team sergeant for laziness: Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task (New York: Penguin, 2013), 33.

  “… ever come across,” Lamb remembered: Dexter Filkins, “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War,” New York Times Magazine, October 14, 2009.

  “… attitudes or arrogance”: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 52.

  “… seen up close”: Ibid., 65.

  low expectations: Urban, Task Force Black, 35.

  pressed ahead: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 272; McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 149, 161–162.

  “… disrupting the enemy in foreign lands”: Walter Pincus and Dan Morgan, “Congress Supports Doubling Special Operations Funding,” Washington Post, June 5, 2003.

  further targeting information: Michael Flynn, Rich Juergens, and Thomas L. Cantrell, “Employing ISR: SOF Best Practices,” Joint Force Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2008): 56–61; Spencer Ackerman, “How Special Ops Copied Al-Qaida to Kill It,” WIRED, September 9, 2011.

  “… ambassadors and advocates”: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 276; Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing, Secret Weapon: High-Value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2011), 16–18.

  “… eliminate somebody”: Yochi Dreazen, “Joint Special Forces, CIA Hit Teams Are McChrystal’s Legacy,” National Journal, September 1, 2011; Naylor, Relentless Strike, 255–
256; Urban, Task Force Black, 82–83.

  “… Do it”: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 155.

  three hundred per month in 2006: Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Penguin, 2015), 218.

  “… this is their life”: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 275.

  “… perform at that level”: Ibid., 275.

  body parts of the targets: Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), 228; Urban, Task Force Black, 156.

  forces on patrol: Couch, The Sheriff of Ramadi, 40–41, 68–69, 167–180.

  target the insurgent leaders: Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 197–198; Lamb and Munsing, Secret Weapon, 30.

  rather than launching raids themselves: Gregory Wilson, “Anatomy of a Successful COIN Operation: OEF-Philippines and the Indirect Approach,” Military Review 86, no. 6 (November-December 2006): 38–48.

  ramp up operations beyond Iraq and Afghanistan: Harold Kennedy, “SOCOM Creates New Hub for Fighting War on Terror,” Defense Media Network, February 2004.

  “… past few years?” he demanded: Bradley Graham, “Shortfalls of Special Operations Command Are Cited,” Washington Post, November 17, 2005.

  “… micro standpoint”: Andrew deGrandpre, “Task Force Violent: The Unforgiven,” Military Times, March 12, 2015.

  “special operations capable”: John P. Piedmont, Det One: U.S. Marine Corps U.S. Special Operations Command Detachment (Washington, DC: US Marine Corps History Division, 2010), 8–20.

  pro-American Iraqi leader: Bing West, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah (New York: Bantam, 2005), 208–251; Piedmont, Det One, 48–71; Moyar, A Question of Command, 229–230.