The Silent Warriors
Special forces are having an outsize impact in Iraq
KHAWR AZ ZUBAYR, IRAQ--The small, gray inflatable boat rounded the prow of a rusty green and white trawler. Crouching low inside were U.S. Navy SEALs and their partners, Special Warfare Combat Crewmen, wearing wetsuits and goggles and packing .45-caliber long-barreled pistols. As they trained their M-4 automatic rifles at the trawler's deck, a second inflatable boat rushed in, its American and Polish crew tossing grappling hooks and rope ladders to the rail. With an Arab linguist shouting instructions at the trawler's cowed Iraqi crew, the special operators stormed the ship to search for mines, weapons, or soldiers. The teams had seized and sunk a trawler loaded with 12 Manta mines just days earlier. This one being clean, they left to hunt for another target.
From this oily channel leading to the gulf port of Umm Qasr, to the western badlands of Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad where the battle rages for control of the capital, an estimated 10,000 special operations forces (SOF) are fighting an unseen war. They are training--and fighting alongside--Kurdish peshmerga ("those who face death") who have been battling the Baghdad regime for years. They have routed Ansar al-Islam terrorists linked to al Qaeda in the mountains near Sulaymaniyah. They have hunted for Scud missiles along the Jordanian border, secured airfields for resupply, seized oil terminals and oil fields before they could be destroyed, and taken down an observation post in southern Iraq to blind Iraqis for the war's first hours. President Bush, speaking at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, where their command is located, called them America's "silent warriors." Indeed, the work is both daring and dangerous. Late last week, three special operations troops were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack 120 miles northwest of Baghdad. While the majority of SOF are Americans, including Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, and Air Force special operators, they have been joined by British Special Air Service and Special Boat Service units, and Polish and Australian special forces as well.
The commando action with the most dramatic impact would be the extermination of Saddam Hussein. It is believed that special forces have run high-speed surveillance missions into the heart of Iraq to pinpoint targets, including the regime leadership. But the existence of supersecret forces used for such missions, including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, is not even officially confirmed. Their best-known accomplishment so far is the storming of a hospital last week in Nasiriyah to free an American prisoner, Pfc. Jessica Lynch (box, Page 30). Some moments of that raid, as well as night-vision video of special forces taking control of an Iraqi dam and a presidential palace, were later released by the military. But otherwise, virtually everything they have done has been kept in the shadows.
Still, U.S. News reporters have had the chance to observe several operations in action. Typically, the forces rely on lightness, speed, surprise, and technology to get the job done. The SEALs and Special Boat Teams operating in the channels leading to Umm Qasr, for instance, boarded 90 vessels in less than one week. They have worked so closely and for so long with their boat-team partners that they effortlessly read nonverbal signals across the channel's choppy waters.
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