osama bin laden & Squad 13

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks on America, President Bush announced the creation of a new group of special ops personnel with one mandate - To capture or kill bin laden and all his top associates. The name of this group according to Mr. Bush, is Squad 13. Their mandate was to track bin laden and his associates "without borders".

Today I read the following:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates submitted a request to the White House at least four months ago aimed at allowing U.S. Special Operations forces more access and greater ability to chase Al Qaeda in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions, but that request has so far gone unanswered, FOX News learned Monday.

www.foxnews.com...

Apparently Bush is blocking this request and the reason is that it is too risky.

The same man who created Squad 13 to do exactly what Mr. Gates is proposing.

In any case, after watching the one and only announcement about squad 13 and it's mandate, I have not heard anything more about it.
Does it still exist?
Did it ever exist?
etc...

I have asked military friends and they have nothing.
I have researched as much as possible and found nothing.

Does anyone have any information or thoughts about this???

Thanks

im not shure about any secret special ops group but if there is a squad 13 i don't even think natives of the tribal territories would know exactly who or what they are, if they operate anything like the delta squad they're in and out. so you wouldn't hear about them until the war is over and some tom clancy like book comes out. but then again you can never tell what ol' george and friends are up to

Originally posted by declassified
im not shure about any secret special ops group but if there is a squad 13 i don't even think natives of the tribal territories would know exactly who or what they are, if they operate anything like the delta squad they're in and out. so you wouldn't hear about them until the war is over and some tom clancy like book comes out. but then again you can never tell what ol' george and friends are up to

Good point. You'd also have to think that a special ops group with only one mandate could turn up something in 6 years.

And on a side note, pres. bush also has said that his goal is to capture or kill bin laden before he leaves office. That isn't a very long time and he hasn't been able to do it for 6 years previous. Makes you wonder if he knows where bin laden is operating out of and is holding off taking him until there is a political reason to do so?????

Thanks for you input

[edit on 2-7-2008 by jfj123]

reply to post by jfj123

Does it still exist?

There are some who argue that it was a really just a political move to form this group, not a military one. You know, get the people thinking that there's some super-elite group out there actively hunting bin-Laden.

Then there are those who believe that Squad13 was just a cover for the real group, who's mandate was not to actually kill bin-Laden, but to maintain contact and open lines of communication. Some reported activities of Squad13 have been quite brutal and seemingly not in accordance with the objectives of the rest of our military. Shadow ops and intelligence ops really are the realm of smoke and mirrors, so it's impossible for us to discern the truth here really.

In the end though, I believe that Squad13 was disbanded due to unwanted attention by the press, and a new group was formed which still operates today in a more clandestine fashion.


[edit on 7/2/0808 by jackinthebox]