50 Percent of US Military Casualties A-stan are SF

While doing some research on secret involvement of Dutch special forces in Iraq prior to the invasion, I found something rather remarkable:

Secret Military Support of the Dutch government

‘The Special Forces losses in Afghanistan and Iraq are tremendous’

We started researching the background of the American requests to several allies to send Special Forces to Iraq and Afghanistan? Are the American Special Forces confronted with big losses? It was not easy to find concrete information on this question. The Pentagon told us that they could not provide us with figures. The American Special Forces expert Tim Brown of ‘Globalsecurity.org’ explained to us why the Pentagon tries to keep the numbers of the Special Forces losses classified. Brown said that combat related deaths sometimes even are covered up, for instance as training accidents. "They just say: ‘They were on a training mission and their helicopter crashed.’", Brown stated.

We started an intensive research on the Internet. We found a website called Lunaville with figures of all American military killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, exclusively based on releases of the Pentagon or the American armed forces. Besides the name of some of the casualties the special forces background was mentioned. But a lot of Special Forces casualties were not mentioned as Special Forces. So we had to look further. With the name of every victim we started to search. We came to hundreds of websites: local newspapers, local organizations, private sites, veteran organizations, military sites and so on.

A former Special Forces officer was willing to help us after we guaranteed that we would keep his identity secret. Together with him we found out that more then 50% of the killed American military in Afghanistan were Special Forces and nearly 10% of the American casualties in Iraq. That the losses for the American Special Forces must be dramatic became clear when we looked to the wounded. Here, we had neither figures nor lists of names. But from the US military hospital in Landstuhl (Germany) we got the total figures of all American military that were evacuated to this hospital from Afghanistan and Iraq. The total figure until April 20, 2004, the day that we were there, was: more then 2.300 for Afghanistan and more then 11.400 for Iraq. The former Special Forces officer who helped us with the interpretations said that it was allowed to assume that the Special Forces percentage under the wounded would be similar to the percentage under the dead. So, we could calculate that the total losses of US Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq between the autumn of 2001 and spring of 2004 must be more then 2.200. Precisely our calculation came to 114 killed American Special Forces and 2.112 evacuated to the Landstuhl hospital.

We did not succeed to get any official comment on this calculation. But defence expert Professor Rob de Wijk from the Clingendael Institute in The Hague was willing to have a close look at our findings. He called the results of our investigation "a revelation" and explained: "The number of Special Forces, the elite troops of every army, are limited. So, these losses in Afghanistan and Iraq are tremendous. This explains why the US is putting so much pressure on its allies, including The Netherlands, to send Special Forces to Afghanistan or Iraq."

[edit on 2-9-2008 by Mdv2]

reply to post by Mdv2


They don't sound that special if they're getting pegged all the time.

I'd like to see some real actual figures on this, not anonymous sources that can never be cross-examined. Until real figures emerge (which will never happen), this is pure conjecture.

Makes all kind of sense to me considering the stated and not stated mission in Afghanistan. U.S. Army SF teams are set out across the whole of the embattled regions with 8 to 12 man teams using Afghani troops as their force multiplier. Within these teams sometimes called "A" teams, there are no other forces assigned with them - just the SF qualified troops. It is more than reasonable to expect the greatest losses in Afghanistan be contributed to SF. Wouldn't it?

Vance

Percentages are useless without some raw figures.

The Special Forces are so small that I'm finding this to be a little hard to believe, unless the numbers of fatalities in Afghanistan are very small.

Frankly, this kind of statement is never a good sign of good data:

A former Special Forces officer was willing to help us after we guaranteed that we would keep his identity secret.

www.bits.de...

Maybe that's true, but I like to believe that Special Forces officers are smart enough not to trust journalists, even Dutch journalists.

reply to post by Mdv2


Very interesting information, I have been wondering if we actually are getting the real figures of the death coming from Afghanistan and Iraq or they have been covered to avoid mass hysteria.

Great article of information.

I don't find it all that surprising, the SF guys have done the brunt of the fighting in Afghanistan since the beginning. It really is the kind of small-unit warfare and COIN stuff they specialize in.

reply to post by Mdv2

The US special forces in Irak and Afghanistan haven't been playing "tourists" there.
They were trained killers, uniformed US STATE TERRORISTS sent by
BUSH II to occupy foreign Muslim lands under dubious pretexts.

Its a tribute to the Iraqis and Afghans resisting US agression on their homeland that so many US killers have been destroyed in spite of the obscene imbalance of fire power between to the two sides.
Forget about bull# propaganda such as fight against "terrorism" and for "democracy" for suckers.

I;ve heard Marcus Lutrell make a very similar a statement:

www.squidoo.com...

They are the ones put in the situation of being directly in the path of enemy contact. They go and find the enemy, not wait to be attacked. It would make sense since we use more SF teams in that enviornment. LURRP, RECON, the real dangerous part of being in a small group warfare among large contingents of enemy forces almost always results in more casualties among the SF troops.

Zindo