Who you gonna call?
The missing American Wizzo whose plane was shot down during a combat mission in Iran was rescued from a mountain cranny by US commandos. And not just any commandos: SEAL Team 6.
After ejecting from his F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday, the airman, injured and carrying only a 9mm, followed a rocky escarpment for some two miles before settling into what a CIA official described to the American media Sunday as a mountainside “crevice.”
Apprised, no doubt, that the IRGC was extremely keen to capture an American service member, the airman refrained from using his beacon, relying instead on a satellite-linked survival device for spotty communications.
The CIA bought time by, among other things, running a deception campaign designed to convince the Guards that the stranded airman was already rescued and being transported out of the country in a vehicle.
That misinformation campaign created dispersion — it scattered the IRGC’s search-and-capture efforts by forcing the Guards to scour a wider area.
Meanwhile, the CIA used unspecified techniques (“unique capabilities,” as the agency put it) to establish the airman’s location. Once established, his position was relayed to the Pentagon.
After Donald Trump ordered a rescue mission, JSOC made the only call you can make when you need to extract an injured man from a hillside alcove dozens of miles inside Iran: Task Force Blue.
Backed by significant air cover, including “dozens” of fighter jets and helicopters, and assisted by what sounds like an all-hands-on-deck CIA support effort, the world’s most elite special operators found and extracted the airman.
US warplanes struck nearby IRGC positions as the operation unfolded, and there were reports of a brief gunfight. In addition, the Pentagon had to blow up two of its own transport planes which somehow ended up disabled and marooned at at makeshift base near Isfahan. An ad hoc decision was made to dispatch a trio of separate planes to ferry everyone to safety.
According to The White House, there were no US casualties on the rescue team, and the airman is expected to survive.
If it was embarrassing for the US to lose the F-15 (and it plainly was), the successful rescue operation was an embarrassment for the Guards who initially suggested the Pentagon was lying.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari — profiled here on Thursday — called the whole thing a ruse. “The so-called rescue operation, planned as a deception and escape mission at an abandoned airport, was completely foiled,” he said, calling Trump’s claims “empty rhetoric.”
“The reality on the ground demonstrates the superior position of Iran’s powerful armed forces,” Zolfaghari went on, before sharing compelling evidence that the moon landing was faked and offering conclusive proof that Tupac is indeed alive and living in Barbados with a 90-year-old Elvis.
Jokes aside, there’s something to be said for Zolfaghari’s posturing. The very fact that Iran shot down a US warplane in the first place, leaving a US soldier stranded in the mountains for nearly two days, is a propaganda coup.
And when you tally up the cost of that plane and the disabled transport aircraft the Pentagon was forced to give up this weekend, US taxpayers just took a pretty big hit atop the already enormous cost of the month-long engagement.
But the story on Sunday — obviously and undeniably — is that the IRGC missed the chance to get an American POW and joined SEAL Team 6’s “posterized” list. (“Happens to the best of us,” Osama said, from the bottom of the Arabian Sea.)
And so the DEVGRU mythos grows.
Wars cost money and no one has spent more on them since the mid 60’s than the US. That might be why our infrastructure is not aging well, our healthcare is flea-bitten and the bottom 50% of the population are forced to bear the cost.
Now I’ve got 2 more good reasons to visit Barbados.
My dad was taught hard-hat diving in Barbados in the early 1940s
All politics aside, it is a pretty frickin awesome rescue mission. Definitely fits a Hollywood script. Does Michael Bay still make movies?
Now we’ll get to see if we’ve gone full North Korea if the White House tries to explain rumors of Trump’s absence this weekend by claiming he was secretly on the mission with seal team 6. They’ll turn it into the next installment in the MAGA “Sound of Freedom” film series.
Similar thoughts. I can’t wait to see the movie. I guarantee Paramount/WBD has already pulled together an executive team to begin production.
As to your second paragraph, CNN reported that Trump skipped his planned golf outing & spent Saturday in the West Wing.
Trump could play Trump. Tom Cruise could play Pete Hegseth. Do it in the style of Tropic Thunder. 🙂
Turns out the West Wing thing may have been a wee porkie. He may have actually been in Walter Reed [non-disclosed].
If anyone hasn’t seen it, Lone Survivor is a good watch. I did not serve, and I’ve never been to Afghanistan, but it struck me as realistic. And intense, entertaining film.
Yeah, but that wasn’t Team 6. That was Team 10. Team 6 would’ve killed all 150 Taliban with nine bullets. Then they would’ve snuck into the village on the underbellies of four mountain goats, grabbed the target, gone back up the hill, fashioned wings from tree limbs and woven-together leaves, then flown themselves and the target to Bagram Air Base.
Clearly, my Michael Bay reference has awoken H’s true passion: writing action movie scripts where we measure the quality based on the number and size of explosions.
I remember an advice years ago , that the ‘ suckiness ‘ of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.
1-2 exceptions , but its an advise I have found to be mostly accurate
More deception and lies on behalf of the IRGC. Even I know Elvis & Tupac are residing in Trinidad & Tobago.
Excellent!
Incredible. Does not matter how one feels about Trump!
Furthermore, I had to read this post (originally posted 3 or 4 hours ago) of Trump’s twice because I couldn’t believe he actually said this, let alone in writing, but I have to admit: it certainly captures the sentiment. 🙂
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump is emotional and impulsive.
I read reports (flimsy ones, to be sure) that the two shootdowns and missing airman were factors in US decision to escalate to hitting Iran’s power infrastructure (granted the threat hasn’t been carried out, but Israel did hit Iran’s petrochemical facility).
I speculate that the success of this rescue mission may embolden the US to launch Operation Dig Out Nuclear Materials.
Friday will be $200 Oil Day and $7 Gasoline Day, all wrapped up into one, in the USA! There will be nothing like it! Welcome your Global Recession, you crazy voters, or – well um actually there will be no “or” – JUST WATCH!
I hope so. Therefore it is not likely to happen.
Yeah I, um, didn’t (and still don’t) know what to say about that (Trump’s Sunday Truth). I realize “respect” is absolutely not the right word, but… well I think I put it best late last month when I said, “You gotta hand it to him. I don’t know what ‘it’ is. But something.”
24 Hours. That airman has more than my respect. It is an incredible feat. In a war a long time ago, in a different place and time, I was a young, aspiring pilot that went through what you guys call SERE. In certaim ways, that made me who I am today. It was a dead serious exercise, just like yours are. During that training, I got an an inkling of the physiological impact of having to evade. This is far, far more than physical skill it is a testament to this guy’s training, but above all, his will to survive. We all have it, but it takes a certain kind of individual to push it to the limit. No matter what I think of the situation in general, this man is an example of what we can and should try to be. Resilience does not come from bravery, foolish or otherwise. It comes from a deep knowledge of what scares us and what we can do with it. 24 Hours on his own. Just incredible.
25th Amendment, inshallah.