Fog of war?
(Washington Times) — The top NATO commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that the doomed Navy SEALs mission that claimed 30 American lives was intended to stop fleeing Taliban fighters and not necessarily a rescue mission as first reported.
After the crash Saturday, news reports quoted NATO officials as saying commanders dispatched the CH-47 Chinook helicopter with 22 SEALs onboard to rescue an Army Ranger team pinned down by the Taliban.
The huge twin-engine CH-47 was downed by a rocket-propelled grenade as it approached a “hot” landing zone.
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, told Pentagon reporters via a teleconference from Kabul that the mission was to stop Taliban fighters from fleeing in the Wardak province’s Tangi Valley.
“As this mission unfolded, we saw some significant success occurring on the objective itself, but there were elements that were escaping,” Gen. Allen said.
“And in the course of their attempt to depart the objective, we committed a force to contain that element from getting out. And of course, in the process of that, the aircraft was struck by an RPG and crashed.”
Instead being pinned down, as NATO officials first said, the Ranger unit was winning the fight and wanted more troops to stop the enemy retreat.
The Washington Times has reported that some in the special operations community are privately critical of the mission. They wonder why so many SEALs were put in one helicopter instead of two. The sources also ask why the command dispatched a CH-47 instead of the special operations version, the MH-47, flown by the highly trained 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.