Imaginary warfare and non-existent enemies

CIA Opens Books with Surprises for Lee Wanta, Libya and More

Lee Wanta next to Alexander Hamilton at the U.S. Treasury

Reagan Era To Be Declassified

Something unusual has happened.  An era is going to be uncovered, a time of BCCI, Iran Contra, the fall of the Soviet Union, one of corruption and triumph.  What we know is this, the files are being opened and interviews never before authorized are scheduled.

More curious, perhaps the most curious of all, the FBI is notifying former intelligence agents and officials that the project has the official ‘green light.’ 

The fist interviews and, perhaps the first book, will outline relations between President Reagan and Emil Lee Wanta, letting a few into the dream world of White House insiders.

I have had my perceptions of Reagan shattered more than once.  The official cover story, the myth sold by the Bush clan, that Reagan came into office, was almost immediately gunned down and for the next 8 years, George H. W. Bush was “defacto” president while Reagan remained a “doddering fool.”

I spent an evening going over notes with Lee.  His memory of the period is volumes, much of which isn’t going to be of interest to many.  While White House intelligence coordinator, Wanta worked in a grey environment of jockeying for influence, internal strife and one thing he makes clear:

President Reagan despised and distrusted his vice president and refused to allow him to be briefed on anything.   Reagan felt he was saddled with a potential “rogue operator” who would use his experience as former CIA director to use the White House as a platform for personal business interests inconsistent with national policy.

One of Reagan's Best Lines

Of the issues which have current standing, Libya will be high on the list, for awhile at least. 

Tony Blair is doing the rounds in Tripoli today for JP Morgan, the Rothschild partner that worked so closely with Gaddafi on his plans to put together a series of Banks based on the African Union. 

The deals offered, if things go as expected, will be intended to impact the new Libya as they did the old, bleeding the majority of oil cash into private accounts and leaving a pittance for the people. 

This was Gaddafi’s policy and it may well be the policy of the new government as well, if writers like Franklin Lamb are right.

During talks with Wanta I was able to verify some issues involving Gaddafi.  Gaddafi was placed in office in 1969 by the CIA as personal protege of Director Richard Helms. 

Helms admired Gaddafi greatly and valued the relationship between the US and Libya as one of the most critical and strategic for America during that vital period. 

The cover stories, that rogue CIA agents were training IRA terrorists in Libya got a laugh out of Wanta. 

“This was Gladio, of course, the bastardized anti-Communist program that set up terror organizations across Europe as a “fall back” defense in case of a successful Soviet invasion.  Libya was the staging ground for Gladio, a program operated, not out of Italy as reported, but out of Switzerland, by the ‘P2,’ a Freemason organization that eventually operated in 26 countries, across not only Europe but Latin America as well.”

“Later on, it was the P2 that had me arrested in Switzerland, put in solitary confinement and emptied the US Treasury accounts I managed, hundreds of millions of dollars.  By that time, they had become little more than organized crime, particularly after they had murdered so many people during the Italian elections.”

Filling out the history of the Reagan era, in particular, the project to “crash the ruble,” the financial trading scheme run by Wanta through the Department of Treasury that netted trillions in assets that Reagan intended to be spent paying off the national debt, as Wanta relates. 

 In actuality, it was much more than that, with Treasury getting control of $23 trillion dollars leaving $4.3 trillion to Wanta’s companies.

This would all sound imaginary if it weren’t for the court filings backing it all up and the arrests, Wanta in particular, and murders surrounding the disposition of these funds, which represent the combined assets of the American people.

The money exists, has existed, enough to erase our national debt.  The concept of Wanta’s own funds, seized by the Federal Reserve, $4.3 trillion dollars less $1.7 trillion in taxes owed, immediately put into the “General Fund” is frightening to some.  This kind of money is unimaginable power, particularly in the hands of someone jailed for failing to be adequately dishonest.

Wanta, a devout Catholic, lay clergy, is a simple working class kid from Milwaukee, one who has shunned the trappings of wealth though he, at one time, controlled the greatest fortune in the history of our beleaguered planet.

Leo E. Wanta - Signed by Ronald Reagan

Sometimes we review accounts and where they have gone, some in billions, the names of powerful political families known to all are tied to the looting of these accounts, some names predictable, some surprising. 

Most embarrassing are bank security photographs of high ranking government officials, cabinet officers, looting bank accounts held in trust for the American people.

 All of the money involved, taxpayer funds, all belonging to the American people, more than enough to fund a high speed rail system for America or housing for a century of homeless veterans.

Ah, but back to Libya and the “teaser” Wanta left me:

“I had some familiarity with Gaddafi during the late 70s and early 80s. 

I had, by  1982, been able to confirm that our “hostility” toward Gaddafi was a CIA deception plan tied to his usefulness in assisting operations around the world, much as with Osama bin Laden.”

There is a rationale for Gaddafi to consider the UN action against him, based on his history of cooperation with NATO, a betrayal in fact.  How could a man, so heavily invested in the Rothschild banks, a silent partner in the Carlyle Group with Bush, Baker, John Major, Frank Carlucci, be attacked by NATO?

Then again, I watched Ambassador Mark Siljander, a Reagan favorite, friend of Baker and Edwin Meese indicted by the Bush administration under circumstances, were I allowed to mention them (I serve on his legal team) as incredulous.  I am showing restraint here.

Steve Rosen - Weissman - AIPAC

I look at the indictment of Steve Rosen, former head of the Rand Corporation, member of the Bush/Rice National Security Council arrested for spying for Israel. 

News reports fail to mention Rosen’s position as top Bush advisor on the Middle East but, instead, mention his later employment with AIPAC, the Israeli lobby. 

Rosen sued AIPAC for firing him, they claimed they couldn’t have an “accused spy’ working for them.

His claim?  As AIPAC is a spy organization, firing me is the height of absurdity. 

Rosen’s case was dropped and investigations against other Bush advisors, in fact ALL Bush advisors were dropped after a 3 year FBI “sting” operation that included wiretapping the White House. 

“Play by play” of the tapes included, among other things, passing on nuclear secrets, done by people currently, not only ‘free as birds’ but chirping to the news every day.  Moreover, dozens of hours of FBI transcripts cover sexual liaisons of what is typically termed an “unnatural” nature, described in punishing detail and tedious repetition.  

The prosectutions were halted, the FBI agents reassigned and the targets, Rosen the least of them, still, to a large extent, run America, certainly run the Republican Party.

But we still aren’t getting to that “teaser” on Libya.  How do I say this?  

MK Ultra - Survivors Conference

According to Trowbridge Ford, Reagan was told by his vice president, George H.W. Bush that John Hinckley, the man who tried to murder him 69 days into office, the most obvious CIA “MKUlta” case we know of, was working for Gaddafi.

Ford has put some top level intelligence on Veterans Today but this just didn’t jell.  Hinckley’s family was directly tied to Bush.  They were family friends. 

I saw nothing that could have tied Gaddafi to this.  Ford went on further stating that Gaddafi planned and executed the Berlin club bombings at the behest of the Soviet Union and, in return, suffered a devastating air attack at the hands of the United States, the 1986 bombing of Tripoli.

I am now told that all the groups Gaddafi was said to control, the IRA or a group pretending to be “IRA,”  the Red Brigades and others had been working for NATO all along as part of the Gladio program, the whole thing was a NATO “cover and deception” program, an integral part of the Cold War. 

Thus, the “retaliation” against Gaddafi was nothing more than theatre as were other incidents of pretended confrontation with the long term CIA asset, as previously stated, a strong parallel to Osama bin Laden.

The CIA’s version of events is different, more than a bit.

Operation Gladio - Taxpayer Funded Terror

The “disco bombings” were not Gaddafi but rather “P2/Gladio” operations, part of a series of bombings that began in 1969 and went on into the 1990s.

The reason for the attack on Libya is classified, not “up for grabs,” not yet anyway.  I will keep working on that but, rather than simply invent something, best tell you that I just don’t know.  What I do know is this:

The 1986 bombing of Tripoli that supposedly killed “Gaddafi’s daughter,” a subject of much conjecture, was planned between the Reagan administration and Gaddafi. 

Gaddafi agreed to the bombing to provide him with “needed cover and credibility.”

The operation began with the landing of Special Forces personnel in Tripoli.  They secured the Gaddafi family and arranged for “selected targets.”  Those included the communications antenna arrays near the Gaddafi compound, army barracks and an air field.

All targets were “painted” by American Special Forces personnel on the ground working with Libyan permission.  One American plane was lost due to mechanical failure.

The results?

Gaddafi in Italy - Gladio Operations Framed Communists

Gaddafi claimed a great victory over the United States. 

He fired two SCUD missiles at Italy and America continued to blame Gaddafi for terrorism that had nothing to do with him, he continued to be the “front man” for false flag terrorism much as Osama bin Laden was blamed for attacks in Africa and on 9/11 though we were able to confirm that he was on the CIA payroll at the time.

Was Gaddafi ever under total NATO control?  Was he ever a full ally of Israel, a nation he worked closely with on WMD programs?  Why was Libya given so much latitude in keeping its WMD programs alive if all this weren’t true?

Some of the key elements, proof if you choose to accept it, came out recently when former Bush special envoy, David Welch, met with Gaddafi representatives in Cairo, at the Four Seasons Hotel, on August 11, 2011. 

Welch, now head of Bechtel Corporation, the “top of the food chain” when it comes to American multi-national corporations involved in military construction and “big oil” reiterated continued support for Gaddafi, albeit 11th hour.

They May Want Him but Will They Get Him ?

The real discussions, taking into account that Gaddafi was “dead meat” politically, involved the disposition of his billions spread across the banks of Europe, the United States and his defense holdings, partnered with the Bush family.

We still know little about Gaddafi.  Was he really working for an independent Africa, free of western financial machinations or acting as a ‘front man’ for Rothschild interests in Africa? 

That is never going to be known.  We do know the banks he proposed would never have worked, the currency he wanted to put in place, a ‘pan-African’ replacement for the dollar and euro were not supportable with Libya’s tiny gold reserves. 

We also know his partners in the African Union to be among the most corrupt politicians in Africa.

Was his attempt still, taking on what could never be done, still an honest effort?  Will we ever understand Gaddafi, who to this day may well be alive and, under some circumstances, still have a role to play?

Will Gaddafi ever admit his position during the Cold War, was he a CIA asset of simply “playing the grand game” of East v. West?

Special Ops con, imaginary warfare and non-existent enemies

With an election book by a SEAL, real or imaginary, out now, it is time for an honest discussion of “Special Operations” from someone who has actually sat through “mission planning” sessions involving three continents.

Thus far, the quotes I have read, of finding an unidentified old man shot but not dead and then shooting his wounded body repeatedly makes sense.

Any old man would do as lying about who it is can easily be done under cloak of secrecy, like lying about the helicopter crash though photos of the downed “carbon fibre stealth helicopter” were in every paper. Witness also so crash dead, crew and SEALS.  We lied about that too.

Someone may have murdered an old man; we have no idea who neither did they.  The whole thing was staged, go somewhere, kill an old man, claim it is Osama bin Laden, move General Petraeus to CIA and he can’t claim he killed bin Laden and run for president.

The whole thing was a political con.

Then, noting from this recent book that SEALS are obsessed with leaking information, we had a record number of SEAL deaths in an air crash in Afghanistan reported soon after, totaling as many dead SEALS as the entire Vietnam War.

Let’s start with the con of Vietnam.  The US was involved, I am guessing as I am no longer sure of anything, in a Cold War.  Under the surface, however, the world’s banking system, the same one that controls the Federal Reserve, also built up Russia, made deals for their diamonds to join DeBeers “price fixing” and, of course, most of Russia’s spying on America went through Israel and agents like Jonathan Pollard, one of hundreds.

Two things come to mind in Vietnam.  One was the major effort to blame others for the flow of heroin from the Golden Triangle on a single incident where someone put an ounce of heroin in a body being sent home.

The real heroin shipments went by container on US ships, flown into DaNang by planes and helicopters out of Laos.  Money went in, heroin came out.  I have some minor personal knowledge of this.

The other major issue was the “Phoenix Program.”  This involved the killing of thousands of South Vietnamese thought to be “dangerous.” 

The real politics of the time were simple.  The US took over from the French, installed a Catholic government over a country that was 95% Buddhist and the country tried to throw the regime out.  The Diem government, we eventually assassinated him ourselves, was totally corrupt.  Vietnam never had an election, like we really don’t have them here anymore.  I have seen them up close and personal, rigged 100%.

Our enemy in Vietnam?  We fought against the NLF, a wide group of religious and educated people who made up most of the population.  The National Liberation Front was not communist but rather a wide political group that fought the US backed totalitarian regime and its murderous secret police.

Thus, our effort through the “Phoenix Program” to “terminate with extreme prejudice” (our euphemism for murder at the time) every decent person in Vietnam was fairly successful.  Unarmed innocent people make easy targets.

The US had promised, in 1954, to allow the people of Vietnam to have a referendum to form a single nation.  We signed a treaty in Geneva guaranteeing it.

We violated that treaty and a generation of American died.

The government of North Vietnam turned to Russia for aid.  They never liked China, weren’t particularly communist and, historically, had strong ties to the US, having worked closely with us against the Japanese and the French collaborators during World War II. 

We lied about all of that and still do.  North Vietnam would very easily have been a better ally for the US than South Vietnam and if the country were to have been joined together under the rule of the north, things would be like they are now.  They would do business with us, Americans would go there on vacation as thousands do and Vietnam would belong to NO anti-American conspiracy.

A third thing I might mention is about special operations in Vietnam.  Some involved trips in Laos and Cambodia, sightseeing missions, none of which accomplished anything whatsoever and others, these are highly classified, involved trying to capture American defectors who were said to be leading “Viet Cong” groups like the “Q84” company.

The American “renegades” were always described as “black militants” and “Marines.”  I wore out a pair of boots following them or someone around.

Soon afterward, our engorged special operations capability, all with too much time on its hands and years of experience driving around Vietnam in jeeps (Ford build M151 “mighty-mites”), socializing with local young ladies and periodically drifting off into the war where locals would shoot at them from time to time set their eyes on Central America.

Other than Costa Rica, we had several nations with problems.  El Salvador needed to suppress newspapers, a democratic movement that wanted to end slave labor, Guatemala wanted to implement genocide to kill several hundred thousand “Indians” and Nicaragua had just installed a democratic government replacing the vicious military dictatorship of Somoza, a moronic clown that makes Noriega and the Bush family look like Albert Einstein on steroids.

Our answer there, as in other countries was to organize “death squads” by training local elites in torture and mass murder techniques at the School of the Americas. 

In Guatemala, we supplied the government with hundreds of “tacticals,”  Subaru 4 wheel drive trucks with machineguns mounted on them.  They were taken from village to village, shooting down everything that moved.

In El Salvador, tens of thousands were murdered, anyone demanding freedom of speech and a fair wage.  “Enemy” meant “union member” or anyone with an education.

We hired mercenaries, trained them in Honduras and sent them across Nicaragua to murder teachers, nurses, nuns, doctors and local officials, all of whom we had labeled “Sandinista infrastructure.”

I sat through the meetings where those “death lists” were prepared.

Simultaneously, we hired pilots and small ships to supply them.  Funny thing, they always ended up in Colombia picking up cocaine and never delivered ammunition and medical supplies.

Think “Mena.”  I have some minor personal knowledge of this also.  Many of those involved were close associates in New Orleans of characters in Oliver Stone’s film, JFK.

Throughout South America, tens of thousands “disappeared,” Chile, Argentina, Brazil, the nation that loved cleaning the streets of homeless children, sending them to underwater “orphanages” where sharks would help in their “schooling.”

All of this was done by US “special operations” personnel, some longtime friends, all planned in the US, some overseen by the CIA, some by rogue operatives in the White House under what we now know as “Iran/Contra.”  Where Americans weren’t holding the guns, we stood by watching.

Sometimes we only trained and directed the killings. 

We had been running wars in Africa for years as well, starting in the Congo where Patrice Lumumba of Katanga Province (read “uranium”) had to be killed.  Then UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold got in the way and his plane was shot down.

We propped up military regimes across West Africa, we installed what we thought was a puppet in Libya and, with the British and French, continued to suppress any attempt at democratic reform.

Anyone remember the war in Angola?  I still socialize with people who fought there and in Rhodesia, in fact, I am surrounded by them.

J B Campbell, the author, served in Rhodesia.

Can we talk about Europe?  Our “special operations” units there involved cutting a deal with a Freemason group called “P2.”  This was Operation Gladio (a “Gladio” is the short sword carried by a Roman gladiator)

We trained groups in Europe and other nations, 37 in total, to become an “underground terror network” in case the Soviet Union was to “take over.”

In the end, however, our own friends turned on us and for nearly 20 years blew up trains and buses, public buildings, kidnapped officials, murdered an Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro, attacked NATO intelligence officers, all with our own weapons, our own training and from bases set up by NATO.

The Norwegian incident with Andrew Breveik is a carryover of that time.  He and his friends, Norwegian police, the groups that helped him in Poland, his fellow gang members in Norway, are all 2^nd generation “P2/Gladio” groups.

They are particularly active in France now and, I have it on good authority, are planning a continent wide move against Muslims in Europe, beginning in France.

None of this will ever be reported in the US though it has already started in Marseilles.

Saddam, of course, was an American ally, and as Ron Paul told congress when he read the Wikileaks cable to an empty House of Representatives, the Bush 41 administration had instructed Saddam to move troops into Kuwait.

Then we started a war to kick him out.  This, of course, was in all the papers, look it up.  It won’t be on the internet, “scrubbing” took care of that but it was reported just the same.

Were I to explain Iran, Egypt or Israel, it would take days, suffice it to say, nothing any American has ever been told is remotely true.

Egypt just fired 70 generals, all of whom had been taking orders from Tel Aviv.  They will be replaced with more of the same, I am afraid.

We could then discuss the WMD’s and the Second Gulf War.  Some like to credit Israel with orchestrating the war.  The Israel lobby in Washington did plan it and order the timetable, actually schedule the invasion and helped collect the stooges and liars that supplied the phony intelligence.

I guess they do deserve some blame.

I won’t discuss 9/11 except to say that an airliner hitting one of the twin towers would have the same effect as throwing a ping pong ball against the side of a garbage truck.

So much for my analogies of pretty accurate science and engineering.

Can we start with the “special ops” in Afghanistan?  First of all, there was no viable intelligence that Al Qaeda ever existed much less had training facilities in Afghanistan.  No Al Qaeda has ever been found anywhere though several busboys and taxi drivers after years of kidnapping and torture have admitted to being Al Qaeda.  They will also tell you they are the Easter bunny if you ask.

Everything about special operations is a joke.  Intelligence lasts 48 hours, and then targets move.  Instead, we kidnap people, fly them around for days, torture them for years and pretend we get valuable intelligence out of them.

The whole thing is a joke.

Our friends?  Who are they?  As usual, we go back to our lessons of the Cold War.  We side against the people and only go to war for oil or drugs with massive profits on wasted munitions and phony development projects to sweeten the deal for friends of the political hacks that support these wars.

Wars are 100% “pork.”

We have never killed an Al Qaeda leader.  The militants we kill are people who we shot at first, people militant because we invaded their country.

When they use their considerable expertise and a curious amount of high tech equipment delivered by American allies to kill thousands of American troops, we just keep sending more in and never ask questions.

This is the nature of secrecy and special operations, we lie to our own, they lie to everyone else, and secrecy covers up the fact that we started the wars we are in for no reason at all; no targets, no “militants,” and the only “extremists” were and still are in the United States.

Our drone attacks, contrary to our reports, have systematically targeted rival drug lords to those who we installed as rulers of Afghanistan or those who refuse to submit to being ruled by the gangsters of the Northern Alliance and the oil puppet Karzai.

That means, of course, all of Afghanistan and about a third of Pakistan.

Every “secret mission” has one purpose, to silence someone.  The “kill the old man and lie about him being bin Laden” raid in Pakistan is one of thousands.

About 80% of them end up killing innocent civilians.  We get wrong houses.  Who are the ones we wanted to kill?  Oh, they are our enemies, people who fight against foreign invaders as though they were the kind of people we wish every American was.

This is what every war we have fought for all these years, wars you have never heard of, the dead Archbishops, the raped and murdered nuns, the doctors and nurses piled up beside roads, the journalists shot in the head along with an endless supply of dead children.

Secrecy allows us to make up stories, remember Kuwait and Saddam, the babies being taken out of the incubators or Colin Powell caught lying to the UN about Iraq?

When every statement released by the US is carefully investigated, it is all proven to be a total fiction.

Our dead and maimed kids are real.

Our 15 million Americans in prison are real.

Our children addicted to heroin 90% cheaper than it was 40 years ago is real.

Our collapsed banks and insurance companies are not real; a financial institution with “no finances” is not real.

The War on Terror was always made up and the reports of terrorists arrested always turn out to be FBI recruits, paid with taxpayer money or, like in Detroit, a young mental case hand carried through customs into First Class seating with no passport or visa and a defective bomb strapped to his crotch.

As with 9/11, where many were arrested, nearly 200, but none exist, the other arrest at that Christmas bombing, observed by a planeload of passengers, that person disappeared as well.

We have reliable information that what are called “terrorists” are 90% FBI informants and have actually been able to track down the accounts they are paid from and the FBI agents who handle them, pay their bills, rent their apartments and help them shop.

SEAL package insertions and egress are where they are most vulnerable. They have very special transport to protect them from small arms. The story of their going to the rescue of a pinned down unit…a SEAL insertion would most likely not be going into a landing zone blind as to enemy fire risk. Protecting the landing spot is like….ahhhh….very important !!! Some VT associates have, for many years, flown “black ops,” including SEAL teams. Military death notices were going out today (August 8th) and we saw and heard some of the first sad family interviews. And a special one was a National Guardsman, Sgt. Patrick Hamburger, a Chinook crew chief only in Afghanistan for a few days.  So it appears we might have a breach of standard operating procedure where a huge team was put into a National Guard Chinook to go in. No word yet on where the Seals SPECOPS Chinooks were. But I suspect we will not have to wait long. Sgt. Patrick Hamburger and Daughter The operational procedures are designed to avoid even the possibility of a loss like this. This should not have happened and no stone will be left unturned. I hope they fare better than my mother when she became a 16 year old WWII widow. Her newlywed husband got blown to bits with 579 others on the SS Paul Hamilton, April 20th, 1944. It seems the brass had been packing troops onto ammo ships and they took an aerial torpedo with 7000 tons of explosives aboard. The details were classified for 50 years. I pray that these families fare better. Our thanks to Ann Barnhardt for  passing the along the personal source news below. We still had no Pentagon video today, but the BBC got a phone interview with an eye witness who says he watched it all from his porch. That is a strange thing to be doing in a fire fight as folks tend to shoot first and ask questions later. This is an updated CBS news video and some families getting through their horrible Sunday. YouTube - Veterans Today -   National Guard Chinook “Almost immediately, after news of the crash began to spread, we were placed in an internet and phone blackout. This means communication with family, friends and “others” back home, in real time, is prevented until further notice. However, there are also chinook pilots, crews and mechanics assigned here who were privy to the details of the crash almost immediately. One of confirmed details they have been discussing is that the chinook shot down belonged to a National Guard unit. Which is causing people to whisper in astonishment, “why were some of the most elite of America’s military, in such large numbers, tooling around on a National Guard aircraft? Also, those around me are wondering why such a large number (extremely unconventional for Seals, Green Berets, etc) of them riding in a single aircraft instead of being spread out into numerous aircraft.” The Famous Patch Without question, I mean no disrespect to the pilots and crew of the National Guard aircraft, but the fact is that it’s very “strange” that Seals would be conducting an actual mission, with such large numbers, in such a basic aircraft. …Especially, given the fact that there were special operation chinooks easily available and sitting idle when this tragedy took place.” I am not a journalist. I have no means of checking this. But SOMEONE needs to investigate if in fact the SEALS were on a National Guard helo, if there were SPECOPS Chinooks available and idle, and what the difference in armament is between Guard Chinooks and SPECOPS Chinooks. This potential difference in armament is HUGE and could account for the possibility of the Chinook being shot down by an RPG, if that is what happened. MH-47G Chinook - rollout ceremony 6 May 2007 Following up on the RPG question, we have lost only one (that I can find) SPECOPS Chinook to RPG fire, and that incident saw the RPG shot go inside the cabin of the SPECOPS Chinook through an open hatch. It was a Golden BB shot. That tells us that the SPECOPS Chinooks are extremely resilient and have high combat survivability. The SPECOPS Chinooks are like a heavily armored Brinks truck. A standard National Guard Chinook would be analogous to a FedEx truck by comparison. You never pack 25 SEALs into one helo as a point of dispersion protocol, as stated by a reader below. “I have been told that a MINIMUM of three helos would normally be used for a group of that size. And IF they were indeed in a standard National Guard Chinook and not a SPECOPS Chinook, that would be like rolling out in a FedEx truck with your extremely precious cargo.” Every human being is infinitely precious, but we can all agree that from a battlefield standpoint, SEALs are “tactically precious.” UPDATE 2: From a reader: Ann, You are on to something here. I was in the 160th 1982- 1985 and I can tell you that the reason the aviation wing was created was so special ops would never again have to fly missions with anyone other than their own pilots and birds. Inseparable in life and in death: The high school best friends who died together on Navy SEAL rescue mission when helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan U.S. official says Taliban ambushed chopper with rocket-propelled grenades Common technique rarely brings down aircraft Fatal attack does not point to increased sophistication of the Taliban Chopper was on its way to aid other elite troops fighting militants Twenty-two of the dead soldiers were from elite Seal Team Six At 38 deaths in total, it's highest number of U.S. casualties in one incident President Obama mourns 'extraordinary sacrifice' They were inseparable high school best friends, who stuck together through remarkable triumph - and the bitterest of tragedies. As the U.S. comes to grips with the deadliest loss of American lives since the war in Afghanistan began, it has emerged that among the 38 brave men who perished were two home town best friends. Chief Petty Officer Robert James Reeves and Lieutenant Commander Jonas Kelsall, from Shreveport, Louisiana, both mastered extreme trials to gain their places on Seal Team 6, the elite unit which killed Osama Bin Laden just three months ago. They had excelled at high school together before enlisting and being sent to Afghanistan, where the pair were assigned the same mission, placed in the same helicopter - and died together when the Chinook was shot down in an attack on Saturday morning. Scroll down for video Lives lost: Lt Cmdr Jonas Kelsall (L) and Chief Petty Officer Robert James Reeves (R), both Shreveport, Louisiana natives who were killed when a U.S. Chinook helicopter crashed in Afghanistan on Saturday Mr Reeves, 32, joined the elite Seal team in 1999. He had been best friends with Mr Kelsall, who enlisted soon after, since his freshman year of high school. 'He was always very gregarious, a star soccer and lacrosse player in high school,' Mr Reeves's father, James Reeves, told the New York Times. Memories: Navy Seal Jonas Kelsall, seen here as best man at a friend's wedding It had never been obvious to me that he was going to choose a military career. It is very difficult to make it on these Seal teams. But that was where he knew he needed to be.' In more than a decade of service, Chief Reeves fought in war zones more than a dozen times. He earned four Bronze Stars for bravery, each with a 'V Device', signifying valour. His family last saw him at home for Christmas but even then he refused to speak about the highly secretive specifics of his work, his father said. The Chinook chopper which crashed early on Saturday morning was on a mission to back up U.S. Army Rangers, who had come under fire by Afghan insurgents in the area. The team had completed their mission to subdue the attackers, and were departing in the helicopter when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. However, a U.S. official has said news of the deaths does not signify increased sophistication of the Taliban, calling the fatal attack a 'lucky shot'. 'We are not seeing it as a game changer,' an unnamed official told the Telegraph. 'This was not a new tactic and it wasn't a new weapon. A spokesman for the Taliban movement said the craft had been shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) from as close as 150yds in an ambush attack soon after it took off following the raid. Ambushing aircrafts is a common tactic of insurgents in parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, making the aircraft vulnerable during take-off. Endurance: Navy Seal Jonas Kelsall, centre, during SEAL Qualification Training at Camp Pendleton in 2001 Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the event while the investigation remains ongoing, said that the Rangers, special operations forces who work regularly with the SEALs, secured the crash site afterwards. 38 people - including 30 American Special Forces troops and eight Afghan soldiers - were killed when the blast brought down the helicopter early Saturday. Of the 30, 22 Navy SEALs from the elite 'Team Six' unit that killed Osama bin Laden lost their lives. On Sunday, the names of the Americans aboard the chopper began to be released. Aaron Carson Vaughn, from Tennessee, was a 30-year-old Navy SEAL and the first special ops soldier to be identified in the devastating crash that killed 38 on Friday. Tragic: Sgt Patrick Hamburger, 30, of Grand Island, Nebraska (L) and fallen Service Man Kevin Houston (R), both of whom were killed in action Heroes to the end: Navy SEAL Michael Strange (L) was on his third tour of Afghanistan; Spencer Duncan of Olathe, Kansas (R), was serving as a door gunner on the helicopter when it was shot down Proud: Aaron Carson Vaughn (L) is one of the elite soldiers who was on the doomed chopper; Air Force Tech Sgt John Brown (R) was a paramedic whose unit was attached to the Navy SEALs Saluted: Kraig Vickers of Haiku, Maui, a Navy bomb disposal team member, died when insurgents shot down the military chopper He left behind two children, the couple's two-year-old son, Reagan, and two-month-old daughter, Chamberlyn. Widow Kimberly Vaughn saw television reports of the helicopter downed in Afghanistan on Saturday morning, before her doorbell rang and Navy officers told her that her husband was killed in action. In spite of her pain-staking grief, she said her husband 'wouldn't want to leave this Earth any other way than how he did' - making the ultimate sacrifice for his country. 'He loved his job,' she told CNN. 'There was no way - even if you could tell him that this would have happened he would have done it anyway. All those men are like that. They're selfless.' Tragic development: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a conference call from Camp David, Maryland yesterday after a NATO helicopter crashed during a battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan It was just hours before the fatal mission Vaughn had called his wife, and spoke to his son for the last time. 'It was actually a great conversation - probably just about time before he went out to work that night,' she remembered. 'We got to tell each other we loved each other, so it was a great conversation to have.' Soon after, the tragedy came to her doorstep. 'I thought, "Oh, hopefully it's just a neighbour," and as I rounded the stairs I saw the men in uniform and I just fell to my knees. There's no preparing for it. It's something you see in the movies. It's not something you're supposed to live through. 'I fell to my knees and cried and didn't want to hear it, but it's the truth,' she remembered. 'You want it to be a mistake. You want them to say it's the wrong person, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone.' A family from the Philadelphia area was devastated to learn their son, Navy SEAL Michael Strange, was also killed. His father, Charles Strange told CBS Philly: 'He was intense, he was funny, he had that dry humour, like Seinfeld.' Sgt Patrick Hamburger, a Navy SEAL from Lincoln, Nebraska, spoke to his family back home before the mission. He told his brother that he wouldn’t be in touch because his team 'had stuff to do.' Kevin Houston of Chesapeake, Virginia, died while living his dream. The 36-year-old had wanted to be a SEAL since he was a toddler, friends told The Boston Globe. Grieving parents in Jacksonville, Florida, confirmed to the Jacksonville Daily News that their son, Navy SEAL Chris Campbell, was on the chopper when it was shot down. Another SEAL, Jon Tumilson, of Rockford, Iowa, perished in the crash, his father said. Spencer C Duncan, 21, of Olathe, Kansas, was serving as a door gunner on the doomed chopper when it was brought down. Air Force Tech Sgt John W. Brown of Arkansas, a paramedic whose unit was attached to the Navy SEALs, made the ultimate sacrifice. Kraig Vickers, a Navy bomb disposal team member, of Haiku, Maui, also died in the attack. Childhood friend Mike Labuanan of Wailuku told Hawaii News Now Vickers was planning to return to the islands next year. 'We e-mailed a few times several weeks ago, and he let me know that he was having another child and moving back to Oahu. 'Kraig is real strong, real smart,' he said. 'And he always wanted to do something challenging, so when he said he was going into the Navy, it was only right. It kinda fit his personality.' Meanwhile, as Nato begins an operation to recover the remains of the large helicopter, an Afghan official says heavy fighting has erupted in the area of the crash. Revenge? Some analysts peculated that the attck could be seen as retaliation for the killing of Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six Return trip: 23 Seals who killed Bin Laden in his Pakistan compound in May had recently returned to Afghanistan from their base in North Carolina Wardak provincial spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said Sunday that a joint operation was taking place in the Tangi Joy Zarin area of Sayd Abad district. He said there were reports of Taliban casualties overnight, but had no additional information. It was reported last night that the Seals who died in the helicopter crash were not among the 23 who killed Bin Laden. According to intelligence officials, the 23 SEALs who killed Bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan in May had recently returned to Afghanistan from their base in North Carolina. However, they were members of the same 120-strong SEAL Team Six and would have trained alongside and been close friends with those who carried out the Bin Laden raid. It was not clear if the Taliban had deliberately targeted the helicopter as an act of revenge. But its shooting down is bound to be greeted in many parts of the Arab world as terrible vengeance for the death of the Al Qaeda leader. Reports suggested that seven members of the Afghan National Army, one dog handler, an interpreter and an unknown number of crew were also on board the downed helicopter. Friday night’s attack is the deadliest single incident since the Afghan war began in 2001. It was also the highest one-day death toll for US Navy Special Warfare personnel since the Second World War. In 2005, 16 Navy Seals and US Army special forces troops died when their helicopter was shot down as they tried to rescue four comrades under attack from the Taliban. 'A Nato helicopter crashed last night in Wardak province,' Karzai said in the statement, adding that 31 American special operations troops were killed. 'President Karzai expressed his deep condolences because of this incident and expressed his sympathy to Barack Obama.' Vulnerable: Slow-moving transporter craft like the Chinook face massive risks in eastern Afghanistan Mystery: It was reported those who died were not among the 23 Seals who killed Bin Laden Mr Obama, who learned of the incident at Camp David, issued a statement saying his thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who perished. 'Their deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our military and their families, including all who have served in Afghanistan,' the president said. 'We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values that they embodied.' Mr Obama said he also mourned the loss of seven Afghans 'who died alongside our troops in pursuit of a more peaceful and hopeful future for their country.' At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says he is deeply saddened by the loss, and vowed that the U.S. will stay the course to complete the mission to make the world a safer place. The Chinook involved in Friday’s attack – a US twin-engined helicopter mainly used to transport troops – was hit by a shoulder-held grenade as it returned from a night raid on a militant gathering in the Tangi Valley in Wardak province, west of Kabul. The Tangi Valley, dubbed ‘Death Valley’, is known for being one of the most hostile corridors in Afghanistan. The volatile Wardak province is an infamous insurgent stronghold. The Special Forces unit in the Bin Laden operation, Seal Team Six – known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group – has around 300 members, of whom 120 are commandos. The rest are communications and specialist support troops. US sources said the troops were being flown by a crew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The Taliban claimed they downed the helicopter with rocket fire and that wreckage was strewn at the scene. The tragedy comes as America draws down its presence in Afghanistan and attempts to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Seven Afghan soldiers were also killed in the crash. 'Their deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our military and their families, including all who have served in Afghanistan,' he said in a statement, adding that his thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who perished. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: 'Their courage was exemplary, as was their determination to make this a safer world for their countries and for their fellow citizens. We will stay the course to complete that mission, for which they and all who have served and lost their lives in Afghanistan have made the ultimate sacrifice. They and their families are in my thoughts, in my prayers and in my heart.' Unforgiving terrain: The Taliban-infested, rocky valleys of the Wardak province where the helipcopter was brought down Elite: The Navy Seals are the special operations unit that killed Osama Bin Laden THE FIVE DEADLIEST MILITARY CRASHES IN AFGHANISTAN Excluding the latest, and worst, crash, they are: June 28, 2005: U.S. helicopter is shot down in eastern Kunar province during a rescue operation, killing 16 special operations troops. April 6, 2005: U.S. Chinook helicopter crashes in a sandstorm near eastern Ghazni, killing 15 American troops and three civilian contractors. May 5, 2006: U.S. Chinook helicopter crashes while attempting a night landing on a small mountaintop in eastern Kunar province, killing 10 U.S. soldiers. September 21, 2010: U.S. Army Blackhawk crashes in southern Zabul province, killing nine troops on board, including four Navy Seals. February 18, 2007: U.S. Chinook carrying 22 U.S. soldiers crashes in southern Zabul province, killing eight and injuring 14. Aircraft crashes are relatively frequent in Afghanistan, where insecurity and difficult terrain make air travel essential for coalition forces transporting troops and equipment. There have been at least 17 coalition and Afghan aircraft crashes in Afghanistan this year. In June 2005, 16 American troops were killed when a U.S. helicopter crashed in eastern Kunar province after apparently being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Most of the crashes are attributed to pilot errors, weather conditions or mechanical failures. However, the coalition has confirmed that at least one CH-47F Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket propelled grenade on July 25, injuring two crewmembers. Meanwhile, Nato troops attacked a house and inadvertently killed eight members of a family, including women and children, in the southern Helmand province, an Afghan government official said Saturday. Nato said Taliban fighters fired rocket propelled grenades and small arms at coalition troops during a patrol Friday in the Nad Ali district. The troops fired back, and as the fight escalated an aistrike was called in against the Taliban position, said Brockhoff, the NATO spokesman. He said Nato sent a delegation to meet with local leaders and investigate the incident. Nad Ali district police chief Shadi Khan said civilians died in the bombardment but that it was unknown how many insurgents were killed. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said: 'The fresh reports from the site tells us that there are still Americans doing search operations for the bodies and pieces of the helicopter are on the ground.' Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, police chief of Wardak, said the operation began around 1 a.m. Saturday as Nato and Afghan forces attacked a Taliban compound in Jaw-e-mekh Zareen village in the Tangi Valley. The firefight lasted at least two hours, the general said. Sympathy: Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered his condolences to President Obama. 'It was at the end of the operation that one of the Nato helicopters crashed,' he said. 'We don’t know yet the cause of the crash, and we don’t know how many Nato soldiers were on board.'Helmand, a Taliban stronghold, is the deadliest province in Afghanistan for international troops.' Nato has come under harsh criticism in the past for accidentally killing civilians during operations against suspected insurgents. However, civilian death tallies by the United Nations show the insurgency is responsible for most war casualties involving non-combatants. Also in the south, Nato said two coalition service member were killed, one on Friday and another on Saturday. The international alliance did not release further details. The deaths bring to 334 the number of coalition troops killed this year in Afghanistan, and 11 this month. WHO ARE THE U.S. NAVY SEALS? U.S. Navy's SEa, Air and Land Teams, (SEALS) are the U.S. Navy's principal special operations force and a part of the Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) as well as the maritime component of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). The name is derived from their capacity to operate at sea, in air or on land, but in the war on terror they have been almost exclusively for land-based operations, such as the storming of Osama bin Laden's compound. The Seals were born in the Second World War when the Navy recognised the need for soldiers to take control of landing beaches, note obstacles and defences, and ultimately guide the landing forces in. The unit officially became known as the Naval Combat Demolition Unit. They became Seals in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy, aware of the situations in Southeast Asia, recognized the need for unconventional warfare and special operations as a measure against guerilla warfare. Units were established to operate from sear, air or land. The first joint Seals and CIA operations, which are currently being carried in the war on terror, were executed in the Vietnam War. Since then the SEALS teams have operated in Grenada, the Persian Gulf and Panama.

A National Guard Chinook with a Full Load of Seals and Special Ops?   Special Operations - Boeing - MH-47E Chinook Gordon Duff’s piece Saturday afternoon has run up over 61,000 reads plus whatever the blogger traffic was. We put it out quickly because losing this many SEALS in a one mission crash seemed impossible with the ops procedures for moving these highly trained teams around. The comment section was very active and generally most all agreed that an a  RPG shot bringing down a SEAL Chinook with a huge team aboard staggered the imagination. SEAL package insertions and egress are where they are most vulnerable. They have very special transport to protect them from small arms. The story of their going to the rescue of a pinned down unit…a SEAL insertion would most likely not be going into a landing zone blind as to enemy fire risk. Protecting the landing spot is like….ahhhh….very important !!! Some VT associates have, for many years, flown “black ops,” including SEAL teams. Military death notices were going out today (August 8th) and we saw and heard some of the first sad family interviews. And a special one was a National Guardsman, Sgt. Patrick Hamburger, a Chinook crew chief only in Afghanistan for a few days.  So it appears we might have a breach of standard operating procedure where a huge team was put into a National Guard Chinook to go in. No word yet on where the Seals SPECOPS Chinooks were. But I suspect we will not have to wait long. Sgt. Patrick Hamburger and Daughter The operational procedures are designed to avoid even the possibility of a loss like this. This should not have happened and no stone will be left unturned. I hope they fare better than my mother when she became a 16 year old WWII widow. Her newlywed husband got blown to bits with 579 others on the SS Paul Hamilton, April 20th, 1944. It seems the brass had been packing troops onto ammo ships and they took an aerial torpedo with 7000 tons of explosives aboard. The details were classified for 50 years. I pray that these families fare better. Our thanks to Ann Barnhardt for  passing the along the personal source news below. We still had no Pentagon video today, but the BBC got a phone interview with an eye witness who says he watched it all from his porch. That is a strange thing to be doing in a fire fight as folks tend to shoot first and ask questions later. This is an updated CBS news video and some families getting through their horrible Sunday. YouTube - Veterans Today - Tips from Afghanistan   …from  Ann Barnhardt National Guard Chinook I received a tip from a soldier stationed with an aviation brigade out of Jalalabad overnight. “Almost immediately, after news of the crash began to spread, we were placed in an internet and phone blackout. This means communication with family, friends and “others” back home, in real time, is prevented until further notice. However, there are also chinook pilots, crews and mechanics assigned here who were privy to the details of the crash almost immediately. One of confirmed details they have been discussing is that the chinook shot down belonged to a National Guard unit. Which is causing people to whisper in astonishment, “why were some of the most elite of America’s military, in such large numbers, tooling around on a National Guard aircraft? Also, those around me are wondering why such a large number (extremely unconventional for Seals, Green Berets, etc) of them riding in a single aircraft instead of being spread out into numerous aircraft.” The Famous Patch Without question, I mean no disrespect to the pilots and crew of the National Guard aircraft, but the fact is that it’s very “strange” that Seals would be conducting an actual mission, with such large numbers, in such a basic aircraft. …Especially, given the fact that there were special operation chinooks easily available and sitting idle when this tragedy took place.” I am not a journalist. I have no means of checking this. But SOMEONE needs to investigate if in fact the SEALS were on a National Guard helo, if there were SPECOPS Chinooks available and idle, and what the difference in armament is between Guard Chinooks and SPECOPS Chinooks. This potential difference in armament is HUGE and could account for the possibility of the Chinook being shot down by an RPG, if that is what happened. MH-47G Chinook - rollout ceremony 6 May 2007 Following up on the RPG question, we have lost only one (that I can find) SPECOPS Chinook to RPG fire, and that incident saw the RPG shot go inside the cabin of the SPECOPS Chinook through an open hatch. It was a Golden BB shot. That tells us that the SPECOPS Chinooks are extremely resilient and have high combat survivability. The SPECOPS Chinooks are like a heavily armored Brinks truck. A standard National Guard Chinook would be analogous to a FedEx truck by comparison. You never pack 25 SEALs into one helo as a point of dispersion protocol, as stated by a reader below. “I have been told that a MINIMUM of three helos would normally be used for a group of that size. And IF they were indeed in a standard National Guard Chinook and not a SPECOPS Chinook, that would be like rolling out in a FedEx truck with your extremely precious cargo.” Every human being is infinitely precious, but we can all agree that from a battlefield standpoint, SEALs are “tactically precious.” UPDATE 2: From a reader: Ann, You are on to something here. I was in the 160th 1982- 1985 and I can tell you that the reason the aviation wing was created was so special ops would never again have to fly missions with anyone other than their own pilots and birds. UPDATE 3: From a reader: U.S. Army Chinook - Interior Ann, I’m sure you’re getting a lot of notes on the Chinook debacle. I’m retired USAF familiar with how the system works when it comes to the questions asked by your Jalalabad contact. First, look to the Command Authority. Dispersion protocols are almost never broken except on direct order up the chain high enough that nobody could question or refuse the order without jeopardizing their career. Second, ‘who benefits’? Follow the trail of beneficiaries to the incident. Tactically, intell had to be passed to the shooters as to the timetable. I’m willing to bet that there were several RPG’s (if not Stinger’s – remember, we provided quite a few and never kept a record during the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan) involved. Then, once fired, the shooters had to egress unseen to fight another day. Many people I know, including some recently back from that area say this stinks to high Heaven, as you do. Editors Note: We seem to be in the fog of war on what kinds of helicopters these teams use and when. Some checking around has turned up SEALS on Army Chinooks.  Many factors may come into play as to multiple helos, day or night operation. Below is a famous tragic battle of a Ranger rescue attempt of a shot down SEAL chopper team and found their Chinook taken down with an RPG and bullets going through it like butter. Another Chinook helicopter crash lands in Afghanistan days after Taliban kills 38 NATO reports no casualties Taliban claim responsibility for 'hard landing' Demonstrations after claims civilians were killed in night raids Incidents come barely two weeks after foreign troops began first phases of withdrawal from Afghanistan digg] A NATO helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan this morning, just two days after 38 people were killed in another Chinook crash. Officials said there were no apparent casualties on board the ISAF helicopter, which mad a 'hard landing' in the volatile Paktia province. An investigation is underway but it appears there was no enemy activity in the area at the time, confirmed ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Doherty. A NATO helicopter made a 'hard landing' in Paktia province, a volatile area in Afghanistan's east, today. There were no reported casualties. File picture Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed in a text message sent to Reuters that the Islamist group had shot down the helicopter, another Chinook, in the Zurmat district of Paktia, killing 30 American soldiers.     The Taliban often exaggerate claims in attacks against foreign troops and Afghan security forces and government targets, although they correctly identified the number killed in the weekend's Chinook crash in Wardak.  The Wardak crash accounted for the largest single loss of foreign forces in 10 years. A worrying surge of military deaths is being matched by record casualties among civilians, who continue to bear the brunt of a war that appears to have become bogged down despite claims of success from both sides.  Afghan men shout anti American slogans during a protest over the deaths of two men in Ghazni, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, today. On Monday, three hundred angry Afghans took to the streets in central Ghazni province carrying the bodies of two people they claimed had been killed during a raid by ISAF troops.    Civilian casualties caused by foreign troops hunting insurgents have long been a major source of friction between Kabul and its Western backers. U.N. figures show such casualties hit record levels in the first six months of 2011, although it blamed 80 percent of them on insurgents.     NATO officials are still investigating the cause of a helicopter crash two days ago that killed 38 people, including 30 U.S. soldiers, seven Afghan commandos and an Afghan interpreter.    Of the dead, more than 20 were US Navy Seals from the elite unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban claim to have shot down that troop-carrying CH-47 Chinook helicopter in central Maidan Wardak province and a U.S. official in Washington, who asked not to be identified, said that helicopter was believed to have been shot down.    Some of the lives lost in the central Maidan Wardak province crash two days ago: Lt Cmdr Jonas Kelsall, Chief Petty Officer Robert James Reeves, Sgt Patrick Hamburger, door gunner Spencer Duncan, Service Man Kevin Houston, Navy SEAL Michael Strange, Aaron Carson Vaughn and Air Force Tech Sgt John 'We're still not aware of the cause of the incident, this is a very vital part of the investigation,' said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen, senior spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).    'The area in which the helicopter was operating was known to be not free of insurgents,' he told a news conference.    ISAF has imposed a security crackdown on the area while the grim task of recovering the aircraft and the bodies of those killed is completed, although some residents have complained about some of the measures that have been taken.    Enlarge Graphic locates Wardak province in Afghanistan, where the Taliban shot down a US helicopter 'I can only advise (civilians) not to try to approach the site of the crash while the investigation is ongoing,' Jacobsen said .      At least another seven ISAF troops were killed in a ghastly 48 hours for the coalition. Four were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday, including two French legionnaires.   The spike in casualties -- at least 383 foreign troops have been killed so far this year, almost 50 of them in the first week of August -- comes at a time of growing unease about the increasingly unpopular and costly war.    U.S. and NATO officials issued statements vowing to 'stay the course' in Afghanistan after the deadly weekend Chinook crash but the recent devastating death toll will likely raise more questions about how much longer foreign troops should stay in Afghanistan.    Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama by telephone overnight and shared condolences over the Wardak crash, Karzai's palace said in a statement.    'The U.S. president thanked the Afghan president and emphasised the fight against terrorism, which is a threat for security in the region and the world, and said the people of Afghanistan and the U.S. unitedly stand against the terrorists and their sacrifices will be never forgotten,' it said.    The deaths came barely two weeks after foreign troops began the first phase of a gradual process to hand security responsibility over to Afghan soldiers and police.    Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama by telephone overnight and shared condolences over the Wardak crash THE FIVE DEADLIEST MILITARY CRASHES IN AFGHANISTAN Excluding the latest, and worst, crash, they are: June 28, 2005: U.S. helicopter is shot down in eastern Kunar province during a rescue operation, killing 16 special operations troops. April 6, 2005: U.S. Chinook helicopter crashes in a sandstorm near eastern Ghazni, killing 15 American troops and three civilian contractors. May 5, 2006: U.S. Chinook helicopter crashes while attempting a night landing on a small mountaintop in eastern Kunar province, killing 10 U.S. soldiers. September 21, 2010: U.S. Army Blackhawk crashes in southern Zabul province, killing nine troops on board, including four Navy Seals. February 18, 2007: U.S. Chinook carrying 22 U.S. soldiers crashes in southern Zabul province, killing eight and injuring 14. That process is due to end with the last foreign combat troops leaving at the end of 2014, but some U.S. lawmakers are already questioning whether that timetable is fast enough.    Karzai has already said 'enemies of Afghanistan' -- the Taliban and other insurgents -- want to disrupt the process.    In Ghazni, deputy police chief Mohammad Hussain said almost 300 people had gathered to carry the bodies of what they said were two civilians to the provincial governor's office after an overnight raid by ISAF in the Khogyani district.    ISAF earlier said there were no reports of civilian casualties but Jacobsen said a man had fired on an ISAF patrol from inside a house with his family around him.     'We are very much certain that ISAF could not be aware that the man was shooting from a house where his family was inside,' Jacobsen said, adding that an investigation was underway.     On Sunday, Karzai ordered an investigation into a NATO air strike that allegedly killed eight civilians in volatile southern Helmand province on Friday.    U.N. figures show that 1,462 Afghan civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents in the first six months of 2011, the deadliest period for civilians since the Taliban were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.    Foreign military deaths also hit record levels in 2010 with 711 killed, with 2011 following a similarly bloody trend.           MoD blunder in deal on Chinook helicopters 'endangers lives of British troops'   The lives of British troops in Afghanistan have been put in even greater peril by the Ministry of Defence mishandling the purchase of extra combat helicopters, Parliamentary watchdogs will say today. Bungling officials placed an order for eight helicopters 14 years ago. But the contract was so 'appallingly' written that the Chinooks were never airworthy and have languished in a hangar since 2001. The resulting critical shortage of air transport means more soldiers have had to move around by road - and scores have been killed by roadside bombs and ambushes. 'Irresponsible': The MoD has been accused of mishandling the purchase of extra combat helicopters (Chinook Mark 2, pictured), which has put the lives of troops in Afghanistan at risk Frustrated commanders on the ground have complained bitterly of the effects of the shortages, which at times have seriously limited the kind of operations they can mount against the Taliban insurgents. Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, accuses the MoD of 'bad decision-making to the point of irresponsibility', which has 'heightened the risk to the lives of British troops'. The PAC report condemns the whole saga as 'one of the worst examples of equipment procurement that we have ever seen'. The cost of the eight Chinook Mark 3 aircraft have spiralled from £259million to more than £422million. The aircraft were supposed to offer Britain's elite SAS and SBS special forces a state-of-the-art helicopter to carry them deep behind enemy lines on night missions, capable of flying long ranges at low level even in zero visibility, and of refuelling in mid-air. Instead of buying the US version off the shelf, the MoD tried to save money by fitting cheaper British equipment in the cockpit. The resulting patchwork of equipment proved incompatible, and the MoD found it could not declare the Chinooks airworthy because officials had forgotten to ask Boeing for access to the complex on-board computer software. Years of costly but ineffective efforts to fix the problems followed. Eventually in 2007, ministers opted to pull the plug, ordering the RAF to rip out all the Chinooks' extra features and turn them back into ordinary Mark 2 versions for general use. But even this has proved a fiasco. The decision was taken 'in haste'  because of the urgent need for more helicopters as Britain poured extra troops into Afghanistan. For years, RAF pilots flying in Afghanistan have had to use a cumbersome 'bolt-on' package of night vision equipment to enable the ordinary Mark 2 Chinooks to fly in the dark. But there are grave concerns about the safety of the system, which is now officially regarded as a 'key safety risk'. It would have been far cheaper to buy the fully fledged American special forces version of the Chinook, which could have entered service with the RAF years ago. Nobody within the MoD has ever been held to account for the fiasco, despite exhaustive investigations by the National Audit Office and others. The NAO could not even find proper records of how the deal went so disastrously wrong, but said in its report 'it would appear lack of funding has played a significant part'. Obama did not ask who shot Bin Laden after meeting SEAL Team Six 23 SEALs raided compound, wile others waited outside for Pakistani forces Weight of men and gear on Stealth Blackhawks measured to within an ounce Interpreter and search dog called Cairo part of raiding team 'Two dozen' more SEALS waited in back up Chinooks Element of surprise ruined after Blackhawk crashed in front yard It was the single most important U.S. military mission of the last decade - capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. With state of the art technology and an unparalleled level of secrecy, every part of the mission had been planned to the second. But new details have emerged showing just how close run the fabled SEAL Team Six assault on Bin Laden's hideout was, after the plan quickly fell apart. Adding exclusive new details to the account of the assault , officials described just how the SEAL raiders were forced to ditch a foundering helicopter right outside the elusive terrorist's door, ruining the plan for a surprise assault. Scroll down for video Intricate planning: The SEALs mission to find bin Laden nearly went drastically wrong after one of the 'stealth helicopters crashed soon after the start Osama bin Laden's lair: The terrorist had set up a home in this compound in Pakistan Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials close to the operation revealed how originally two SEAL teams were to enter Bin Laden's house separately - one from the roof and one from the ground. The aim was to 'squeeze' the terror mastermind as the raiders worked their way through the complex from both sides in search of their target. But almost immediately the raid ran into trouble after one of the specially adapted 'stealth' Blackhawk helicopters became unsteady and had to ditch - nose first - into the compound's courtyard. Loosing the element of suprise, the SEAL's switched to plan B as they busted into the ground floor and began a floor-by-floor storming of the house, working up to the top level where they had assumed bin Laden - if he was in the house - would be. It took approximately 15 minutes to reach Bin Laden, one official said. The raiders came face-to-face with the Al-Qaeda leader in a hallway outside his bedroom, and three of the Americans stormed in after him, U.S. officials have revealed. Fearing he would detonate a suicide vest, the SEALS flung his wives aside before shooting him in the head and chest - known as 'double tapping'. The next 23 minutes were spent blowing up the broken Black Hawk, after rounding up nine women and 18 children, to get them out of range of the blast. Destroyed: The SEALs wasted no time blowing up the helicopter during the mission Auspicious: Team six was selected to carry out the mission, and it is understood they will soon return to active duty in Afghanistan The decision to launch on that moonless May 2 night came largely because too many American officials had been briefed on the plan and it was feared it could be leaked to the press and Bin Laden would disappear yet again. The job was given to elite SEAL Team 6 unit, just back from Afghanistan, who had been hunting bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan since 2001. Five aircraft flew from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with three school-bus-size Chinook helicopters landing in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way to bin Laden's compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. Unravelling: The Black Hawk helicopter, like the one seen here, could not cope with the unforeseen hot weather and had to land Aboard two Black Hawk helicopters were 23 SEALs, an interpreter and a tracking dog named Cairo. Nineteen SEALs would enter the compound, and three of them would find bin Laden, one official said, with two dozen more SEALs there as backup. The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the gram, with weather factored in. The Black Hawks were to drop the SEALs and depart in less than two minutes, in hopes locals would assume they were Pakistani aircraft visiting the nearby military academy. One was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard, while the other was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside, plus an interpreter and the dog, who would track anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces. If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out. The two SEAL teams inside would work toward each other, in a simultaneous attack from above and below, their weapons silenced, guaranteeing surprise, one of the officials said. They would have stormed the building in a matter of minutes, as they'd done time and again in two training models of the compound. Deadly: Navy SEALs are highly trained and well equipped elite soldiers used in the most challenging of missions Versatile: While they are associated with sea operations, they can operate in any environment, including high altitude parachute insertion But the plan unravelled as the first helicopter tried to hover over the compound. The Black Hawk skittered around uncontrollably because of the hot weather and the heat-thinned air forced the pilot to land. As he did, the tail and rotor got caught on one of the compound's 12ft high walls. The pilot quickly buried the aircraft's nose in the dirt to keep it from tipping over, and the SEALs rushed into an outer courtyard. The other aircraft did not even attempt hovering, landing its SEALs outside the compound. Now, the raiders were outside, and they'd lost the element of surprise. They had trained for this, and started blowing their way in with explosives, through walls and doors, working their way up the three-level house from the bottom. They had to blow their way through barriers at each stair landing, firing back, as one of the men in the house fired at them. They shot three men as well as one woman, whom U.S. officials have said lunged at the SEALs. Small knots of children were on every level, including the balcony of bin Laden's room. As three of the SEALs reached the top of the steps on the third floor, they saw bin Laden standing at the end of the hall, before he ducked into his room.   Caught out: Osama bin Laden's compound was filled with evidence which the SEALs scooped up before fleeing the compound The three SEALs assumed he was going for a weapon, and one by one they rushed after him through the door, one official described. Two women were in front of bin Laden - yelling and trying to protect him, two officials said. The first SEAL grabbed the two women and shoved them away, fearing they might be wearing suicide bomb vests, they said. The SEAL behind him opened fire at bin Laden, putting one bullet in his chest, and one in his head. Back at the White House Situation Room, word was relayed that bin Laden had been found, signalled by the code word 'Geronimo.' That was not bin Laden's code name, but rather a representation of the letter 'G.' Each step of the mission was labelled alphabetically, and 'Geronimo' meant that the raiders had reached step 'G,' the killing or capture of bin Laden, two officials said. Silence: Team six have been told by their commander to remain tight lipped about the raid on Osama bin Laden's house As the SEALs began photographing the body for identification, the raiders found an AK-47 rifle and a Russian-made Makarov pistol on a shelf by the door they'd just run through. Bin Laden hadn't touched them. They were among a handful of weapons that were removed to be inventoried. One of the waiting Chinooks flew in to pick up bin Laden's body, the raiders from the broken aircraft and the weapons, documents and other materials seized at the site. The level of distrust between the U.S. and Pakistan is such that keeping the allies in the dark was a major factor in planning the raid, and led to using the high-tech but sometimes unpredictable helicopter technology that nearly unhinged the mission. When the SEAL team met President Barack Obama, he did not ask who shot bin Laden but simply thanked each member of the team. In a few weeks, the team that killed bin Laden will go back to training, and in a couple of months, back to work overseas.

What you see here is a Chinook being disassembled by 18/27 Engineering Squadron before it heads out for action

Enlarge

What's the best way to get an RAF Chinook to Afghanistan?

Not under its own steam, that's for sure. Flying one of the 185mph transport helicopters would take days, and several refuelling stops.

Instead, each £22m aircraft is broken down and loaded into the vast belly of a C17 transporter  -  and it's a snug fit.

What you see here is a Chinook being disassembled by 18/27 Engineering Squadron, based at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, before it heads out for action.

It will come back in about four months for a clean-down  -  under Afghan wear and tear, a Chinook will accumulate 850lb of sand on a tour of duty.

Some Possibly Killed in Abbottabad Helicopter Crash Months Before By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor Today 31 NATO troops, 20 of them Navy Seals from the Osama bin Laden operation died in what is reported as a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.  The chances of this story being true is almost nil.  The chances of this being a staged coverup is over 80%.  We believe these people were murdered to silence them.  This is why. We have solid information on two areas: Osama bin Laden died in 2001 as an active CIA employee and his body was recovered in Afghanistan and taken to “the sand box.”  We were told it was frozen.  We have so much verification from this, CIA, ISI, US military and top officials.  I have a direct confirmation from Bin Laden’s CIA handler who I grilled mercilessly on this. The Abbottabad operation involved numerous American deaths, witnessed, bodies all over, a helicopter crash. (suppressed translated TV interview below)  These bodies were recovered by land vehicle from Islamabad and there was NO “successful” bin Laden operation of any kind.  There was and has been a CIA safe house in Abbotabad where terror suspects were stored for years. This gave the US several areas of severe vulnerability.  Generally, Navy Seals are the best people in the world at keeping their mouths shut, these are real team players, as the term “Seal Team” belies. We at VT were informed that the bin Laden operation was staged at this time, a theatrical farce, to cover the exit of Secretary Gates, the move by former CIA Director Leon Panetta into the DOD as Secretary of Defense and to stem any heroic claims by new CIA Director Petraeus of killing the long dead Osama bin Laden, the long frozen CIA operative. Petraeus is a possible presidential contender and had to be denied this “gift from heaven,” a fast track to the oval office for sure. Will We Ever Know What Happened? Again, I remind you, I went over specific meetings on bin Laden with his handlers, getting every last detail.  I have watched what has gone on, the continuing need to vilify a long dead top CIA operative to provide residual cover for the Bush administration…. The reason?  Bush and his cronies are all facing charges of war crimes, not just in minor jurisdictions but heading for the ICC, putting them on the dock with Gaddafi ( a far less harmful character). As for the timing of this incident?  This we will work on.  What we can easily surmise is that some of the dead have been dead since their bodies were taken away from the helicopter crash site in Abbotabad. Who would order such a thing?  We are going to have to wait but we are going to find out.  However, we expected this, the timing is exactly as predicted. HOW VT TRIED TO SAVE THEM When the phony Abbotbad operation came out, I immediately understood what happened.  I also saw much potential good from it other than the tragedy of the dead Americans from the crash.  I wrote of this and see their deaths as more heroic than many recognize. They died to erase for all time remnants of the Bush era fairly tale of badguy and evildoer Osama bin Laden.  Enough good men had died chasing a ghost who lived only in phony video and audio tapes by “Bin Laden Studios” in Tel Aviv and in the continual “boogeyman” rhetoric of professional fearmongers. Not long afterward, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, another able public servant announced the near defeat of Al Qaeda, another Bush fairly tale. Al Qaeda has never existed, there are no magic worldwide terror conspiracies other than those run by governments.  There are several of those and I have written extensively on these.  Google will help you with this if you are curious. When VT saw why the government staged this, we saw we could accomplish two things: We could simply report the truth for those willing to believe it, something we believe is the right thing to do. We could also support the United States in a very real way, knowing Pakistan would weather this crisis, timed, in some ways, as a face saving move in response to the embarrassing Raymond Davis affair.  I believed if the truth came out, clear enough for insiders, intel and miliary for sure, to understand that we knew and other insiders knew, there would be no reason to “clean house” afterward, to stage a coverup and get rid of any involved. Abbotabad - How Many Died Here? I had felt that we had provided cover for the Seal Team, we hadn’t trashed them, we acknowledged the dead at Abbotabad where no one else bothered, this is our job as fellow members of America’s military forces (current and former). More importantly, we got out word, I certainly did enough radio and TV on this, enough that, for anyone who care, the “truth was out there.” This is all we could do but I hoped it would stem a need for covering tracks.  After all, anyone leaking real information on the operation would only seem like they had gotten it from me and I put it out there in such a manner that I allowed room to be “debunked.” I do this to protect myself but I really was thinking of them.  These are great guys, Seals are among the best people on earth.  The Seal and Special Forces communities are, of the military groups in the US, some of the finest people I know. They also help cover my “behind,” which I appreciate. This is just too obvious, too brazen.  I can’t imagine it started at the White House or even cabinet level but maybe I am deluding myself.  Bin Laden was all about the election. After the bond collapse and credit disaster yesterday, anything threatening President Obama’s reelection is seen, by some, as a threat to America’s financial survival.  This debt crisis is a bigger threat to the US than a Japanese invasion in 1942 would have been. You may not see it that way and you certainly cant get out your hunting rifle to fix it. (Don’t be a sap, kill a Jap!) Osama in Better Days Someone had gotten to someone.  My best guess and this is a guess…an expose’ by the mainstream media, perhaps Murdoch, another guess, conjecture I admit, regarding the farce at Abbottabad, information possibly gotten through spying, bribery and blackmail, threatened to take down Obama. With Murdoch’s good friend and “monkeyboy,” Netanyahu ‘on the ropes,” with crowds marching in Israel’s streets demanding his ouster, we have more timing to factor in. The bin Laden killing, the third rate drama of capturing an unarmed frozen dead guy and throwing him into the ocean had probably become an albatross around certain high ranking necks. Norway was no accident, it was a warning too.  It has been containerized, just as the Murdoch espionage issue is now “poor Rupert and the pie thrower.” These Americans are casualties in a game, one like 9/11, sacrificial pawns, like Britain’s 7/7, all lies, all theatre, all evil. This is not for public consumption.  There are those who know exactly who I am talking to. There are many of us here who still keep our mouths shut about so many things.  There are too many who don’t even care, most of us at VT do.  Yes, I am aware I can be jailed, I am aware my passport can be pulled, I already see the damned surveillance. Amateurs. We aren’t anti-American.  I am simply sick of seeing solutions that go one direction, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.  I am also sick of the fact that Washington can’t visit the “head’ without Israel’s permission. This…today, this is too much. It is unforgivable.  We are not going to allow this to stand. We have a long standing history of “cleaning house” after operations of this kind.  Usually its dead senators in plane crashes, heart attacks, car wrecks, like the Minot Barksdale or 9/11 incidents.  I could name a dozen more.  Does the name Wheeler meaning anything to you?  Anyone remember Pat Tillman

Anchor: Welcome back, Mohammad Bashir is a resident of Abboottabad’s Bilal Town. Muhammad Bashir might seem an ordinary guy but he is no ordinary guy. Muhammad Bashir lives in front of Osama Ben Laden’s house in Bilal Town Abbottabad. On 2nd of May, Muhammad Bashir was present on his rooftop from where he saw the whole American operation against Osama Ben Laden with his own eyes. Yesterday when our team was present In Bilal Town, Abbottabad, near Osama Ben Laden’s hose, Muhammad Bashir came to us and said, “Sister, I need to tell you something, something that is a burden on my heart and soul”, just listen to what he said.Bashir: I am going to share something about the Abbottabad operation which till this day nobody else has told you.Anchor: But Muhammad Bashir was a little afraid too, while talking to me he telephoned hia reletive, Vice President of Jummat-e-Islami, Abdur Razzaq Abasi, watch itReporter: Tell me your name and tell me whare do you liveBashir: Let me first, Let me talk to him one minute, i will give you full interview, full or half?Reporter: Full FullBashir: Let me first talk to himReporter: To whom? To Abbasi?Bashir: yes, to AbbasiAnchor: Muhammad Bashir told us something that no one said before. So we checked his identity card, we also confirmed that he really lives there, we asked from the senior fellows about him. We were very astonished by his story just see and listen what he said.Bashir: We were awake, not asleep, a helicopter came, some men came down from that, into that house, then that helicopter went awayReporter: How many men?Bashir: 10-12, then that helicopter took rounds of those rear hills, then he came bac…k and when he came bach, two more helicopters arrived, one from the west and other from the north, there was a blast in the first helicopter and it was on fire, we immediately came out, when we reached there, the helicopter was burning, then after about 20 minutes the army and police arrived, they pushed us back, now we are asking that if oama was here then who took him to america because all those men that came in the helicopter died in the blast, now if Osama was in that helicopter he must have died and got burnt in that helicopter too, then how they took him? this is a question of serious concern. America claims they they killed him and picked him up. How they picked him up? This is what we are thinkingReporter: Was there only one helicopter?Bashir? Yes the other that came flew away to Mansehra, there was only one that landed the men and came back to pick them but as he was picking them up, it blew away and caught fire.Reporter: Then were in it when it blew?Bashir: Yes They were.Reporter : How you know?Bashir: We saw it with our own eyesReporter: You saw dead man?Bashir: Yes, dead men,Reporter: How many?Bashir: I couldnt count them because then the compound was on fire. The gate was open, we went in, the army and police hadnt arrived then, there were some people but they werent stopping them. The whole neighborhood has seen that but they are silent now.Bashir: We saw the helicopter burning, we saw the dead bodies, then everything was removed and now there is nothingReporter: How many dead bodies you saw?Bashir: We couldn’t count them because they were blown into pieces. The reporter asked Bashir to narrate the story again. Bashir said we could see the faces of those men but they were speaking pashto. I dont know whether they were Pakistani or American army or people of agencies, as you know that agency people can speak many languages. May be they were speaking Pashto so that we consider them Pakistani. They knocked and banged at our doors and told us not to come out. I laid down on my rooftop and was watching them. My kids were calling me, I told them to go to their rooms and let me check whats going on. The reporter asks Bashir, that when he saw that the helicopter was American what was he thinking then? Bashir said that he got afraid. He didn’t had in his mind that they will attack that house. He thought that they might have come to attack the Pakistan Army. The reporter asked so when was your cousin Shamraiz taken away? Bashir: Shamrez was at our home, as the helicopter exploded, me and many others went out of our homes to see what happened. Shamrez also came out and the gate of the compound was open, we went in, every thing was lying scattered, as it is a huge compound, some body parts were lying here, some there, legs, arms, heads, broken and torn body parts, during that time some part of the helicopter inside, may be the engine or other fuel related part had an explosion so we rushed out. During that time Shamrez was taken away, he is in his home now, but no one is allowed to meet him and i couldn’t get a chance to talk to him later. Then the anchor says that they had vegetations inside the compound and Shamrez was their gardener. We know that two men Arshad and Tariq used to live there. They had good relations with the neighbours, they used to buy things from the local store. Sometimes imported dates and used to send many things to their neighbours. Then the reporter is at Abdullah Ben Zubair Mosque, which is the nearest to compound of Osama. She asks a guy: do you think people would have been glad and happy if they would have ever met osama? The guy : Yes, possibly. Because he was a muslim and he believed in God. This is the whole story! Every aspect and point translated. The gentleman being interviewed lives across from the compound. His cousin Sahab Jamrez Khan used to grow vegetables in the compound. He was taken away in all the hullabaloo on tape @10.29 Bashir says he did not see when they wisked his cousin away. Interviewer asks “Have you spoken to your cousin?” Bashir “No, I have not seen him yet he in in the house. “They will not let him get out” “They will not let me get in.” 2 other men Arshad Sahib and Tariq Sahib used to go to market to shop for that compound and bought international brand items. Dates, dried meat found in compound. Also food used to come from compound to Bashir’s house Kabulu Pilau and things like that used to be presented to Bashir. They will follow up with more information. In the end the lady is standing in front of Abdullah Bin Zubair mosque. The mosque was with in walking distance of the compound. She asks people if Osama did attend this mosque people would have be happy? The one answered maybe. The other said Osama did “not” live here but he was muslim and believed in God. Interview ends. Another thing to note is that Bashir mentioned that we are very “sharif” meaning law abiding honest people. His town was a peaceful place no excitement no murders, fights, and he is unhappy how they have made his town so frightful with all this news. One thing is very clear in this video. Two helicopters hovered never landed. One landed dropped Pashto speaking poeple on the roof 10-12 of them Helicopter left fo 20 minutes returned to load people in and small blast engine failure fire helicopter parts all over. Body parts arms, legs, head, all over. Pakistani Army/Police came in dispersed crowd. The whole scene is cleaned up totally now. No evidence left to examine. Deep Background, The Raymond Davis Affair