Cheney to Special Ops: ‘We Have a Long War Ahead of Us’
Posted by James Joyner at 08:04
Outside The Beltway
Cheney presents heroism awards to special operators - Vice president to special ops forces: ‘We have a long war ahead of us’ (AP - Army Times)
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Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday lauded and thanked international special operators for their role in the war on terror, but warned them that it is far from over.
“We have a long war ahead of us, and our enemies are waiting for us to let our guard down,” Cheney said, speaking to more than 300 people at the closing of the International Special Operations Forces Week conference. “But we will not relent in this effort because we have the clearest possible understanding of what is at stake.”
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Sobering words and a reminder that, contrary to revisionist remembrance, the Administration has told us from the beginning that the war on terror would be a long one.
Some well deserved kudos to our special operators:
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Cheney said U.S. special operators — “silent professionals,” he called them — were “the first boots on the ground” when the war on terror began in Afghanistan nearly four years ago and played a key role in bringing down Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
“Once again, the contributions of special ops were critical in the swift downfall of a regime, and a strutting dictator went from a palace to a bunker to a spider hole to a prison cell,” Cheney said.
“At every stage of this conflict, we have looked to special operations forces to carry out the most perilous, the most technical, the most time-sensitive and least visible missions,” he said. “When you have enemies that are hidden, secret in their movements … the only alternative is to find out exactly where they are and go in and get them.”
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The story is slightly marred by a bizarre mistake, made twice no less, in referring to one of the medal recipients, Sergeant First Class Stephan Johns, as Sergeant Second Class.
outsidethebeltway.com
Given that there is no such rank and never has been, it's rather bizarre. Even if the AP reporter didn't know that, one would think the Army Times editors and/or webstaff would have caught the error.
outsidethebeltway.com
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