Hostage Rescue Attempt Fails

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21 Responses to Hostage Rescue Attempt Fails

  1. norilsk says:

    Yes it failed, but the Canadian ambassador came to the rescue and got some of them out.

  2. kentclizbe says:

    Great analogy.

    This is exactly the same situation.

    The Obama spin machine surely already had video clips ready, and had loaded his teleprompter with strutting boasts of his prowess.
    But now that it failed, the PC-Prog media will just let this sink into oblivion.
    Nothing to see here–move along!

  3. Mat Helm says:

    I remember that well. They dragged the body’s of the soldiers through the streets. We still owe them one for that crap. Same thing happened with Clintion….

    • B says:

      You really don’t want to keep score: Operation Ajax, a couple decades of the Shah, a brutal war against a US proxy, economic warfare for decades…

  4. rah says:

    Carter failed to adequately fund the military during his term. Naval combatant ships didn’t sail for lack of spares. Over 2/3rds of the Army was deemed unready for combat. In SF our annual training budget amounted to about the same as what it took to move one armored brigade for a major exercise. The only bright note was the Carter did adequately fund military R&D.

    In special ops, the conventional minded and short sighted were trying to kill SF altogether. There was no unified special ops command. There was little joint training between the various special ops units. There was little funding for equipment. We on the teams in 10th SFG were issued the exact same cold weather package that had been issued during the Korean war. It was too the point where I, as a PFC just arriving at 10th group spent the equivalent of 4 months pay just to buy the basics I needed for winter warfare from the civilian market. The sleeping bag I used for cold weather and alpine ops for the winters of 1980-81-82 was a Christmas present from my parents.

    So when Carter needed them they couldn’t perform. The command structure, combination of aircraft, etc, were an ad-hoc hodgepodge put together not because of capability in most cases but because of the various services all demanding they have some key role in the mission.

    A team sergeant I had was on the mission. He was one that would have gone into the city had the mission continued. He was in the MC-130 parked next to the one the helicopter hit. The guys didn’t have a chance because they were sitting on fuel bladders the covered the cargo deck of the aircraft. Those fuel bladders were full of JP4 for refueling the choppers. Choppers flown by pilots that had no desert flying experience. The list goes on and on.

  5. James Strom says:

    It’s surprising that the administration released this information at all.

    • Mat Helm says:

      With the bodies being dragged through the streets, and all the wreckage video, it was kind of hard not to….

      But the worst thing about the whole deal was that had he just picked up the phone and threatened the ayatollah, there would have been no hostages to rescue. They thought the US was going to attack, and were denying any involvement with the taking of the embassy.

      • James Strom says:

        I was referring to the current leader, whose rescue attempt had been secret. He has a way to go to match Carter on this count.

    • TGT says:

      Mr. Carter, by politician standards, an honest man back then*. He as much as advertised that he was incompetent as an executive. When he left office, I expected never to see the U.S.A. to ever have a worse president: live and learn.

      *Even now, I think he believes the lies he tells.

  6. au1corsair says:

    On another note, the Desert One disaster made President Obama sweat blood over his “green light” to get Osama bin Laden. It was the most difficult decision of Barack Obama’s entire political career. Most of us cannot appreciate Citizen Obama’s perception of risk versus pay-off in this instance.

    Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t: President Carter dithered for weeks about acting. Extreme pressure was applied to get Jimmy Carter to “do something” to salvage national pride over the insult of occupying the American Embassy in Tehran and holding hostage embassy personnel. When Citizen Carter authorized the raid to rescue the embassy staff, he wasn’t able to remotely control every soldier on the ground. Commando operations are high risk–and many fail. The architect of the Son Tay raid (another failure) commanded the Tehran raid on the ground.

    Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t: President Obama dithered for weeks about acting. Extreme pressure was applied to get Barack Obama to “do something” to salvage national pride over the insult of murdering 3000 American citizens on September 11, 2001. When Citizen Obama authorized the raid to ‘arrest bin Laden’ he wasn’t able to remotely control every soldier on the ground. Commando operations are high risk–and many fail. The commandoes on the ground learned from Son Toy and the failed Tehran raid–but Barack Obama was outside his comfort zone.

    Oh, by the way, Carter’s failure did contribute to releasing the Tehran embassy hostages. The fact that “soft Americans,” especially Jimmy Carter, would do something as desperate as Operation Eagle Claw, scared the hell out of Iran’s leadership. Matter of fact, the failed Son Tay Raid made the North Vietnamese government concerned enough to treat American “air pirates” and “war criminals” held captive with more humanity. The next Operation Ivory Coast might have been to abduct North Vietnamese government officials!

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/failed-james-foley-raid-recalls-futile-past-efforts-to-rescue-u.s.-captives/article/2552272

    And of course there were two successful World War Two operations as nightmare fodder:

    http://olive-drab.com/od_history_ww2_stories_1945cabanatuan.php

    http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/aerialcampaigns/p/operation-vengeance.htm

    • rah says:

      The Cubantuan raid by the US Army Rangers assisted by the Filipino Alamo scouts and guerrillas without which it would never have been possible, remains the most successful POW rescue raid in history. If one hasn’t read about it they should. Remarkable story and one of the finest examples
      of what can be accomplished when there is successful coordination between conventional and unconventional forces. Another great story of such coordination is less well known. OSS Detachment 101 in the Burma working with the Kachin tribes to assist the Sky troopers and Chindits of the military genius Orde Wingate. Not a rescue story but one that people that only think of Merrill’s Marauders or the bridge of the river Kwai when they think of the CBI should learn about.

    • Mat Helm says:

      Need to find my wader boots for that one. As documented by the the ayatollah himself, it was assumed the US would defend (aka. take military action) it’s embassy personnel. They were taken 11-4-79, the attempt was 4-24-80. That’s nearly 6 months of nothing. It wasn’t pride, it was duty. But you’re right about the pressure, which was reelection pressure. Had it not been an election year, those hostages would have been there for years…

      Good luck with the Carter myth though. Although unlike the Kennedy myth, he’s still around and not afraid to show all what a fantasy world his mind really is…

  7. geran says:

    Here’s the correct way to do a hostage rescue:

    http://operationentebbe.com/p1_rescue.php

  8. Andy DC says:

    The mission failed because our wonderful NOAA meteorologists failed to predict a sandstorm that day. That was covered up by NOAA officials, as you might imagine.

  9. Paul in Sweden says:

    Hostages? No Problem Soviets Offer ‘How-to’ Lesson In Kidnapping – Philly.com
    According to Morris, the KBG determined the kidnapping to be the work of the Shiite Muslim group known as Hezbollah, or Party of God. This was the same radical pro-Iranian faction that figured so belligerently in the mass hostage-taking from the TWA airliner at Beirut Airport last June.Unlike the approach the United States used to resolve the TWA crisis, however, the Soviets did not bother negotiating with Hezbollah through Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s justice minister and leader of the Shiite Amal militia. Instead, the KGB kidnapped a man they knew to be a close relative of a prominent Hezbollah leader. They then castrated him and sent the severed organs to the Hezbollah official, before dispatching the unfortunate kinsman with a bullet in the brain. In addition to presenting him with this grisly proof of their seriousness, the KGB operatives also advised the Hezbollah leader that they knew the identities of other close relatives of his, and that he could expect more such packages if the three Soviet diplomats were not freed immediately. The message was a lot more extreme than Ronald Reagan’s vague allusions to using “Rambo next time,” but the swift release of the three remaining hostages indicated that the Hezbollah big shot couldn’t handle having terror shoved back in his face.
    http://articles.philly.com/1986-01-15/news/26052630_1_hostage-crisis-soviet-captives-islamic-liberation-organization

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