Friday morning, the Pentagon released the name of the first American serviceman to die in battle in the latest round of U.S. military involvement in Iraq: Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, age 39, killed during a raid by Kurdish and American commandos on an Islamic State prison near the town of Hawija that reportedly freed 70 hostages who were soon to be summarily executed.
Accompanying Wheeler’s name and age in the Pentagon’s release was a vague description of his unit: “Headquarters U.S. Army Special Operations Command.” That phrase is a euphemism, trotted out for the 12th time since 2003 to describe a soldier killed in Iraq. The official biographies of the soldiers described in this way follow a pattern: They are old for combat soldiers, usually in their 30s. They are veterans of the Army’s elite Special Operations units — the Green Berets or, in Wheeler’s case, the 75th Ranger Regiment. And they die in known insurgent hotbeds: Qaim, Ramadi and, Thursday, Hawija.
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WNU Editor: A good summary on what Delta Force has been doing (and is doing). Unfortunately .... it is not the solution to having no strategy in the Middle East or elsewhere.
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