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My Share of the Task(245)

By:General Stanley McChrystal


                for hours, obscuring anything: “He climbed to one thousand feet and was still in the cloud. . . . For three hours they flew like this on instruments” (Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah, 449).

                insufficient bandwidth of every type: “When the on-scene commander happened to be away from his radio to consult with others, his radio operator broadcast that the RH-53 and the C-130 had collided. Unfortunately, the transmission was incomplete and no call sign was given. This resulted in several blind radio calls from support bases in an attempt to find out what had happened and where. These unnecessary transmission blocked out other radio calls” (ibid., 51). Years later, I would still face the need for ever more bandwidth to transmit information and support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

                pilots later admitted: Ibid., 50.

                fully rehearsed: Ibid.

                security concerns prevented: “The AWS team . . . did not have direct contact with the helicopter and C-130 aircrews. Weather information was passed through an intelligence officer to the pilots on regular visits to the training sites. . . . Information flow to the mission pilots was filtered as a result of organizational structure. The traditional relationship between pilots and weather forecasters was severed. This was done to enhance OPSEC” (ibid., 38).

                “directed against” the United States: Holloway, “Holloway Report,” 61.

                Iranian state television looped footage: Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution, 44.

                press conference in Tehran the next day: Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah, 479.


CHAPTER 4: RENAISSANCE

                produce the real metal ones: U.S. Army, “Fort Stewart History,” Fort Stewart website.

                the size of Rhode Island: U.S Army, “Fort Irwin History,” Fort Irwin website.

                Patton’s 2nd Armored Division: Anne W. Chapman, The Origins and Development of the National Training Center, 1976–1984, Office of the Command Historian, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2010, 7.

                train as they would fight: Information on the NTC comes from Chapman, Origins and Development of the National Training Center, 8, 17, and 20–22.

                major in the commandos: Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 204.

                rising to two hundred: Numbers on Afghan Arabs come from Camille Tawil, Brothers in Arms: The Story of al-Qa’ida and the Arab Jihadists (Saqi Books, 2010), 16–19.

                four thousand strong: Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin Press, 2004), 201.

                behind the wheel of bulldozers: Mary Anne Weaver, “The Real Bin Laden,” New Yorker, January 24, 2000, 34.

                Beal Brothers boots: Ibid.

                between the two quickly shifting: Steve Coll, in his biography of the family, notes that at this time, “Osama associated himself with Azzam’s radical voice, yet he remained an entirely orthodox Saudi figure, a minor emissary of its establishment.” Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (Penguin Press, 2008), 256.

                al-qaeda al-sulbah: Thomas Hegghammer, “Abdullah Azzam, the Imam of Jihad,” in Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, ed. Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli (Belknap Press, 2008), 100.

                his homeland of Egypt: Wright, Looming Tower, 150.

                through coordinated coups: Hegghammer, “Imam of Jihad,” 100.