Burrus86 said:

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Well, Democrats like them a good war every now and then.

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Sometimes you have to create the crisis if you want to take advantage of it, amirite?

Slicer97 said:

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Troy91 said:

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I did the workup to go to Somalia but did not deploy there.

The documentary covers this in the first 5 minutes. We were on a UN peacekeeping mission. That UN peace keeping command is the one that refused to roll armored vehicles for a long time which left the Rangers stuck in the city overnight.

The only heavy support that the Rangers and Delta had were UN forces.

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My understanding was the Marines had been sent on a peace keeping mission to help protect the grain distribution. After they left, Aidid's guys attacked and killed some UN Paki soldiers and the Rangers/Delta were sent in to go after Aidid. But that was from reading an article back in the mid/late 90s.

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Correct. That is a separate mission.

Due to the rising tensions caused by the civil war, someone decided that the embassy needed more than a normal security detachment. So they started rotating a FAST platoon of about 50 Marines through there. You won't see it discussed as nothing happened.

txags92 said:

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Burrus86 said:

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Well, Democrats like them a good war every now and then.

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Sometimes you have to create the crisis if you want to take advantage of it, amirite?

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You mean like April 2020?

Slicer97 said:

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Troy91 said:

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I did the workup to go to Somalia but did not deploy there.

The documentary covers this in the first 5 minutes. We were on a UN peacekeeping mission. That UN peace keeping command is the one that refused to roll armored vehicles for a long time which left the Rangers stuck in the city overnight.

The only heavy support that the Rangers and Delta had were UN forces.

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My understanding was the Marines had been sent on a peace keeping mission to help protect the grain distribution. After they left, Aidid's guys attacked and killed some UN Paki soldiers and the Rangers/Delta were sent in to go after Aidid. But that was from reading an article back in the mid/late 90s.

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This.

H.W. Bush originally sent in the Marines in December of 1992 (the waning days of his presidency) to assist the U.N. peacekeeping mission there, which was not being successful in getting food to the starving Somalian people. Clinton inherited the mission when he became president in January 1993.

From History.com:

Quote:

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Like his predecessor, Clinton was anxious to bring the Americans home, and in May the mission was formally handed back to the United Nations. By June 1993, only 4,200 U.S. troops remained. However, on June 5, 24 Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers inspecting a weapons storage site were ambushed and massacred by Somalia soldiers under the warlord General Mohammed Aidid. U.S. and U.N. forces subsequently began an extensive search for the elusive strongman, and in August, 400 elite U.S. troops from Delta Force and the U.S. Rangers arrived on a mission to capture Aidid. Two months later, on October 3-4, 18 of these soldiers were killed and 84 wounded during a disastrous assault on Mogadishu's Olympia Hotel in search of Aidid. The bloody battle, which lasted 17 hours, was the most violent U.S. combat firefight since Vietnam. As many as 1,000 Somalis were killed.

Three days later, with Aidid still at large, President Clinton cut his losses and ordered a total U.S. withdrawal. On March 25, 1994, the last U.S. troops left Somalia, leaving 20,000 U.N. troops behind to facilitate "nation-building" in the divided country.

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it's hard to believe that Clinton could be reelected in 1996 after the clusterf of

Somalia Black Hawk Down

Waco

wasn't the first World Trade Center bombing in his first term?!?

Oklahoma City

that is what happens when you nominate honorable but ancient Bob Dole!

Gator92 said:

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Troy91 said:

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I did the workup to go to Somalia but did not deploy there.

The documentary covers this in the first 5 minutes. We were on a UN peacekeeping mission. That UN peace keeping command is the one that refused to roll armored vehicles for a long time which left the Rangers stuck in the city overnight.

The only heavy support that the Rangers and Delta had were UN forces.

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I cancelled Netflix.

I can remember from reading the book, one of the big takeaways was Clinton admin wouldn't allow AC130's and the command in Somalia requested them.

The movie made no mention of it.

Is there mention of AC130's in this doc?

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I was there with the 10th Mountain Division from mid 93 thru MAR 94 (the very end of US involvement) and we had AC-130s there. I cannot speak to exactly when they arrived, but they were certainly there in my time. We had one actually grounded towards the end of 93 for 'Rodent Infestation'. I had to go pick up an expert from Auburn that was flown over to help eradicate them. Lol. Fun times...

One of the Rangers who ran the Mogadishu Mile was in my OCS company. He was the most decorated individual in Quantico at the time which made for interesting interactions with the staff.

He was ahead of the DEI curve and was switching services to avoid women in combat roles.