TEAGUE: You know, I went into it thinking that there would be stark differences between, you know, a red side and a blue side and one versus the other. Gunplay was a possibility, so Thomas had a list of strict no-go scenarios, among them the presence of local police, Russian troops, or children. The clip wasn't unearthed by a professional journalist. At the conclusion of the briefing, he recalled, Obama made two points: One, We dont know enough about the problem. And two, Maybe the best thing we can do is mow the grassmeaning, manage the problem around its edges, quietly. But it's a little different. Barring the outbreak of a catastrophic war between major powers, SOCOM will likely remain a primary way America projects force, one that is well suited to the global, varied, and collaborative nature of war in the 21st century. The trip from genius to idiot was a flash. ROBERTS: Let's talk about that ACORN video, because it was also not produced by journalists, but by conservative activists. Leaders began to find new uses for Special Ops. He had insulated himself from failure with bluster. I mean, it's a revelation, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with what they did. As in most other fields, modern telecoms would transform war-fighting. I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida homeprepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. Copyright 2009 NPR. To compete on the computer-assisted modern battlefield, SOCOM has taken the lead in employing artificial intelligence. His trademark techniques are used by top leaders and political players around the world who want to gain an advantage beyond wordswhen they speak. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me. Killing or capturing a murderous foe appeals to a sense of justice and provides momentary satisfaction, but eliminating a terrorist leader is not victory. Learn How rich is He in this year and how He spends money? Theyve become a major military playerand maybe a substitute for strategic thinking. Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the worlds Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Last week, a video made the news rounds - two conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute, soliciting tax advice from ACORN. Hostage rescue, manhunting, search-and-destroy missionsthese had become the U.S. militarys active pursuits worldwide. The Green Berets survived as an elite unit, but many ambitious Army officers considered a berth in Special Forces a career-killer. As Ive watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasnt changed. Accuracy and availability may vary. Notably, its continued growth has been spurred by both success and failure. He explained the situation to me in a way that both made his position understandable and underlined the institutional imperatives that push in one direction only. Could he take out the Scuds? He is a go-to media commentator on the body language of politicians, celebrities and public figures, appearing regularly on CNN, CBS, and Global News, and he is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and GQ Magazine. As Krstis vehicle neared, first a Russian convoy approached, then a local military-police vehicle. The assault was filmed from a helicopter, which flew lower and slower than the jets that provided most of the footage viewed at headquarters. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. He looked soft, from his growing jowls to the way his belt bit deeply into the spreading roll of his belly. The comment about being a wise Latina woman and thereby being able to make superior judgment, which was aired universally, was actually the second part of a paragraph that began by looking at a case involving sexual or racial discrimination. what? Is this the only direction journalism is going, or is there a counteracting force? Trump did not make decisions. At last, on the screen, Thomas watched the school bus clear the zone, with only seconds to spare. Mr. BOWDEN: Well, you know what? The unheralded and mostly unknown Republicans active in local politics who refused to go along with Trump's lies and played a key role in preserving American democracy are the main subject of. Thomas admits that he fought a losing battle to keep his command from becoming bigger and more bureaucratic. No one ever influenced me in my work for The Philadelphia Inquirer to slant a story in one direction or the other, and nor was I even aware of any effort to censor or shape the reports that went into the newspaper. These guys are doing a hundred times more than we ever dreamed of doing, and doing it better., His friend seemed disappointed by the response, so McChrystal explained further: Its not just a few, you know, burly men anymore. But that part was ignored by the political machinery that was determined to find flaws in the electoral process. Other events secured SOCOMs status. And you are undoubtedly familiar with this video clip from May. So what Sotomayor was saying was not that her gender and her ethnicity made her superior across the board. And so he found it without actually too much trouble. The tankers were being preyed upon by Iranian forces. You can find the link to his most recent piece, "The Story Behind the Story," at our Web site, npr.org. Mr. BOWDEN: That came from a speech that Sotomayor gave at Berkeley in 2001. ROBERTS: Mark Bowden, a national correspondent for the Atlantic Magazine, joining us from our home in Philadelphia. . Special Ops teams were still hunting Saddam and other high-value targets when a new enemy arose: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a jihadist known as The Sheikh of the Slaughterers. His followers were setting off bombs in crowded places, attacking American soldiers, and kidnapping infidels and beheading them in horrific videos posted online. But McChrystal got what he wanted. The results were also on film. Both passed by. Its intelligence network and aerial assets would give Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrian fighters an overwhelming advantage against ISIS. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer. And in Michigan he called individual members of commissions who were responsible for certifying the vote to lobby them to change their votes. In that role he researched and wrote Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, both of which appeared as lengthy serials in the newspaper before being published as books. Mark Bowden 's birthday is 12/29/1972 and is 49 years old. Much of SOCOMs action takes place in secret. By seeking out dramatic military missions, I have chronicled the movement of Special Ops from the wings to center stage. I guess thatll have to be in your story, he said. Powell said, This just in from the Israelis. Iraq had begun firing Scud missiles at Israel from mobile launchers in the vast western-Iraqi desert. And that really wasn't the case. The insurgency persisted and ultimately morphed into ISIS. The attackers were crammed into four Black Hawks, as many as 15 Rangers in each helicopterI mean, just ridiculous loads, Thomas recalled. Special Ops is lodged today under the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, a combatant command that reports directly to the secretary of defense. Mark Bowden October 2009 Issue Subscribe Now I f you happened to be watching a television news channel on May 26, the day President Obama nominated U.S. Theres the continuum of absolute peace, which has never existed on the planet, up to toe-to-toe full-scale warfare, General Raymond A. The very definition of JSOC changed, again. Special Ops was the star of the 1989 invasion of Panama, an operation that went as smoothly as Grenada had gone badly. They appeal to anyone who cant be bothered to think them throughcant be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? All rights reserved. Career. SOCOM gave him the option of mowing the grass, at least for a time. Bowden believes that young people are just as drawn to "deep" journalism as other generations of people have been. Thomas was already fielding units in virtually every European country bordering Russia and developing plans to deter China. In less than 24 hours she had corrected it and said, I've made a mistake; and that's all it is. Silverman closes by listing three takeaways for newsrooms, one of which is, "Whether or not you like the tone or approach taken by an outside critic, you still have a responsibility to examine claims of factual error or ethical malfeasance," and he notes further that it might have been easier for T&T and Vanity Fair to deal with the issue if they had spoken to one another directly. Then theres that difficult in-between space.. Bowden has produced a fascinating story that is a harsh description of rough justice in the world. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. We lucked out and came right on a Scud launcher two or three days after we started, Thomas recalled. It didn't matter that she had taken responsibility for the mistake. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced. . With Trump, what you see is what you get. He has taught journalism and creative writing at Loyola University Maryland, and was Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Delaware from 2013 to 2017. Execute! he ordered. The Nunn-Cohen amendment also gave SOCOM clout. Mark's ethnicity is Caucasian, whose political affiliation is currently a registered Republican; and religious views are listed as Christian. So from them, it gets sent out to - or tips are sent out to journalists from the major networks. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. BOWDEN: Well, I don't see that distrust going away. ROBERTS: So let's go back to that Sotomayor clip. GURA: Matt, President Trump himself plays a funny role in this. Thursday is Jan. 6, a year since a mob overran the U.S. Capitol. It's my fault. After President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, news organizations - including this one - played that clip over and over and over again. We came skimming in over the ocean and had three out of the four helicopters crash, Thomas said. you see how the national political priority of anti-communism in the 1950s and '60s effectively rooted out people in . But in fact he would be present for nearly every major U.S. military action of the next four decades. Meet The Team Mark Bowden Founder and President, TRUTHPLANE View Profile Tracey Thomson The effort seemed snakebit. We were lucky we were not up against the A team, Thomas acknowledged. David Gura speaks with journalists Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague about their new book "The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It.". Round up the families of suspected terrorists? It works to locate hidden nuclear-missile sites in North Korea. Is it any wonder he and the former president are already locked in a 2024 cold war? Democracy depends on a modicum of trust. He had agitated so long to create a similar multipurpose commando unit within the U.S. military that he had alienated many up the chain, which helped explain why he was still a colonel when he retired. There is still a lack of trust in the way elections are administered and the way these machines work. Part VI of the series, published on T&T in October 2012, noted that Cullen Murphy, Bowden's editor at Vanity Fair, declined to comment on the record to the blog's author about the allegations related to Bowden's article. The if we must plan he outlined was a bold and daring Rube Goldberg scenario. He said in March 2009: "Nothing will ever replace language as the medium of thought, so nothing will replace the well-written, originally-reported story, or the well-reasoned essay."[10]. Poynter Journalism School blog posted an extended analysis of the dispute by Craig Silverman,[7] noting that Vanity Fair had posted a correction to the article, and that "the discrepancies [noted by T&T] don't amount to quote manipulation or a misrepresentation of what was said." His refurbished, tech-assisted team found, fixed, and finished Zarqawi himself with an air strike at one of his hideouts north of Baghdad in June 2006. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Sometimes Mark goes by various nicknames including Mark Biowden, Mark R Bowden and Mark Russell Bowden. The elections are very decentralized, and local officials are, for the most part, deeply patriotic and honest. Live video feeds were just the beginning. And another headquarters eventually becomes just another layer you have to get through., McChrystal saw it coming. In 2017, responsibility for policing weapons of mass destruction worldwide was handed from U.S. Strategic Command to SOCOM, which was given information operations at about the same time. Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague have a new book called "The Steal," documenting the rise of this conspiracy across the country and the lives destroyed by it. Mark's ethnicity is Caucasian, whose political affiliation is unknown; and religious views are listed as Christian. Written more than a year before the violations of prisoners were revealed at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, he wrote, in part: The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Nevertheless, it's not journalism. Joining us now from Philadelphia is Mark Bowden, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine. Rescuing hostages being its prime focus, JSOC was a key player in the invasion, which was over fast. McChrystal was known as a relentless striver. You can read his article at npr.org. Mark Robert Bowden (born July 17, 1951) is an American writer who is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and a 1973 graduate of Loyola College in Maryland, Bowden was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1979-2003, and has won numerous awards. But, you know, I came away from this book optimistic about the future because what we saw was that the American people are not as fundamentally dishonest as Donald Trump. He ran into another predawn gym rat, a retired Navy SEAL, who lamented, Its just not like the old days, is it?, No, McChrystal agreed. The researchers, Eitan Hersh, formerly a political scientist at Yale, and Gabrielle Malina, a graduate student at Harvard, identified about 180,000 clergy and were able to match about 130,000 to . To compete on the computer-assisted modern battlefield, SOCOM has taken the in. To idiot was a key player in the invasion, which was over fast by,! 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