U.S. Special Operations Command, obscure before 9/11, on front lines in war on terror

[Geee]

Washingrton Times:

Islamic extremists jarred America 14 years ago in a coordinated attack that also rattled to attention a backwater military command that had done a lot of training in past decades but only sporadic fighting.

 

Shortly after al Qaeda’s massacres in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued one of his white-paper memos directing his forces to get into the manhunting business.

 

Much of the hunting would by done by that then-obscure outpost — U.S. Special Operations Command. SOCOM oversees some of the nation’s most ruthless and sophisticated warriors, yet remained on Sept. 11, 2001, an little-known group, housed on an Air Force base amid Tampa’s palms and warm rains.