Special Forces

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- So many of America's special operations commandos have been thrown into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan that only a handful of the elite troops are available for the quiet but critical work of training local security forces and stabilizing governments elsewhere -- raising worries about al-Qaida and related terrorist groups expanding in other parts of the world. The demand for Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other highly trained units in battle, which senior military commanders expect will last for the foreseeable future, is a tough problem for the military and for its relatively small and overstretched special operations forces centered here in a bustling wartime headquarters.

A longtime Green Beret who attended high school in Maryland died in an ambush Saturday in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said yesterday. Chief Warrant Officer Bruce E. Price was fatally wounded when his vehicle was attacked by insurgents using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, officials at the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina announced. He was 37 and had lived in Fayetteville, N.C. The often-decorated soldier leaves a wife, Renate, and an 8-year-old son, Aidan.

Aaron Bank, 101, known as "the father of the Green Berets" for his role as the first commander of the Army's elite Special Forces, died Thursday in Dana Point, Calif. In 1952, the Army approved 2,300 spaces for men in a Special Forces unit, the 10th Special Forces Group, at Fort Bragg, N.C. Colonel Bank was a key figure in pushing for its creation.

KABUL, Afghanistan - An American Special Forces soldier has died from wounds sustained during an operation against Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said yesterday. He is the third American to die in operations in Afghanistan in less than a week. The Special Forces soldier, whose name has not been released, was with a combat unit of Americans and Afghan militia when they came under attack Thursday from a group of 10 to 15 gunmen suspected of being members of the Taliban in the Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

MOSCOW - Special forces swooped in on Russia's richest man yesterday when his plane stopped for refueling in Siberia, then handed him over to prosecutors who charged him with seven criminal counts, including tax evasion and fraud. The action against Yukos Oil Co. chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky - which a company spokesman complained resembled the capture of a terrorist - stunningly raised the stakes in a months-long confrontation between prosecutors and the influential billionaire, a battle many people see as a struggle over political power and oil riches rather than real issues of law. At its broadest level, the struggle pits pro-business bureaucrats led by Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov against officials who want to rein in the country's wealthiest men - so-called "oligarchs" who acquired much of the nation's wealth in questionable 1990s privatization deals.

With the White House and Pentagon facing mounting criticism over their handling of the war in Iraq, what's one more television report attacking their credibility? Perhaps not all that much when measured against the sheer mass of media questions as to whether there really were stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to obtain uranium. But War Spin: Jessica Lynch, a British report airing tonight on BBC America, does take allegations that the U.S. government purposefully misled the public to a new level that warrants consideration.

WASHINGTON - U.S. special forces entered Syria in pursuit of a convoy believed to be carrying former Iraqi regime leaders last week and wounded three Syrian border guards in a firefight, senior defense officials said yesterday. The clash with the Syrians occurred as U.S. aircraft or commandos on the ground crossed the frontier as they closed in on the convoy. The incursion into Syrian territory underscored the risks the administration is willing to take in its stepped-up hunt for ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons, whom defense officials described as potential targets of the action.

MOSUL, Iraq -- Lt. Col. Robert Waltemeyer quickly discovered that seizing the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was a lot easier than running it. "We have to protect families and kids, stop bad guys from shooting at us, set up a city council and convince people I don't want to rule the city," said the beleaguered officer and Baltimore native, who led the ragtag forces that captured Iraq's second-largest city this month. But rule it he must, at least for now, because the city's old government vanished in the Mesopotamian mists when the Americans arrived.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - With still no sign of President Saddam Hussein, American Special Forces captured one of his half-brothers, a former intelligence chief who is the third on a list of 55 Iraqis wanted by U.S. authorities to be captured so far. Other ghosts of the old regime are emerging: Relatives of about 700 Iraqi soldiers killed in the war picked through shallow graves yesterday at a military hospital in southern Baghdad, as another mass grave of 1,600...

WASHINGTON - Out of sight of television cameras, some of the heaviest and most prolonged fighting in Iraq has been raging for nearly three weeks near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border. There, British commandos and U.S. Special Forces have been attacking units of Iraq's Special Republican Guards and Special Security Services, according to senior military and defense officials. The Iraqi forces in the area, along the Euphrates River, have been defending a large compound that includes phosphate fertilizer and water treatment plants.