| I spent my first couple of years in the Army trying to get people to surrender. It's called psychological operations. Though 'calling out' is not the preferred method of doing it. Loud speakers are far more effective in a tactical situation. Get somewhere where they can't see you/shoot at you, and talk to them via a loudspeaker. Saddam is a high enough priority target that we would want him to surrender rather than kill. Remember, we didn't kill Noriega either when we knew where he was. Nope, PsyOpers broke his spirit and he came quietly. I also noticed the eight guys thing. We had two native born interpreters for six teams when I was in Somalia and that was at least double the native speaker:gringo ratio that everyone else had. We were so tight for native speakers that we would fax things back to the states for approval from (I think it was) a sailor who was a real-for-real Somali native and not just someone raised speaking Arabic. So it struck me that the Corps would be extremely unlikely to compromise that high a percentage of their linguistic assests in a single mission. Although the Corps is a different branch of service, so I don't know their SOP's. I do know that the Marines would be extremely unlikely to let the Army take credit for their work though. Whereas the guys I suspect got Saddam would want nothing more than for someone to have the adulations. |