Both stories involve elite commandos being discovered by regular Joes; the commandos are then presented with the moral dilemma of killing innocent people vs. saving their own skin.
Why couldn’t they just Bill Cosby them? Cosby apparently drugged dozens of women over the course of decades, without any medical training whatsoever, and yet, no one seemed to be seriously harmed.
PLEASE LEAVE THE DISCUSSION OF ANY TRAUMA FROM THE SEX ACT OUT OF THIS DISCUSSION.
My point, or question is this:There seems to be effective ‘Knock out drops’ out there, why doesn’t the military use them?
And even if the commando has these drugs, how is he administering them? A woman on a date is likely to accept a drink (in which a drug can be hidden), but if you’re some random goatherd and a Navy SEAL pops out of nowhere and tries to get you to drink something he gives you, why would you?
Plus, suppose you do knock them out. They’re going to wake back up eventually, and if they wake up quickly enough, they might still be able to jeopardize your mission. How long will that be? It’s tough for even medical professionals to predict, much less a guy who’s trained in an entirely different skillset and who has exactly no medical history for the victim.
Faced with a crowd of people of mixed age, size, gender and health, there is no ‘one size fits all’ knockout drop. Formulate it gentle enough to spare the sick infants and the result is that the big, burly men will not be unconscious. Formulate it to pacify the big burly men, and it will kill some of the smaller/weaker/less healthy individuals.
My understanding of the Bill Cosby (type) situation is women are given drugs and alcohol in a social situation: Either persuaded to take drugs recreationally or slipped them in an alcoholic drink. They are then left for minutes if not an hour or so for the narcotics to take effect. The whole process takes place over several hours plus (while not trying to dispute rape occurs) the sexual activity is a (non-consensual) extension of a consensual social activity. Not to mention shame, social conditioning, fear of lasting damage to professional standing not to mention confusion and drug induced uncertainty dampen the level of resistance from the victims before, during and after the event.
In the wandering Goatherd situation the difference is there is a war going on. The goatherd will not, necessarily, allow the troops anywhere near and will not voluntarily take any drugs or drugged drinks. The goatherd could run immediately he hears a sound. Scream if he even sees troops alerting anyone anywhere near. A trained SAS type (Special Forces) soldier would find it far easier to either silently kill a goatherd or walk away rather than engage in conversation and hope the goatherd is compliant.
In a Cosby type situation the aim is to drug, rape and then (social shame and doubts) suggest the next morning the victim very probably won’t complain. In the goatherd situation, if the soldiers are moving on foot, they may need several days to get clear of the danger zone. They possibly would need to leave Goathard unconscious for days out in an exposed area to ensure they escape. Otherwise goatherd recovers, gets to a radio or phone and the recent position of enemy troops is now known.
In a Cosby type situation the attacker is knowingly breaking the law. Soldiers (this very much applies to UK soldiers) are expected to obey international law which has restrictions on how civilians are dealt with and even limits the treatment of genuine enemy combatants. There have been a number of UK soldiers taken to court in the last few years for (what some may see as entirely justified) actions such as shooting an injured enemy in the head after coming across them rather than taking them prisoner and bringing them back.
Pactical tactical answer: in a war sometimes collateral damage is inevitable.
It’s just bad luck you happened to drive by a building just as a smart bomb goes through the roof. Sucks to be you.
It’s just bad luck you happened to herd your goats around that rock & there happens to be a commando team on the other side. Sucks to be you.
Not really a moral dilemma here. I was sent to do a mission. You’ve become an obstacle. Unlikely I’ve got enough spare manpower to detail somebody to detain & restrain you until the rest of my team finishes our mission. Sucks to be you.
Uh, are you not familiar with the Lone Survivor story? The SEALs were discovered by goat herders, and they ended up letting them go because it was judged that killing them would be a clear-cut case of murder, even though others on the mission thought that was the better thing to do. For the goat herders, it most certainly wasn’t “sucks to be you.” That’s the exact opposite of what happened – in reality, because of the decision to let them go, all but one of the SEALs on the mission were killed, along with dozens of other U.S. service members. “Sucks to be you” literally couldn’t be further from the truth.
In any case, the book made the case that killing them (or knocking them out, I suppose) wouldn’t really solve the problem because the people from the village would come looking for the goats and find the individuals dead, and they’d probably figure out that Americans did it, and the SEALs would go to Leavenworth anyway.
The Bravo Two Zero patrol was on an extended foot mission. When you’re carrying your gear for 50 miles, every ounce of weight matters. Colin Armstrong wound up walking nearly 200 miles to escape into Syria.
I suspect both SEALS and SAS are trained to knock people out with carotid pressure, but whatever you do (including administering ether or other sedatives) your victim is going to wake up in a matter of hours at most.
FWIW, both stories as related by Luttrell, and to a lesser degree McNabb, are largely bullshit. For Luttrell, go read “Victory Point,” by Ed Darack. We’ve talked about it here before (and if Search were working, I’d link to it), but the TL;DR version is that they were compromised from nearly the moment they inserted (nearly on top of their desired OP) and were ambushed by 10-12 ACM from prepared positions, with a couple of belt-feds.
I have my doubts that there were even goatherders, but if there were, killing them wouldn’t have bought them much time. AIUI, if they existed, they were sent by Shah (the HVT they were surveilling) to see if anything was up the hill from the village. If they didn’t return, well, he’d have his answer, wouldn’t he? If you wanted to incapacitate the herdsmen, tying their hands and feet to each other with the ubiquitous 550 cord that all these JSOC guys seem to carry, would have been the way to do it.
Moreover, soft compromise of an OP is not exactly something that’s unprecedented in the GWOT: usually the move is to exfiltrate immediately—it helps if you determine your radios work ahead of time—to your rally point. The move is not to kill unarmed noncombatants, unless you enjoy getting a courts martial if caught.
This isn’t to say that compromise doesn’t happen—ODA 525 had a particularly bad day during Desert Storm—but the solution isn’t to kill noncombatants. ODA 525 let the Bedouin children go that compromised their location, which led to roughly 150+ Iraqi soldiers trying to overrun their position. Unlike B20 or the Red Wings SEAL unit, ODA 525’s radios worked and with the help of a bunch of F-16 strikes, they managed to make it out.
What, you think the date rapists are consulting a chart? “Hmm…120 lbs, 22 years old, good health, - I’ll give 20mg.” They just give some and hope for the desired result. (not speaking from experience!)
Well if they’re going on this type of mission, and assuming such a reliable drop existed, they would take some along. Duh.
That’s your world view? Shoot random innocent people just because you’re too lazy to find a better way? I’m sure you’d sleep fine, too. I don’t consider that an acceptable action. We’re supposed to be helping these people, not pretending we’re in a FPS game.
As far as chemical incapacitation is concerned, AIUI, it’s hard to have a method that’ll knock a wide variety of people out, while also not depressing respiration and involuntary musculature enough to cause their airway to collapse. IOW, you can knock people out, but you may knock them out so much that they die. Especially if you aren’t hanging around to give aid to the recipient when they go into respiratory distress.
See, for example, the Moscow theater crisis, where elite troops of the Interior Ministry used what is believed to be an aerosolized Fentanyl derivative to neutralize Chechen terrorists. It worked—the 40 terrorists were knocked out (and later killed) before they could trigger their explosives—but another 100 or so hostages were also killed by the gas.
Back in the 90’s I interviewed some special forces soldiers as part of research for a video game. We asked them about hand-to-hand combat, specifically about using a knife or choking to subdue someone silently.
Their response: We’d just shoot them. A gunshot makes noise, but so does a struggle. And if you grab someone and try to slit their throat or strangle them, they’re much more likely to be able to turn the tables on you.
Asher actually interviewed the family of goatherds who originally compromised B2Z for the latter book, so they definitely exist. They didn’t know what they had seen, though.
The idea of safely, silently and instantly knocking someone out is a Hollywood myth. There is a reason anesthesiologists are paid a lot (and why general knocking people out remains the most dangerous part of most surgeries that require it).
Additionally it would be a war crime (as it would use of chemical weapons). Something similar was attempted by Russian security services during a terrorist siege with tragic results:
Lutrell is a Hospital Corpsman, so he’d at least know the basics of anesthesia. And he’d probably know that any such method runs the risk at either extreme of being either dangerous or ineffective.
Luttrell’s story has always sounded like bullshit to me, and as others have said his testimony is questionable. His argument was basically ‘the liberals wouldn’t let us kill the goatherders, as a result all my friends died’. He put his political spin on what happened. Even Luttrell’s commanders father said Luttrell’s story probably wasn’t true.
As far as knockout drugs, a single pill should be sufficient. I don’t see why it would matter as far as carrying capacity. Any soldier could carry 3-5 small tablets (and they could probably be made tiny in size) to use in that situation.