Secret Armies Of The Night

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The Pentagon took Rumsfeld's theory for a test drive in Afghanistan, where a relatively small force of several hundred special forces, relying nearly as much on cash as on pinpoint firepower, routed the Taliban and took over the country in two months. But in Afghanistan, the special forces weren't cut loose. Instead, Rumsfeld teamed them with U.S. bombers for a potent ground-air duet that pulverized the Taliban from 35,000 ft. with a minimal U.S. presence on the ground. In part because of the success of special forces in Afghanistan, by the middle of last year, a huge shift in their favor was under way in Washington.

In January, Rumsfeld proposed giving the special-operations command the highly prized authority to propose and carry out missions for the first time. He then asked Congress to increase the SOF budget some 30%, to almost $7 billion, and to expand the number of commandos roughly 10% over the next several years. But Rumsfeld isn't stopping there: a senior U.S. military official told TIME that Rumsfeld has ordered more special-forces personnel to be "forward deployed"--that is, stationed overseas--and some will be given the same kind of civilian cover that intelligence agents get in order to stay closer to the action. "The global nature of the war, the nature of the enemy and the need for fast, efficient operations in hunting down and rooting out terrorist networks around the world have all contributed to the need for an expanded role for the special-operations forces," said Rumsfeld at a January briefing. "We are transforming that command to meet that need."

It would be wrong to imagine that Rumsfeld can convert his special units into supersoldiers who can do anything or stop anyone. Even he knows that. Special forces have yet to find Osama bin Laden after a 20-month manhunt in Afghanistan. And for all their military success in Iraq, notes a Pentagon official pointedly, "we haven't got Saddam, and we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction." But for the officers who have been fighting the military's conventional thinking for decades, Iraq was the war they had been waiting for. "There are certain things we can do, and there are certain things we can't," said a top special-forces officer who served in Afghanistan. "We can't take and hold ground. But there are some things we can do, and finally the civilian commanders have learned the proper mix."