British SAS Sergeant killed six Taliban in pitch-black, Viet Cong-style tunnel fight

Reports have surfaced of a 29-year-old British SAS sergeant’s fight against fleeing Taliban terrorists in an underground cave complex in Afghanistan in January. The Daily Star Sunday reported that the soldier from central England managed to shoot three terrorists and kill another three with a claw hammer while in near complete darkness in a series of underground tunnels less than 2 feet wide and 4 feet high. The soldier was part of a joint British and Afghan special forces operation launched against a Taliban base in northern Afghanistan, the Daily Star reported.

The commandos involved in the operation successfully destroyed the base, but several Taliban, including a high-value senior commander, were able to flee into an underground cave complex. When no Afghan commandos volunteered to enter the tunnels, the SAS soldier took it upon himself to complete the mission. The soldier managed to crawl into the narrow tunnel, but with no room for a long-barreled weapon, took only his Glock 9mm pistol.

For 30 minutes, he relied on sound, smell and touch to track and kill six terrorists in the pitch-black, suffocating environment. The soldier used his Glock to kill the first three Taliban he encountered, but when he went to shoot the fourth, his pistol jammed, according to the Daily Star report. Using a claw hammer, the soldier successfully fought and killed the remaining three militants before emerging from the tunnels soaked in blood.

The soldier, an Iraq veteran, called the 30-minute fight the most difficult of his military career. For at least an hour after returning above ground, the solider was unable to speak due to his level of distress.

Article from the Military Times

Is America Deserting her Friends?

This article was published on Defense in Depth and authored by Emerson Brooking and Janine Davidson, with the title "Why Is a Comedian the Only One Talking About the Plight of Afghan Interpreters?" This article outlines the plight of Afghan Interpreters who have been largely left on their own after the US Military pull out. But this is nothing new as the U.S. has been accused of deserting Dr. Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani Doctor and CIA informant who helped track down Osama bin Laden. Dr. Afridi is imprisoned in Pakistan and reported to be routinely tortured. Some people think that the U.S. could trade a little Foreign Military Sales money or otherwise exert some political pressure to get Afridi's release. But then again, when there is another isolated American, Marine Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi, in a Mexican prison that the U.S. Government can't get released, the future goes not look good for Afghan terps or Dr. Afridi.


The article "Why Is a Comedian the Only One Talking About the Plight of Afghan Interpreters?"

If you tuned in for last Sunday’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, you also watched some of the most thorough reporting to date regarding efforts to secure Special Immigration Visas (SIVs) for Afghan and Iraqi translators who have served for years alongside U.S. military personnel. When American servicemen rotate away, these translators remain—often becoming top-priority targets for reprisal attacks. Unfortunately, the State Department program intended to get Afghan translators and their families to safety has long been stuck in a bureaucratic swamp, stranding more than 6,000 Afghans across various stages of the process. With the visa program slated to end on December 31, many of these Afghans are now in very real danger of being abandoned. This raises two difficult questions: first, why has this been allowed to happen? And second, what now—at this late stage—can still be done to save them?

The first question, unfortunately, has an easy answer: asylum-seeking Afghans have been largely ignored by the U.S. government because they have no citizenship, no political leverage, and no large constituency to speak on their behalf. For most members of Congress, this places the plight of Afghan interpreters at the bottom of a very long list of issues. Conversely, the federal bureaucracy also has faced little urgency in speeding the process to grant safe passage to these individuals. There is no clear incentive to make the gears of the process move faster; on the other hand, there are ample reasons to move slowly. What civil servant would want to bear even tangential responsibility for letting a potential security risk into the United States?

In fact, the only reliable constituency for Afghan interpreters have been the American men and women who fought alongside them. As Rusty Bradley, a retired Army Special Forces officer with eight deployments to Afghanistan, recently wrote in a piece titled “Heroes Left to Die:”

I hear all the time about security concerns. The Department of State (DoS) is concerned about admitting Afghan interpreters for fear that al-Qaeda operatives will use the program to enter the United States. This is a loaded excuse. Apparently the State Department is not talking to the FBI, because al-Qaeda is already here. And even if they weren’t, they will not get here through this program. To be sure, there might be unsavory elements among any immigrant population. You don’t think some of the crime problems we have come from Mexican cartels and gangs? But unlike other potential immigrants, our intelligence staffs vet every Afghan interpreter numerous times. We trusted them with mission details, automatic weapons and our lives. The Afghans I sponsor and fully support to come to this country can live under my roof any day. I have vetted them time and again and they have proved themselves to be true, doing so under fire and in the most challenging of circumstances. Who could more deserving of the right to live, work, and enjoy our freedoms then them?

For all the lobbying efforts of U.S. servicemen and veterans, however, the Afghan SIV program has lagged terribly, even when compared to the also beleaguered Iraqi program (in which 6,500 of 25,000 authorized visas were issued). Four years after the initiative’s 2009 launch, the number of successfully processed Afghan visas remained abysmal: it awarded just 32 visas in 2012 to more than 5,700 applicants.

This poor performance prompted a review by Secretary of State John Kerry and incremental reforms that have gradually improved the process. Coupled with rare bipartisan Congressional action taken on August 1 to expand the number of available FY14 visas from 3,000 to 4,000, these have represented small steps in the right direction. But the (according to Oliver’s investigation) fourteen-step visa application process remains cumbersome, oversubscribed, and slow-moving—and time is running out.

This leads to the other big question: what comes next? The entire Afghan SIV program is currently in the process of winding down; the application deadline was September 30, 2014, and all visas must be issued by September 30, 2015. Yet Americans are still fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban are far from defeated, and good translators remain one of the most critical links in the war effort. To let this initiative lapse on December 31 would be a tragic mistake and a moral failure.

There are signs of a solution from Congress. Two bills, introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3), would extend the program to the end of 2015. They languish now respectively in the House and Senate. If they are taken up and passed in Congress’ lame duck session, it will represent an important step in fixing this terrible oversight.

John Oliver may have reignited this conversation, but it shouldn’t end with him. These Afghans have put everything at risk to aid U.S. servicemen, arguably investing more than anyone else in the vision of a free and democratic Afghanistan. To fail them now would not only be a breach of faith—it would also signal to future would-be allies that the United States’ word is not to be trusted and that they help us at their peril. We can do better than this, and we must.

This article does not reflect any position, official or unofficial, of the Special Forces Association (SFA) nor of Chapter IX of the SFA. It is posted to reflect some current on-line commentary regarding the situation of the aforementioned incidents.

Green Beret Major Jim Gant - Lawrence of Afghanistan

This article was published by the NY Post under the title: Green Beret brings girlfriend to Afghanistan, "goes native". This title, does not give Major Gant justice, while the accompanying article is more middle of the road. What is more telling about Jim Gant is the respect and admiration he has received from his fellow Green Berets - that should be enough.








The Green Beret Soldier Who Went Native in Afghanistan - the NY Post article by Gary Buiso

In a remote village in the dangerous northeastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, Army Green Beret Major Jim Gant was doing something few others had — he was making progress against the enemy.

To do so, he and his men went native — trading their body armor for traditional Afghan garb, growing long beards, speaking the local Pashto tongue, and forging close alliances with tribesmen, who would come to revere Gant as “Commander Jim.”

But when he went to bed at night, Gant had one thing his men did not — company. Ann Scott Tyson, a Washington Post war correspondent, quit her job to live secretly with him on the front lines — where he taught her how to shoot an assault rifle for protection. They drank alcohol and made their own rules.

When his commanders got wind of the domestic bliss he carved out for himself in the heart of a war zone, Gant was quietly relieved of his command and pushed to retire in disgrace.

Once nicknamed “Lawrence of Afghanistan” by Gen. David Petraeus, Gant was now more like Col. Walter Kurtz, the Green Beret who goes native — then loony — in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now.” Gant indulged in a “self-created fantasy world,” his commanders charged.

To this day, Gant remains as defiant as Kurtz. “They treated me like a crazed criminal instead of who I was,” Gant, 46, tells The Post. “My expectation was only ever that I would be treated honorably, and that just did not happen.”

The son of schoolteachers, Gant grew up hunting rattlesnakes in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he was inspired to enlist after reading Robin Moore’s 1965 book “The Green Berets.” “I grew up pretty tough. I had a real tough dad,” he says. “Ever since I could remember, I’ve never had a problem fighting. I used to fight a lot when I was younger — so it almost felt like an extension of that for me.”

He enlisted in the Army in 1986, went through special forces training and fought in the first Gulf War. In 2003, Gant was deployed to Afghanistan. He quickly learned there were only two ways to succeed — either get in a gunfight with the Taliban, or find people who would be friendly to the cause. And in the village of Mangwel, where he met tribal chief Malik Noor Afzhal, he found the latter.

Gant showed the leader — whom he nicknamed “Sitting Bull”— footage of the 9/11 attacks, which Afzhal said he had never seen before. “I said we had come there to fight the enemies of my country,” Gant recalls.

Here, the seeds were sown for Gant’s combat philosophy, which would inform a 45-page treatise he wrote in 2009 called “One Tribe at a Time.” “It’s about people. It’s about face-to-face relationships. It’s about the ability to get in there and find out what is going on on the ground and figure out how you can best leverage that resource in Afghanistan which means the most — people,” he says.

He didn’t get the chance to fully realize this initiative until 2010, when Petraeus, then in command of the US forces in Afghanistan, ensured that Gant would go back to test out his “native” theory, charging him with supervision of “village stability operations.”

By that time, Gant — awarded a Silver Star for a brutal battle in Iraq in 2006 — was attracting attention from journalists such as Tyson, 55, a Kansas native who covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The two first spoke over the phone in 2007 and eventually met in Washington, DC, in 2010, when the pair — both separated from their spouses and each with four kids — quickly fell in love. “We spoke each other’s language,” Tyson says.

When they met, Gant was grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder — he still is — and it was Tyson’s wartime experiences that provided her with a deep understanding of what he was going through. “Not only could I talk to her, I loved looking at her, and she is a very wonderful woman, as well,” Gant says.

Gant left for Afghanistan in June 2010, and in March 2011, Tyson left her job to join him. She was a true believer. “The mission he was embarking on made a great deal of sense to me,” Tyson says. “I had seen the military take a much different approach to the point that they were having zero contact with the Iraqis and the Afghans. It was not working.”

The couple lived alongside Afghan tribal fighters in mud-walled compounds with crude latrines and no running water. An Afghan cook whipped up meals for everyone, usually rice and beans with flatbread. On special occasions, they’d eat watermelon.

The couple would stroll through the village together, where they’d meet locals, who would sometimes invite her alone into their homes. “One woman brought out a copy of the Koran, and she started reciting it and asking me to recite after her,” Tyson says. “It was very moving for them to share their religion with me — an infidel American woman. It was extremely powerful.”

And she made an impression on Sitting Bull, who called her his “daughter-in-law” and took her into the interior courtyard of his home — where even Gant had never set foot. “It was a family atmosphere, totally different. Joking, laughing, children were playing on swings. The babies were in the hammocks,” she says. “The symbolism was that I was part of his family.”

Gant taught his lover practical skills — such as how to fire weapons. “I mainly learned how to use a 9mm, AK-47 and an M4. I learned a bit on the larger guns mounted on vehicles,” she says. “This was all as a last resort, in case of a dire emergency.” She said she fired the guns only in training, where she also learned how to hand off ammo to a turret gunner. “You can absolutely say I was his right-hand woman,” she says. “I had many different roles, primarily offering a rare opportunity to build relations with the women in the village.”

Gant says it was not irresponsible for him to bring his lover to Kunar, a hornet’s nest of Taliban and al Qaeda. Rather, it showed the tribesmen the ultimate respect — he trusted them with the safety of the woman he loved.

While there, she was working on her new book, “American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant.” Before long, Gant and the 17 men in his command didn’t even need to request assistance when things got hairy. When there was word that a suicide bomber was headed to Mangwel, it was the local mosque that sounded the alarm over its loudspeaker. “We did not ask them to do this,” Gant says. “That’s a pretty remarkable thing to happen in an Afghan village. I didn’t have one checkpoint in Mangwel, I had 4,000.”

So it was no wonder that when Petraeus awarded him a Joint Service Commendation Medal for his work in Mangwel, Gant knew who also deserved the honor — his old friend Sitting Bull. The next day, he gave it to him. “Without you, there is no me,” he told him.

Twenty-two months after he arrived — and almost a year since Tyson joined him — a lieutenant tipped Gant’s superiors to their cozy living arrangement, as well as other behaviors, including prescription drug and alcohol use. “None of his bosses knew that Ann was there,” Army 1st Lt. Thomas Roberts told ABC. “He didn’t follow any [rules]. He was definitely erratic. He did not act in a stable manner.”

Roberts filed a sworn statement in March 2012, accusing Gant of “immoral and illegal activities and actions,” claiming the major was “intoxicated and under the influence of pain medications.” Gant was airlifted out of Afghanistan, stripped of his special forces honors, demoted to captain and pushed into retirement — a case the Army kept quiet about until Tyson wrote her book. His beard was shaved, and he received a letter of reprimand, signed by Lt. Gen. John Mulholland. “In short, your actions disgraced you as an officer and seriously compromised your character as a gentleman,” the letter reads.

Gant admits to popping pills and says he knows his superiors’ hand was forced once the allegations surfaced. “Any statement that I lived in a self-indulgent fantasy world is not correct. I did drink alcohol. I did take sleeping pills. I did take pain medication. I did break other rules with regard to operational guidance,” he says. But he says those are minor infractions compared to the progress he was making. “It’s ironic to me that [they] would use the term fantasy. It’s almost as though their view of Afghanistan is the real fantasy,” says Tyson, who escaped the country on her own. The brass never caught the two together.

The couple was finally married in Maryland in May 2013 and went back to Afghanistan to “properly” say goodbye to Sitting Bull that September. They now live in Seattle, and plan to one day return to Afghanistan. “Under the right circumstances,” Tyson says.

Captain Keel, latest SF Casualty of Afghanistan

Captain Andrew Michael Pedersen-Keel, 28, of Madison, Conn., died Mar. 11, of wounds received from small-arms fire in Wardak Province, Afghanistan.

He was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C., and was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Pedersen-Keel was commissioned as an Infantry Officer after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 2006. After graduation he attended the Infantry Officer Basic Course and the U.S. Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga. Following his training, he was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division (Light) at Fort Hood, Texas.

In June 2008, Pedersen-Keel deployed to Afghanistan for 12 months with the 3rd BCT where he served as a company executive officer and platoon leader. Upon completion of the deployment, he volunteered for the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course. After completing the Special Forces Qualification Course and language training, he was assigned to the 1st Bn., 3rd SFG (A) as a detachment commander in August 2012. He deployed with the unit to Afghanistan later that year.

His military education includes U.S. Army Airborne School, U.S. Army Ranger School, Combat Lifesaver Course, Combatives Level I Course, Sniper Employment Leaders Course, Pathfinder Course, Maneuver Captain's Career Course, the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Course, and the Special Forces Detachment Officer Qualification Course.

Pedersen-Keel's awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal (2), the Army Commendation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with two Campaign Stars, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the NATO Medal, the Air Assault Badge, the Expert Infantryman Badge, the Parachutist Badge, the Pathfinder Badge, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Ranger Tab, and the Special Forces Tab. 

He is survived by his parents and sister.

Special Forces Ordered out of Afghanistan Province

From an Associated Press by Patrick Quinn, titled "SF Ordered out of Afghanistan Province"

Afghanistan's president on Sunday ordered all U.S. special forces to leave a strategically important eastern province within two weeks because of allegations that Afghans working with them are torturing and abusing other Afghans.

The decision seems to have caught the coalition and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, a separate command, by surprise. Americans have frequently drawn anger from the Afghan public over issues ranging from Qurans burned at a U.S. base to allegations of civilian killings.

"We take all allegations of misconduct seriously and go to great lengths to determine the facts surrounding them," the U.S. forces said in a statement.

Also Sunday, a series of attacks in eastern Afghanistan showed insurgents remain on the offensive even as U.S. and other international forces prepare to end their combat mission by the end of 2014.

Suicide bombers targeted Afghanistan's intelligence agency and other security forces in four coordinated attacks in the heart of Kabul and outlying areas in a bloody reminder of the insurgency's reach nearly 12 years into the war.

Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said the decision to order the American special forces to leave Wardak province was taken during a meeting of the National Security Council because of the alleged actions of Afghans who are considered linked to the U.S. special forces.

He said all special forces operations were to cease immediately in the restive province next to Kabul, which is viewed as a gateway to the capital and has been the focus of counterinsurgency efforts in recent years.

The Taliban have staged numerous attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces in the province. In August 2011, insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs, in Wardak. The crash was the single deadliest loss for U.S. forces in the war.

Afghan forces have taken the lead in many such special operations, especially so-called night raids.

"Those Afghans in these armed groups who are working with the U.S. special forces, the defense minister asked for an explanation of who they are," Faizi said. "Those individuals should be handed over to the Afghan side so that we can further investigate."

A statement the security council issued in English said the armed individuals have allegedly been "harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people."

Ceasing all such operations could have a negative impact on the coalition's campaign to go after Taliban leaders and commanders, who are usually the target of such operations.

Faizi said the issue had already been brought up with the coalition.

The U.S. statement said only that the announcement was "an important issue that we intend to fully discuss with our Afghan counterparts. But until we have had a chance to speak with senior Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan officials about this issue, we are not in a position to comment further."

The brazen assaults, which occurred within a three-hour timespan, were the latest to strike Afghan forces, who have suffered higher casualties this year as U.S. and other foreign troops gradually take a back seat and shift responsibility for security to the government.

The deadliest attack occurred just after sunrise — a suicide car bombing at the gate of the National Directorate of Security compound in Jalalabad, 125 kilometers (78 miles) east of Kabul.

Guards shot and killed the driver but he managed to detonate the explosives-packed vehicle, killing two intelligence agents and wounding three others, according to a statement by the intelligence agency. Provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai confirmed the casualty toll and said the building was damaged in the attack.

A guard also shot and killed a man in an SUV filled with dynamite that was targeting an NDS building on a busy street in Kabul, not far from NATO headquarters. The explosives in the back of the vehicle were defused. Blood stained the driver's seat and the ground where security forces dragged out the would-be attacker.

Shortly before the Jalalabad attack, a suicide attacker detonated a minivan full of explosives at a police checkpoint in Pul-i-Alam on the main highway between Kabul and Logar province. One policeman was killed and two others were wounded, along with a bystander, according to the NDS.

Also in Logar province, which is due south of Kabul, a man wearing a suicide vest was stopped by police as he tried to force his way into the police headquarters for Baraki Barak district, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, the provincial government spokesman. The attacker detonated his vest while being searched, wounding one policeman, according to Darwesh and the NDS.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the Jalalabad attack and two others in the eastern province of Logar in an email to reporters. He did not address the attempted assault in Kabul.

Afghan Hero to Get Medal of Honor

Afghanistan Hero Gets Medal of Honor. A former Army staff sergeant who helped repel one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan will receive the Medal of Honor. Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha, 31, becomes only the fourth living recipient of the nation's highest award for valor from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House announced on Feb. 11 Romesha will receive the medal for his actions in repelling the deadly attack on Combat Outpost Keating on Oct. 3, 2009. At the time Romesha was serving as a Section Leader with Bravo Troop, 3d Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

The attack by hundreds of Taliban fighters on the remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan killed 8 American soldiers and left 22 others wounded. The attack was profiled in the book "The Outpost" by Jake Tapper, formerly of ABC News.

Romesha will become the 11 th veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be awarded the medal. Seven of them have been awarded posthumously.

Combat Outpost Keating was a small base in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, located at the bottom of a valley surrounded on all sides by steep mountain ridges. Plans to close the base had been delayed for months when the attack was launched by 300 Taliban fighters, hiding in the rugged terrain.

According to the citation accompanying his award, Romesha took out an enemy machine gun team and was injured by a rocket propelled grenade as he engaged a second one.

"Undeterred by his injuries, Staff Sergeant Romesha continued to fight," says the citation, "and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers. "

Now leading a five-man team, Romesha used a with a sniper rifle to fight back Taliban attackers, including three who had breached the outpost's perimeter.

"With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Romesha continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire, as he moved confidently about the battlefield engaging and destroying multiple enemy targets," says the citation.

Maintaining radio communication with the tactical operations center at the base, Romesha identified a main point of attackers and directed air support that killed "over 30 enemy fighters."

"After learning that other Soldiers at a distant battle position were still alive, Staff Sergeant Romesha and his team provided covering fire, allowing three of their wounded comrades to reach the aid station. " Romesha and his team then " pushed forward 100 meters under withering fire, to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. "

The citation says "Staff Sergeant Romesha's heroic actions throughout the day-long battle were critical in suppressing an enemy that had far greater numbers. His extraordinary efforts gave Bravo Troop the opportunity to regroup, reorganize and prepare for the counterattack that allowed the Troop to account for its personnel and secure Combat Outpost Keating."

After the battle, Outpost Keating was finally closed down.

Romesha enlisted in the Army in September 1999 and served until April 2011. Married and a father of three, he currently lives in Minot, North Dakota.

Petraeus says he has personal reason to end war: his son

Under close questioning about the nation's longest war from Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), Army Gen. David Petraeus revealed that he has a strong personal stake in ensuring that U.S. troops get out of Afghanistan as soon as is feasible: His own son is serving alongside them.

Jones said he worried the military would not actually leave Afghanistan in 2014 as promised, and that Petraeus would again be testifying in front of Congress that he needed more troops and more time. "You know, 15, 16, 17 years, for God sakes, how much more can we take, how much more can we give treasure and blood?" Jones asked.

"I may not be at this table, probably won't be, in 2015, but I'll tell you that my son is in uniform, and Lieutenant Petraeus just completed a tour in Afghanistan, which thankfully we were able to keep very quiet, and left in November after serving as an infantry platoon leader," the elder Petraeus said. "We're very proud of what he did. He thinks he was doing something very important," he said.

Petraeus said he understood the "impatience" of the American people. He recalled a conversation with a congresswoman who told him she was a member of the Out of Iraq caucus. "And I said, 'Congresswoman, so am I.' But we have to get out under the right conditions," he said. He said he would be the first to tell political leaders if he thought the military's objectives in Afghanistan were not achievable.

The deadly 10-year war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of 2,300 coalition members and thousands more Afghan civilians. Petraeus recently apologized for a NATO air attack that killed nine civilians, some of them children.

Petraeus's son, Army 2nd Lt. Stephen Petraeus, "served in Afghanistan as a member of Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team," according to the AP.

Petraeus isn't the only public figure whose children are fighting or have fought in recent U.S. wars. Sen. John McCain's son Jack graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2009 and his other son Jimmy joined the U.S. Marine Corps when he was only 17 and finished a tour of duty in Iraq in 2008. Vice President Joe Biden's son, Beau, is a captain in the Delaware Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2008.