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Wesley Morgan Profile picture
Wesley Morgan
@wesleysmorgan
Writing about America’s post-9/11 wars and their aftermath. Author of THE HARDEST PLACE @randomhouse. DM for Signal.
Dec 5, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Even if we accept the IDF claim that the ratio of Gazan militants to civilians killed is 1:2 and not worse, this spokesman's claim that this ratio is "unprecedented in the modern history of urban warfare" (and thus admirable) is false.

*Fallujah,* of all places, disproves it. During the brutal, heavily documented Nov 2004 second battle of Fallujah, US troops estimated that they killed 2,100 insurgents.

The Red Cross estimated that US forces killed 800 civilians during the main clearance, and the Iraq Body Count Project estimated 580-670.

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Nov 30, 2023 • 14 tweets • 7 min read
Detailed and disturbing investigation of IDF targeting practices in @972mag by @yuval_abraham, with both anonymous and official sources describing the bombing of "power targets" and loosening of intelligence and collateral damage standards since Oct. 7. 972mag.com/mass-assassina… “Power targets” appear to be how the IDF has implemented “Dahiya doctrine” in Gaza: strikes on government buildings, infrastructure, and high-rises that—although justified by the presence of Hamas offices or personnel—are meant to pressure Gazans into restraining Hamas.

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Nov 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Third report I’ve seen that the largely female 414th Intelligence Battalion—responsible for Gaza border surveillance—sent specific warnings about the coming attack up their chain of command, only to be ignored and have their base overrun (at least 20 414th KIA, plus hostages).


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Image First of the previous reports on the 414th Bn’s ignored warnings, based on interviews with surviving unit members, who feel IDF has ignored them since, too (consistent with FT’s reporting that IDF intends to investigate only “after the war”) haaretz.co.il/news/politics/…
Oct 30, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Twenty years ago today, U.S. warplanes acting on CIA orders launched a devastating attack on the settlement of Ataza in the Waygal valley (marked on the maps of U.S. Army troops who hiked up to assess the damage as Objective Winchester), starting with a strike from a B-1B bomber. Image The CIA was hoping to kill Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, but the strike wound up killing only civilians—family members of Mawlawi Ghulam Rabbani, a cleric who would’ve been very good to have on the U.S.-backed government’s side.

Photo: a Rabbani family member recounting it to me in 2017. Image
Feb 21, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Some new information about US military ops in Africa in the later part of the Trump admin in Mark Esper’s memoir.

In late 2020 before Trump ordered a drawdown, there were more than 1,000 US troops in Somalia, Esper says—more than the highest total (800) DOD ever said publicly. ImageImage Esper says that in late Sept and early Oct 2020, Robert O'Brien pushed DOD to pull out of Somalia, suggesting Trump had ordered it but never providing evidence of it. There was a big meeting about it where Mark Meadows also pushed it, but Trump himself didn't seem involved. Image
Feb 10, 2023 • 29 tweets • 8 min read
US SOF were using Ukrainian operatives for reconnaissance and countering Russian disinformation. But the wording of the funding authority, Section 1202, forced the programs’ suspension when Russia invaded. Now the Pentagon is trying to get that changed. wapo.st/3loKgKk The immediate issue here is a pair of so-called 1202 programs that were active from about 2019 until February 2022, which U.S. officials described to me. But the bigger issue is the fate of Section 1202 more generally, which DOD sees an opportunity to revise and broaden.
Feb 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
How do you market mental health products to American men? You suggest that special operators use it, and that this gives those special operators the delusion of being 13th century knights, which as everyone knows is the opposite of anxiety Also let me tell you, some of those special operators already have that particular delusion even without whatever type of device this is amp.theage.com.au/politics/feder…
Feb 8, 2023 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Whether or not the main claim of Hersh’s Nord Stream Substack piece is correct, level of specificity is no way to gauge a story’s accuracy. You could probably teach a unit about the journalistic equivalent of precision bias based on past details that he got very wrong. For example, look at Hersh’s reporting on the first JSOC raid into Afghanistan in Oct 2001, Objective Gecko. Hersh was correct that this raid occurred and was a big deal! But his New Yorker story on it is full of very precise (and bold) details that later accounts do not support.
Feb 7, 2023 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
One of the most impressive US military veterans I’ve ever interviewed died of cancer last weekend at 89.

Ray Fuller, Sr was a Marine veteran of Korea and Vietnam and an honorary Ranger who deployed with his beloved 2/75 Rangers as their armorer on 2/75’s first Afg tour in 2002. ImageImage Ray enlisted out of high school in 1950.

“I liked the military and didn’t consider college because couldn’t afford it and didn’t think I was that smart,” he told me.

He wanted to go to Korea and went twice—the first time with 2/7 Marines, where he was at the Chosin Reservoir.
Aug 2, 2022 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
It's interesting—& a bit puzzling—that CIA conducted this strike rather than the military, which has a task force in Qatar specifically for "over-the-horizon counterterrorism" strikes in Afg (which it hasn't done any of since last Aug).

I can think of a couple possible reasons. There are two big components to an operation like this: the surveillance leading up to the strike, and the execution of the strike itself. At various points in the past decade or so, CIA and military SOF have seemed better at different parts of this than one another.
Aug 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Unlikely that US and Taliban will agree on whether the strike on Zawahiri was a violation of the Doha agreement's counterterrorism arrangements, or whether what Zawahiri was doing in Kabul was.

US will say he was involved in planning external attacks; Taliban will say he wasn't. Fundamental, irreconcilable difference: For US, AQ is an int'l terrorist organization which also dabbles in advising local jihadist movements. For Taliban, who periodically deny that AQ did 9/11, AQ is primarily a loyal ally in long fight against occupying foreign forces.
Jul 1, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Good stuff on 127e here—revealing programs not previously reported, and showing that several AFRICOM 127e programs were discontinued between 2017 and 2020. A nuance I can add is that Enigma Hunter started as a JSOC program, but was transitioned to white SOF (SOCCENT) around 2019. That’s a common trajectory for 127e surrogate forces—starting out as JSOC programs, then transitioning to white SOF when JSOC get tired of them. That was the case with the Arlit 127e in Niger that I described here (founded by Delta Force, handed off to SF) politico.com/story/2018/07/…
Jun 22, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
After VP Pence got the Navy to let Greitens re-join the Reserve in 2019, the @KansasCityStar FOIA'd internal Navy comms where the brass were struggling to figure out what to do with him, and the excerpts are pretty funny: amp.kansascity.com/article2446344… Greitens dropped Pence's name constantly with Navy brass, suggesting that he only wanted to come back in so that he could go work for Pence on the NSC, but "was very cagey in all of his discussions with us":
Jun 10, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
A military unit where priority 1 is getting everyone home is a unit that’s lost its way. I think a subset of veterans who grew embittered with the risks inherent in soldiering during murky post-9/11 wars have a lot to do with spreading a perception that this is a military mindset Some units *do* lose their way and embrace this "everyone comes home no matter what" mindset, whether because the mission they're supposed to be prioritizing doesn't seem to make sense, or because of how leaders react to losses. I used to see it on embeds.
May 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
That the Air Force plans to give 100 Reaper drones to an unnamed other government agency was reported back in March, but it still blows my mind. That would be a whole lot of Reapers for a CIA that’s supposedly scaling back in the counterterrorism realm. defensenews.com/air/2022/03/28… Some proportion of those 100 might be Reapers that effectively already work for the CIA—ones operated on the agency’s behalf by the Air Force that will now be wholly agency-owned the way CIA’s jet-powered Predator-C/Avengers are. But definitely not all.
Feb 15, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Since the Pentagon stopped releasing Afghanistan airstrike numbers a couple years ago, seems worthwhile to highlight the 2021 airstrike numbers the Abbey Gate investigation contains: 28 US strikes in Afg last June, 23 in July, and 82 in August as the government fell. ImageImage DOD barely said a thing about its continuing Afghan airstrikes in June. The heaviest day that month was June 22, with 8 strikes. Not a word about them in a CENTCOM press release that day about the withdrawal, which had all kinds of other stats in it centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RE…
Sep 13, 2021 • 85 tweets • 48 min read
Resuming this photo thread after a hectic month.

One of the key characters in THE HARDEST PLACE is 1-327 commander Joe Ryan (@25thIDCG). I took this photo of him at COP Michigan in July 2010.

He was on his fifth Afg deployment then. This past June, he came home from his eighth. Image @25thIDCG An @NYTimesAtWar story I wrote about the Pech that trip, focusing on 1-327's use of airpower/artillery at a time when ISAF was trying to curb that:

The Pech was "a mortar and artillery battlefield," Ryan explained. The 155s at Blessing boomed constantly. atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/wei… Image
Aug 20, 2021 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Regardless of whether the al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan poses the same international threat it did pre-9/11, it’s absolutely there—and it now includes al-Qaida figures freshly released from NDS prisons by the Taliban, like Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, whom JSOC hunted for a decade. Here's what the latest US government inspector-general report on Afghanistan operations has to say about al-Qaida's presence in the country and the Taliban's relationship with it: media.defense.gov/2021/Aug/17/20… ImageImage
Apr 11, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The allegations against Australian SASR Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith—of murdering prisoners, desecrating corpses, and all kinds of other stuff—are quite the case study in the dangers of hero-worship of SOF operators theage.com.au/national/burie… “Roberts-Smith dug a hole in the backyard of his house in the Sunshine Coast hinterland & buried the USB drives inside a pink plastic children’s lunchbox to hide them from both police & military investigations...he placed a rock on top to mark the spot.” theage.com.au/national/burie…
Mar 22, 2021 • 32 tweets • 17 min read
Now that THE HARDEST PLACE is out, I'm going to do a photo thread—there was only room in the book's photo insert for 20ish, but people I interviewed shared hundreds more fantastic ones with me. "In 2002, we barely had maps," one of the early Rangers in Kunar told me. "We basically had Russian maps."

He wasn't exaggerating. Here's a map used by Marines in the Pech early in the war. Image
Nov 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Lloyd Austin didn’t impress many of the officers I’ve interviewed who worked for him at MNC-I, USF-I, or CENTCOM. But from Biden team perspective, a guy who, when his recommendations on Iraq troop levels in 2011 were overruled by WH, didn’t make a fuss. That’s may be an important memory for Biden team members (& Biden!) who remember the Afghan surge debate & who seem to be partly hung up about Flournoy for her handling of uniformed leaders’ recs as USD-P—as when Mullen *did* (as was his right) object internally on same Iraq rec.