The raids were mostly at night, and one raid might yield information that would promptly lead to several more before the sun came up. By hitting targets at night, the raiders more often had the element of surprise and caught the targets before documents could be destroyed. The enemy tried to adapt (with more lookouts and data rigged to be quickly destroyed), but the raids were grabbing too many of the competent men and leaders out of action. This caused the terror organizations to shrink dramatically, and between 2007 and 2009, terrorist attacks dropped by over 90 percent.
It is working in Afghanistan, too:
The Taliban and drug gangs tried to use their control of the media to get the raids halted (because they offended the Afghan sense of propriety). This caught on in the Western media, but intel officials always had the real story to show their political bosses. While there were always a few raids that hit the wrong target, most took out someone who was a terrorist killer or producer of drugs. It was the raids that produced the best evidence on who was most corrupt in the Afghan government and military. The 30-40 raids a night were too important to mess with. So American politicians publicly apologized and privately revealed what had been obtained about dirty dealing in Afghanistan.
Offends their sense of propriety? Oh who would be so gullible to fall for this line of drivel? Seriously, who would fall for enemy propaganda and pass it along ? Why, the usual idiot suspects in Pakistan, of course:
US Special Operations Forces have been increasingly aiming their night-time raids, which have been the primary cause of Afghan anger at the US military presence, at civilian non- combatants in order to exploit their possible intelligence value, according to a new study published by the Open Society Foundation and The Liaison Office.
The raids work in Afghanistan with a history of working in Iraq. The Taliban are desperate to get the raids stopped. Pakistan's The Nation, with readers and editors eager to believe what the Taliban claim about the awful Americans, carries their water.
I would never claim that people enjoy the night raids. But as long as we are careful not to do anything other than the raid itself to annoy and anger the people raided in case they are not involved, we will gain more ground than we lose. If we didn't have the intelligence from these raids, we couldn't fight the war. That's why the Taliban want them stopped.
Although to be fair, even the study (done in part by a Soros organization) doesn't come out and say we should halt the raids. Anything can be adjusted to make them better, and our night raids are surely no exception. Although the report's list of proposed limits might make them worthless. That's hard for me to say. What isn't hard to say is that the concept worked in Iraq, and as long as we don't screw them up in Afghanistan (by either halting them or doing them poorly, contrary to experience in Iraq), they'll work there, too.
