A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of them, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday.
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards? I don't think so.
I've been annoyed with the media's absolute ignorance over what troops are "elite" since they droned on about Iraq's "elite" Republican Guards in 1990 and 1991 during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Elite troops are exceptionally well-trained troops with high morale. They often have weapons better than the rest of their military. They are effective fighters and can defeat troops many times their number who are merely trained or just rabble in uniform.
Our press continually refers to the loyal and pampered bully boys of other regimes as "elite." This is wrong.
The so-called elite Republican Guards of Saddam's Iraq in 1991 were merely adequate troops in comparison to the regular army infantry units of Iraq. In 2003, they were again adequate in comparison to the rabble infantry units of Saddam's Iraq. The so-called elite Special Republican Guards who some expected to turn Baghdad into a Stalingrad-on-the-Tigris ran when they faced our troops rather than the usual frightened civilians the SRG were used to confronting.
I've heard the palace guards of Third World Hell holes called "elite."
And this article calls the Revolutionary Guards "elite." They are not well trained. They are not well equipped. Their morale? I've read the regime doesn't trust even the Revolutionary Guards who were formed after the Khomeini revolution and evolved during the Iran-Iraq War into a parallel armed force to balance the untrusted regular military that the Shah had built. The regime looks to the Basij as regime enforcers now.
The Basij aren't elite either, by the way.
Stop confusing loyal and pampered bully boys for troops on par with our Army Rangers or our special operations troops. Indeed, our run-of-the-mill troops are so well trained and equipped that if they weren't part of today's excellent United States Army and Marines they'd be considered elite.
So there you go. Some men in uniform are called elite but don't deserve it. And others would be considered elite by past standards and suffer only from being compared to our special forces people--those we term elite by standards incomprehensible to our press.
