Of all the things about the president’s war on terrorism that can be criticized, the biggest is the notion that it deserves to be called a “war.” But Bush and Cheney insist that it is a war, and they want to boost the Special Forces and the new Special Operations Command to fight it. However, a new report from the GAO notes that the administration hardly has any idea what the new, gung-ho Special Ops people might do.

The SOC, says GAO, gives the secretary of defense vast power for covert action overseas. Among the missions for the SOC are “offensive measures taken to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism,” “short duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions undertaken to seize, destroy, capture, recover, or inflict damage on designated personnel or materials,” “a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations,” “psychological operations [to] influence [the] emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” And of course, “other operations … specified by the President or the Secretary of Defense.”

The report says that since 9/11 the Bush administration has already expanded the SOC and wants even more. “The number of special operations forces personnel deployed for operations has greatly increased,” says GAO, noting that deployments have risen 64 per cent. It adds: “DOD plans to significantly increase the number of special operations forces personnel.” But it says:

The Special Operations Command has not yet fully determined all of the personnel requirements needed to meet its expanded mission. … It has not yet completed analyses to determine … how many headquarters staff are needed to plan and synchronize global actions against terrorist networks—a new mission for the Command.

What exactly are these guys going to do? Invade the suburbs of London? Attack mosques in Germany? Goosestep down streets in Amsterdam to intimidate radical Muslims there? I mean, the so-called War on Terrorism doesn’t need a bunch of hoo-ah types. Last time I checked, it was these heavy-handed displays of muscle that were making things worse, not better, from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Funding for the SOC is up from $3.8 billion in 2001 to $6.4 billion in 2005. It’s projected to rise to $8 billion by 2007 and increase steadily through 2011, says GAO. The number of Special Forces battalions, which was 55 in 2001, will skyrocket to 94 by 2011, and the Pentagon is constantly producing reports to justify bigger increases. (A lot of Democrats love this stuff, too.) The GAO notes that the Pentagon is scrambling to be able to recruit for these huge increases, paying big bonuses to retain people too.