CORONADO Facing a parade ground of battle-weathered faces, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen told Navy SEALs in Coronado yesterday that the war in Afghanistan will be a marathon, but special forces will continue to get funding, even amid budgetary belt tightening.
The Navy admiral also said the fight in Afghanistan will move on to Kandahar, political center of the Taliban’s stronghold, and again voiced his support for allowing uniformed gays to serve openly, in response to questions from the SEAL audience and the media.
“You serve at an extraordinarily challenging time in a very difficult fight that’s going to be around for a while,” Mullen said yesterday afternoon at the Coronado amphibious base, where the Navy’s elite Sea Air Land warfare command is based.
“We are extraordinarily dependent on your success. I know that, and the leaders right through the president understand that. You’ve executed mission after mission successfully, and we have great faith that you will continue to do that.”
The nation’s special operations units have pulled heavy duty in the eight-year-old Afghanistan war, mostly without fanfare, and the Pentagon and Congress have approved an increase in special ops positions throughout the military.
At their grueling boot camp in Coronado, the SEALs are trying to build their numbers by 500 people by 2013 but in some recent years haven’t graduated enough SEALs to meet their goals, according to a federal report.
The joint chiefs chairman praised the assembled SEALs for lowering their famously high boot-camp attrition rate, but Coronado base officials said it’s a recent trend and there are no statistics yet to back that up.
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