Alright, I’m a prick.  I’m an asshole, OK!  But your wrong, I love to debate.  But did you read what I had to say about your post?  It is full of that BS, Army know it all attitude of b/c the Corps didn’t join SOCOM in ’86 that we’re somehow behind the curve, or have some ulterior motive. 

Re-read your post, have someone read it to you, listen to your tone.  I bet you had a big Smug grin on your face while you were typing it.

You have the attitude, but I’m the Asshole?   OK!

Well it’s a good thing Special Operations and SOF began in 1986, huh?  That’ll shut up those Dumb Ass Marines!

No, wait??  They did ask PX Kelley to lead SOCOM, they did request that the MC transfer over all Specialized Units, and the Corps and the other services have been running Special Operations for years B4 and after the birth of SOCOM.

You see its mostly Regular Army Turds, who’ve done nothing more Special then ride the short bus, who come on sites like this w/ their ass up on their shoulders.  Yelling “Who put this thing together” like Tony Montana on Scarface.

Let me say right off that I have absolutely nothing against the Marine Corps. In fact, I would say that man for man they are probably the toughest fighting force in the modern world. They are a fully integrated branch with aircraft, helicopter, armored, and infantry resources. Most world militaries would lust after the firepower the USMC can bring to bear, and I firmly believe that the US Marine Corps could take on most foreign militaries by themselves with only limited US Navy support. I also have nothing against USMC special ops units, and I really don't know where you inferred that from my four sentence post. Marine Force Recon and ANGLICO units are well respected in the special ops community for good reason. I feel that the USMC made a big mistake when they declined to participate in SOCOM twenty years ago, but they have made up for that since then. The "piece of the SOCOM pie" I was referring to had less to do with money than it did with operational experience. As anyone that has ever carried a gun for reasons other than hunting or plinking knows, you can train 24/7 but the best teacher is real world experince in combat conditions. After the Cold War ended it became apparent that the US would be much more likely to become involved in Direct Action operations than it would large scale deployments, and most of those small unit DA ops would be conducted by Special Ops units. The Marines are hard chargers and always want a piece of the action, and I think they realized that its participation in SOCOM was essential if it wanted to participate. As the GWOT progresses I think you will see a lot more DA operations than you will major pitched battles of brigade or division sized units. The Marines were smart to commit to SOCOM, and I'm sure their input and experience was welcome.

I will repost my original response to your thread about the Marine FMTU teams, and I'll let the others decide if I was copping an attitude. One of the biggest disadvantages of written communication over verbal communication is that most verbal communication relies upon non-verbal communication (i.e., hand gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc.). None of that is present with written communication, so for various reasons the recipient may interpret the tone of the communication in a way that it wasn't intended. I wrote the comment, so I know what my attitude was at the time. I would describe my frame of mind at the time I wrote it as more skeptical than anything. I had never heard of the FMTU teams, so I was curious about them, but I had some questions as to their mission and purpose and how their mission was different from the one already being performed by the Army SF ODA teams. They seemed to be doing the exact same job as the Special Forces were doing, so I was simply curious as to why such a unit was created when SF had been doing this job for half a century. Yes, I did read your post, and I reread it again, but some of my questions were not answered. Bad News did a pretty good job of addressing my questions and I was ready to leave it at that. For whatever reasons SOCOM requested that MARSOC form the FMTU teams, and no, I would not expect the Corps to tell SOCOM no. This sounds like a great opportunity for them and I'm sure they'll do a great job, but I become skeptical whenever I see one branch assuming a responsibility that another branch is already performing. I was a little skeptical of the new Navy Infantry units, and I would be equally skeptical if the Army decided to organize units soley dedicated to amphibious warfare.

That said, it appears that DoD and SOCOM simply viewed the Corps as another resource of good instructors and training cadre. The Special Forces haved been e