Good News

One of the members of the missing SEAL team rescued:

One member of a four-man Navy Seal reconnaissance team has been rescued after his group were reported missing in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan last week, a senior Defense Department official said today.

No details about how the commando managed to evade Taliban fighters for about five days were disclosed. Pentagon and military officials in Washington and Afghanistan declined to release details of the rescue until the status of the three other members of the Special Operations team, still declared missing, could be determined.

The senior Defense Department official said the rescued sailor was in good enough health to be providing the American military with a report of how the long-range reconnaissance mission had gone awry. “He is speaking, so we are gaining information from him,” the official said.

The Seal reconnaissance team, which called for help Tuesday while on a mission to locate Taliban fighters or other insurgent figures, was declared missing after a Special Operations Chinook helicopter sent to extract them crashed, apparently after being shot down, killing all 16 aboard. The helicopter crash was the single biggest combat loss for American forces since the war in Afghanistan started in 2001, and it is the first time American officials had acknowledged that a unit had gone missing in the country.

The successful rescue mission, said to have occurred late Saturday, was first reported today by CNN.

An active search and rescue operation certainly explains all the Pentagon reticence on this issue.