from http://newjustin.com/2011/09/the-military%E2%80%99s-joint-special-operations-command/
Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. "We're the dark matter. We're the force that orders the universe but can't be seen," a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit.
The SEALs are just part of the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America's secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed.
This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released "Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State," by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC's spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria.
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