MEU(SOC)...a Marine Air Ground Task Force capable of limited special operations missions...

Thanks to CoffeeJoeJava for the link! 

via Marine Times

Well, he is what some very biased Marines consider perhaps the Corp’s greatest leader, a Marine’s Marine, a New Jersey native who enlisted, that’s right e-n-l-i-s-t-ed, in the Corps, served in both the Korean and Vietnam War, earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star Medal along the way to becoming the 29th commandant of the Marine Corps, serving from 1987 to 1991, retiring after 41 years in uniform.......

.....For the duo’s in-flight entertainment, Gray bent Myatt’s ear, telling him of the Corp’s plans to create special operations ­capabilities for the Marine ­amphibious units, (a MEU precursor), deploying to the Mediterranean.

The move to put special operations under one roof, fund it, train it and sustain it, was driven largely by nightmare-level bureaucratic competition between the services for missions and money, but also by failures of the special operations community and planners who didn’t know how to use them, such as Operation Eagle Claw, a tragic attempt to rescue U.S. hostages being held in Iran that resulted in eight dead troops, including three Marines and five airmen.

Gray had served on the commission that analyzed what went wrong with the operation. Never again.

The rise of terrorist attacks in the 1970s spurred on efforts to tailor units to respond to that threat, which hadn’t been at the forefront of military planning.

Story here 

A few things.

* This story is so good that I can't pick  out just one point to highlight...just read it all.

* If you're a Marine of a certain era then this article will explain why some of the talk that we're hearing now is so wall pounding infuriating.

* Gray knew (and many of us sense) that the roles and missions thing...along with the budget battles...are coming back full strength.  Name a Commandant that so jealously guarded the Marine Corps? You can't.  They're all victims/beneficiaries of "joint command".  You reach a certain rank and you are no longer service specific.  Gray didn't have that issue.  He was a Marine and continued to be a Marine.  None of that "I guess I can't be a Marine anymore" that a certain Assistant Commandant once belched out at a press conference.

* Gray is a pure dee stud.  Disrespect me if you have to.  Talk shit about him on these pages and I'll ban you, your IP address and report it to Google!