Movie Review: 'The Green Berets'
Fighting soldiers from the sky. Fearless men who jump and die. Men who mean just what they say. The brave men of the Green Beret. -- Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Beret." Since the mid-1950s, a time when the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union was at its coldest and the threat of a third world war seemed to loom behind every crisis, the United States Army has deployed very highly trained commando/special warfare teams to Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and other regions to assist and train local military forces and to fight against conventional and irregular forces (such as communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia and Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere). And ever since President John F. Kennedy authorized the various Special Forces Groups to adopt a previously frowned-upon bit of headgear, the Army's SF troops have been popularly known by the nickname "Green Berets," ...