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Comment by agomez314 | Hacker News Reader

Colombia's had some of the most creative spec ops tactics anywhere. They rescued 15 hostages by posing as NGOS with no bullets shot [1]. Many other examples exist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jaque)

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Downside with doing stuff like that is putting all NGO personnel at risk going forward.

Yup. Kinda like how the US used a doctor to stake out Bin Laden's compound under the guise of a vaccination campaign. It triggered massive public distrust in NGOs and was a massive setback for the Polio eradication efforts in Pakistan.

Yeah, although they did try to pretend that they found out about it from some other manner.

It's worse than that; was a massive setback for the *world-wide* eradication of Polio which appeared to be close to accomplished, since Pakistan and Afghanistan were (and remain) the last countries with endemic Polio. It also feeds into general vaccine skepticism that will complicate getting other diseases under control.

Still, I guess not ridding the world of polio was a small price to pay for Obama's re-election (https://www.wired.com/2012/08/bin-laden-book/) at least when compared to what it took to get Bush re-elected.

I've talked to a lot of internationals from less developed countries. "missionary" means "spy" to many of them.

They were high profile, high value hostages too, including a presidential candidate. In 2003, a failed operation to liberate a kidnapped governor led to the governor being executed, further raising the stakes.

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