The invincible reputation of specialist military units such as the USA's Delta Force, Israel's IDF and, of course, Britain's SAS, has grown steadily in recent years. Thanks to a number of campaigns and successful anti-terror operations, from London's Iranian Embassy siege in 1980 to their crucial role in Afghanistan following 11 September 2001, it's now assumed that special forces are ideal for our world of small, localised conflicts - and especially George W. Bush's war on terror.
But their operations often raise the issue of democratic accountability, by making it possible for a government to conduct a successful military campaign to completion without reference to a legislature and without a declaration of war. As well as presenting stories of individual heroism, 'Elite Forces' examines how deserved the reputation of each elite forces unit is, and takes an objective look at what happens when things go wrong, as they did most famously during the Gulf War of 1991, and in America's disastrous intervention in Somalia in 1993.
