It is driven to hunt and capture prey. It
looks like a leaner, more agile German Shepherd. It has a 270-degree field of
vision and the force of its bite equals 1,400 pounds per square inch. It can
run 30 miles per hour. It can withstand the heat of the desert and an August
day in Washington, D.C. It can smell drugs, bombs and unmarked graves. It’s
deadly enough to help take out Osama bin Laden, but gentle enough to push a
toddler in a toy car.
Meet the Belgian Malinois, the weapon the
White House didn’t use last Friday when Omar J. Gonzales scaled the fence and
ran 70 yards to reach the mansion’s unlocked door, where he was finally taken
down by an officer inside. The man appeared to be unarmed — though a search later
turned up a knife in his pocket and ammunition in his car — which may explain
why he wasn’t taken out by sharpshooters on the roof, who are trained not to
shoot unarmed intruders.
But why didn’t White House guards release a
specially trained Malinois? The Secret Service exclusively uses the elite breed
on its canine force. After an intruder jumps the fence and triggers the alarm,
canine teams are trained to be released within four seconds “to act as a
missile, launching in the air to knock the subject down, and then biting an arm
or leg if need be to subdue the person until the handler arrives,” The
Washington Post reported. Chasing people down is one thing these dogs, which
are also used by the U.S. military, do best. “The best way the dogs are used is
that they can chase down anyone,” a military dog handler said of a dog deployed
with the Marines in Iraq in 2005. “A Marine might not be able to catch someone,
but the dogs will.”
In June, dogs, including the Malinois and
other breeds, started patrolling outside the White House gates — the first time
canine agents were deployed by the Secret Service among the general public. The
Secret Service has had a canine team since 1976, when it was created to stop
suicide bombers. The dogs train for 20 weeks before they start working and then
do eight hours a week of retraining for the rest of their professional lives.
These dogs are no strangers to the front
lines.
The U.S. Navy SEALs used a Belgian Malinois
named Cairo in Operation Neptune Spear to capture and kill bin Laden. The dog
helped secure the perimeter of bin Laden’s compound, sniffing for bombs. Like
the rest of the elite force, Cairo was outfitted with a Kevlar vest with
harnesses for rappelling and parachuting, a drainage system for waterborne assaults
and night-vision goggles.
In January 2013, a Malinois in the Secret
Service died during a security sweep after it fell to its death from the roof
of a six-story parking deck near a New Orleans hotel where Vice President Joe
Biden was staying. And last year, a Malinois belonging to the U.S.-led
International Assistance Security Forces went missing after a December 2013
operation in Afghanistan. The Pentagon confirmed its disappearance after a
video of heavily armed Taliban fighters holding the dog on a chain surfaced in
February.
“I don’t remember seeing a dog used as a
hostage,” Rita Katz — founder of SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks
insurgent propaganda — told The Washington Post. She said dogs had been
featured in propaganda in Iraq when insurgents floated the idea of using them
as unsuspecting suicide bombers.
The Malinois may be the first canine
soldier taken hostage, but it’s not the first dog to fall into enemy hands. A
British ship’s mascot, a purebred English pointer named Judy, became the only
dog officially recognized as a prisoner of war in World War II after she was
captured by the Japanese when her boat was torpedoed. For three years, she
shared maggoty boiled rice with British soldiers in Japanese prison camps, some
of whom later credited her with saving their lives
Article Source - Washington Post September
23 2014
