soonercruiser
10/15/2012, 09:30 PM
With all the hubbub about the book and the lack or real details in the public square, and admittedly out of curiosity I decided to break my summer rule and read the book. There had also been a few opinions expressed on this forum. So, I needed to be a little more informed beyond my 29 years experience in the military.
I was intrigued by why the JCS and could openly talk about the raid, and the Defense Dept would contemplate pressing charges on the author of the book.
First of all…
*In the “Author’s Note”, the author notes that the book is more about the extraordinary group of men that he was lucky enough to serve along side of from 1998 to 2012; their struggles, suffering through training, and family sacrifices. That is, why Seals are motivated to go through the brutal training and decades of deployments.
*With the publisher, the author hired a former Special Ops Attorney to review the manuscript to ensure that it was free of “forbidden” topics, and cannot be used by the enemy as a source of information …. …..i.e. harmful to the United States. He says that he took great pain to protect tactics, technologies and techniques that are in use. And, he changed all the names of the major characters. They checked to be sure any of the information presented in the book was alreasdy available in the public media.
*He notes that after leaving the Seal Team he considered writing the book as his first important project! That even though Seal Command did not think much of the notoriety that came from the raid, he notes that at first the Seals themselves were amused with the leaks of bad information on the raid. Even the so-called inside reports were not nearly true. But, the more that he saw inaccurate reports on the raid, the more he wanted to set the record straight. He felt that someone had tell the true story.
*To the author, the story was “bigger than the raid itself. Much more about the men at the Seal Command who willingly go into harm’s way, sacrificing all they have, to do the most difficult job”. In short, he felt that “theirs is a story that deserves to be told, and told as accurately as possible".
-The story itself was constructed around the raid in Abbottabad that killed OBL.
*But, it was a constant “Channel flip”, back & forth from the mission back to years of brutal training, Seal Team qualification courses, and other deployments in the ME.
-He notes that many times over a decade that military intel had said that they were close to catching OBL, only to have him slip away; this included his deployment during the Torra Bora effort.
-In the story is a young blonde CIA analyst who had spent 5-6 years personally tracking OBL from intl accumulated from Guantanamo, who was 100% sure that they would find him in Abbottabad…..and it turned out that almost all her intel about OBL, the compound, who lived there, etc. was 100% “on”.
-There was some time spent discussing the details of how the seals tactics in Afghanistan had evolved over a decade, due “political correctness”…..”everything was getting much harder”. To the point that real “Seal aggressors” fighters were replaced in the field with “straphangers” (staffers) who had very limited duties….like Army Rangers who sole purpose was to serve as “observers” just in case that our soldiers needed to refute the false accusations by the terrorists. Even as Seal Team leaders, they had to know how to make Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations of mission, and file extra reports when accused of something by the enemy. They were being asked by higher HQ to “ignore the lessons that they had learned in blood”; for “political solutions”.
-Instead of simply sneaking in and surprising the enemy, eliminating them; now they were required to surround a building, use a bullhorn to ask the fighters to come out with their hands up (after hiding their weapons). If they arrested the fighters, they would see them free again in months….often capturing the same fighters several times in a single deployment.
-He quoted from his CIA briefings that that al-Qahtani, captured in Torra Bora, was sent to Guantanamo Bay, interrogated into connecting KSM, and eventually another al Qaeda agent Ahmed al-Kuwaiti as a courier and close to OBL…..eventually connected al-Kuwaiti and his brother to OBL in Pakistan.
-Some of the primary Seals in the story joked about if the mission was successful, who they would cast into parts for the movie, and whose “career would be made” by the raid. They joked about Pres. Obama will be re-elected for sure….and “I can see him now talking about how HE (Obama) killed OBL”. But, to be honest they acknowledged that whomever was president would probably do it too. They knew that what they were about to do was bigger than politics……the Seals reward was in doing their job well.
-One of the other Seal missions that the author discusses was his part in the rescue of Captain Phillips in the life boat off of Somalia.
-The author makes the assessment that OBL made no action of self defense…..that although he asked his terrorist followers to sacrifice their lives….he didn’t even believe his own message….that there is no honor in dying for something that your leader doesn’t fight for himself. THis really suprised the Seals.
-You get the inside story how the advanced tech tail rotor of the crashed chopper survived destructive charges.
-In the end, he noted that the major part of the proceeds from the book go to charities for the families of fallen Navy SEALS!
I was intrigued by why the JCS and could openly talk about the raid, and the Defense Dept would contemplate pressing charges on the author of the book.
First of all…
*In the “Author’s Note”, the author notes that the book is more about the extraordinary group of men that he was lucky enough to serve along side of from 1998 to 2012; their struggles, suffering through training, and family sacrifices. That is, why Seals are motivated to go through the brutal training and decades of deployments.
*With the publisher, the author hired a former Special Ops Attorney to review the manuscript to ensure that it was free of “forbidden” topics, and cannot be used by the enemy as a source of information …. …..i.e. harmful to the United States. He says that he took great pain to protect tactics, technologies and techniques that are in use. And, he changed all the names of the major characters. They checked to be sure any of the information presented in the book was alreasdy available in the public media.
*He notes that after leaving the Seal Team he considered writing the book as his first important project! That even though Seal Command did not think much of the notoriety that came from the raid, he notes that at first the Seals themselves were amused with the leaks of bad information on the raid. Even the so-called inside reports were not nearly true. But, the more that he saw inaccurate reports on the raid, the more he wanted to set the record straight. He felt that someone had tell the true story.
*To the author, the story was “bigger than the raid itself. Much more about the men at the Seal Command who willingly go into harm’s way, sacrificing all they have, to do the most difficult job”. In short, he felt that “theirs is a story that deserves to be told, and told as accurately as possible".
-The story itself was constructed around the raid in Abbottabad that killed OBL.
*But, it was a constant “Channel flip”, back & forth from the mission back to years of brutal training, Seal Team qualification courses, and other deployments in the ME.
-He notes that many times over a decade that military intel had said that they were close to catching OBL, only to have him slip away; this included his deployment during the Torra Bora effort.
-In the story is a young blonde CIA analyst who had spent 5-6 years personally tracking OBL from intl accumulated from Guantanamo, who was 100% sure that they would find him in Abbottabad…..and it turned out that almost all her intel about OBL, the compound, who lived there, etc. was 100% “on”.
-There was some time spent discussing the details of how the seals tactics in Afghanistan had evolved over a decade, due “political correctness”…..”everything was getting much harder”. To the point that real “Seal aggressors” fighters were replaced in the field with “straphangers” (staffers) who had very limited duties….like Army Rangers who sole purpose was to serve as “observers” just in case that our soldiers needed to refute the false accusations by the terrorists. Even as Seal Team leaders, they had to know how to make Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations of mission, and file extra reports when accused of something by the enemy. They were being asked by higher HQ to “ignore the lessons that they had learned in blood”; for “political solutions”.
-Instead of simply sneaking in and surprising the enemy, eliminating them; now they were required to surround a building, use a bullhorn to ask the fighters to come out with their hands up (after hiding their weapons). If they arrested the fighters, they would see them free again in months….often capturing the same fighters several times in a single deployment.
-He quoted from his CIA briefings that that al-Qahtani, captured in Torra Bora, was sent to Guantanamo Bay, interrogated into connecting KSM, and eventually another al Qaeda agent Ahmed al-Kuwaiti as a courier and close to OBL…..eventually connected al-Kuwaiti and his brother to OBL in Pakistan.
-Some of the primary Seals in the story joked about if the mission was successful, who they would cast into parts for the movie, and whose “career would be made” by the raid. They joked about Pres. Obama will be re-elected for sure….and “I can see him now talking about how HE (Obama) killed OBL”. But, to be honest they acknowledged that whomever was president would probably do it too. They knew that what they were about to do was bigger than politics……the Seals reward was in doing their job well.
-One of the other Seal missions that the author discusses was his part in the rescue of Captain Phillips in the life boat off of Somalia.
-The author makes the assessment that OBL made no action of self defense…..that although he asked his terrorist followers to sacrifice their lives….he didn’t even believe his own message….that there is no honor in dying for something that your leader doesn’t fight for himself. THis really suprised the Seals.
-You get the inside story how the advanced tech tail rotor of the crashed chopper survived destructive charges.
-In the end, he noted that the major part of the proceeds from the book go to charities for the families of fallen Navy SEALS!