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Posted on 11/16/2011 2:01:16 PM PST by mandaladon
What a smart one you are!
It’s like the SNL skit where you have to choose whether Patrick Swayze or Chris Farley (Both RIP!), was the better Chippendale Dancer.
Trust the SEAL..... Stay Safe Onyx !
((((Thank you, Squantos)))).
Most would argue Chris F had a better shape to him. LOL. One of the best skits of SNL.
just remember, those who you heard it from, weren't there either...
I knew him at ST-4 in the 80s, and I believe him. He went on to ST-6, so he has solid contacts there from his generation, which I would guess were enough to get him into contact with today’s OBL raid operators. At least, they would trust Chuck. I haven’t read the book but I have no reason to doubt his veracity over that of paid administration or pentagon flacks.
Were “the socom guys” you chatted with in Pakistan on the raid? Were any former ST-6 officers with excellent contacts among the current ST-6 operators? Just wondering.
Because I served with Chuck, and I believe him.
“Let me see, one one side we have the world greatest patholigical liar in Mac daddy and on the other side we have a brave navy seal with no axe to grind.”
A lying sack of Kenyan turd or a patriotic American?
Ummm, lemme think about that one
Because I was immediately interested in anything that JSOC (via SOCOM) felt the need to contradict directly, I grabbed a copy of this book. (What can I say? I’m drawn to reading things I’m not supposed to. You can make quite a career out of it, in some circles.)
Well, it was worth a shot. Long story short, save your money.
The first chapter is about about the SEALs and Abu Musab al Zarqawi. I won’t elaborate, except to say that I am quite familiar with those events, and they are not portrayed accurately. I was more interested in the UBL events than than the AMZ ones, so I pushed through.
The next segments of the book are a basic history of the SEALs, Special Operations and al-Qa’ida, with the standard descriptions of SEAL/BUDS training, a Readers Digest version of the Looming Tower, and gratuitous swipes at intelligence agencies.
I don’t have any issues with swipes at intelligence agencies. I rather enjoy it. In a different setting I could and have swiped with the best of them. This is just ill-informed operator griping, which they have a right to, but doesn’t endear me to the idea that knowledgeable people are behind it. This is the part I was actually most hopeful for, and I was disappointed that there was nothing new or even all that insightful.
The segment about the Maersk Alabama (SEALs vs Somali pirates) didn’t quite ring consistent with what I’ve heard, but that’s admittedly just RUMINT.
There are some technical aspects that don’t sounds right. The use of the super lethal “M855 Predator” round was news to me. (I’ll leave that one for the gun aficionados to ponder.) Ditto the Wikileaks sourcing and “AQ has WMDs” aspects.
The UBL raid itself is not described in any manner inconsistent with media reports, aside from pointing out the administration’s own inconsistencies.
Anyway, I could go on, but bottom line, there are more JSOC-insider smiles, wink and nods in the Modern Warfare series than there seems to be real inside information in this book. (MW3 may as well run “Sponsored by Crye Precision and EoTech” banners.)
This book seems to be written by a very pro-SEAL and pro-military guy, but there’s really no inside baseball in here at all. The actual political commentary against the Obama administration in the last chapter is spot on, but nothing you haven’t already read on FR. I was looking for some interesting raid details, not a walk through of the Zen-like operator state of door kicking and room clearing. There may have been some Tier 1 sources for this book, but their contributions were likely limited to a few very specific pages. Most of this book reads like an interesting re-write of popular news articles. If you’re looking for more than that, then I’d recommend you keep looking.
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