Posted on 08/27/2012 6:02:44 AM PDT by Travis McGee
-snip-
But the anonymous author isn’t the first to tell his story of the SEALs, or even the bin Laden raid. Here’s a few other examples of stories from former SEALs willing to put their real names on the jacket cover:
• SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden (November 2011) — Former Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer uses his status as a former SEAL to gain access to members of the team that carried out the raid on bin Laden to tell the story of Operation Neptune Spear. The U.S. military has called his account inaccurate, but he adamantly stands by his retelling. Pfarrer is also the author of the 2004 book Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL.
• SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (April 2012) — Former SEAL Howard E. Wasdin takes readers fro training to combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team 2 before chronicling his rise into Team 6, where he tells the story of the Battle of Mogadishu.
• Inside SEAL Team Six: My Life and Missions with America’s Elite Warriors (December 2011) — Don Mann was a Seal Team 6 member for over eight years and a SEAL for 17 years. His book looks at the toughness required to train and carry out the secret missions, including Mann’s first-hand responsibility in helping train the group that carried out the bin Laden raid.
For those looking for a big-screen version of the bin Laden raid, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal will release Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the event, in December.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.time.com ...
” The former Navy SEAL who has written his eyewitness account of the slaying of Osama bin Laden is in talks with Steven Spielberg to turn the book into an action movie”
The truth just went out the window....
But recently retired SEALs should stick to a higher standard. It is their own buddies who are still down range. That said, I haven't read the new book, and don't know how many operational secrets have or have not been compromised.
Admiral McRaven, the top SEAL on active duty, who is now threatening jail to SEALs who write unapproved books, also sets a terrible example, glory-hounding the OBL raid in his own way. He's spoken at Soros' "Aspen Institute" and other venues where he promotes specwar (and himself) as if he were a corporate CEO flogging a new product line. His brown-nosing of Hillary Clinton has also been disgusting to watch. And not even POTUS can force him to pimp himself in uniform, wearing his SEAL trident at the last SOTUA on camera while Obama thanked him for the OBL raid. He could have bowed out of that gig, but didn't.
Instead of looking for a book or movie deal payout, McRaven seems to be angling for political office or an agency directorship after he retires in the near future. SEALs are already dangerously overexposed, and McRaven is just another self-promoting glory hound at this point.
Geez, I was promised 30 years hard labor if I published something like Navy Communications Technician - My Favorite Submarine Message Traffic
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
I imagine there is a little ‘tongue in cheek’ here^^, BUT, I went to IB in 57 for “R” between not liking etc, was sent to an APA in AUG 57.
I found out many years later (after doing some research on ships I was stationed on) that no less than 6 other people from IB went aboard the same and ended up in the same Radio Shack as RM’s....and never once had a conversation about it till I discovered the data.
To this day I don’t ‘discuss’ what we ‘did’ in school or what the mission was - unless the person was in the same field, we may feel each other ‘out’ etc....
Don’t know if we took the ‘Secret/TS’ roll over zealously, were just taught you were no better than your word, or had heavy jail sentences over our heads.
Probably a combination of all 3.....<:
The “new guy” ratio
Are you sure that’s what they are called? :)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
FNG??
Sad to think even the top frog acts like a toad. Good tactics always need protection for future warriors to use. They are timeless.
“I found out many years later (after doing some research on ships I was stationed on) that no less than 6 other people from IB went aboard the same and ended up in the same Radio Shack as RM’s....and never once had a conversation about it till I discovered the data.
To this day I don’t ‘discuss’ what we ‘did’ in school or what the mission was - unless the person was in the same field, we may feel each other ‘out’ etc....”
I think that I heard of similiar rumors of CTA’s serving as a Captain’s yeoman, with no watches when in home port. Often making more money as a lowly PO with pro pay, sea duty pay, and haz. duty pay than the junior officers on the ships.
It was rumored, that the CO’s of these A’s made it very clear to the senior petty officers and other officers, that these A’s only reported to the CO. In other words, no bs and leave them alone.
It was rumored, that the CO’s of these A’s
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
I am talking ‘drop outs’.
I (pat yourself on back) was the better of the lot as far as code copying RM etc, but a lot of IB dropouts became SM and a few FT/GM’s....
One reason ‘we’ were kept in Communications was because it required a full BI just to get accepted to CT school and it basically followed you, because it was the ‘full monty’. I hung around USN another 7 or so years and don’t recall ever filling out the ‘paper work’ again, and that included one gruesome tour at OPNAVCOMM - which ‘drove me out’ as I ‘loved’ Sea Duty.
> The MAC/SOG stuff didn’t come out for probably 30 years after. That’s long enough.The tactics discussed in the SEAL books about ops inside of VN itself were old news by the time they were written about.
*** It may be old news, but much of it is still classified and disclosure is a felony. ***
Speaking of publicity and self promotion.
Almost no one will know that code talkers was an Army thing, which they started in WWI and kept using in WWII in the Pacific, Europe, and North Africa.
Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Meskwaki, and they were not all Indians, Basque radio operators were also code talkers for the US Army.
It must be weird for them to see how the Marine public relations activities created such a mythical hero status for the radio men who spoke Indian, who were in the Marines.
Use of Cherokee
“The first known use of Native Americans in the American military to transmit messages under fire was a group of Cherokee troops utilized by the American 30th Infantry Division serving alongside the British during the Second Battle of the Somme. According to the Division Signal Officer, this took place in September 1918. Their outfit was under British command at the time.”
Use of Choctaw
“In the days of World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the U. S. Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language. He found eight Choctaw men in the battalion.[3] Eventually, fourteen Choctaw men in the Army’s 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code. They helped the American Expeditionary Force win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign in France, during the final big German push of the war. Within 24 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service, the tide of the battle had turned. In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack.
These solders are now known as the Choctaw Code Talkers.”
Use of Comanche
“Adolf Hitler knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I. He sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. However, it proved too difficult for them to learn the many languages and dialects that existed. Because of Nazi German anthropologists’ attempts to learn the languages, the U.S. Army did not implement a large-scale code talker program in the European Theater. Fourteen Comanche code talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy, and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division during further European operations.”
Use of Meskwaki
“Meskwaki men used their language against the Germans in North Africa. Twenty-seven Meskwaki, then 16% of Iowa’s Meskwaki population, enlisted in the U.S. Army together in January 1941”
On the Code Talkers own website, is found a petition to congress for recognition of other code talkers:
"It is estimated that at least 18 tribes have contributed Code Talkers to both world wars. These include Cheyenne, Comanche, Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage, and Yankton Sioux in WWI, and in WWII, Chippewa, Choctaw, Comanche, Creek, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Muscogee-Seminole, Navajo, Oneida, Pawnee, Sac and Fox (Meskwaki) and Sioux (both Lakota and Dakota dialects). There may be others - this still needs to be fully investigated."
Not quite long enough for some of it.
There are still folks in Congress who get mighty testy about some things that happened back then, including who in Congress blew the whistle on the Son Tay POW raid, and the little matter of the attempted sinking and deliberate murder of 34 US Sailors in lifeboats and aboard the U.S.S. Liberty during the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.
The truth just went out the window....
In the Speelburg version, he'll be Jewish.
I had always wondered about the Son Tay raid with the prisoners having been moved just before they got there. I don’t guess I have ever heard anything about it being compromised, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
The commander, Bull Simons lived on a hog farm not too far from where I grew up South of DeFuniak Springs, FL. I think the fact that he operated a hog farm meant he was not a practicing Jew.
30 years ago I had an interesting assignment. Still can’t talk about it. Taking it to the grave with me, hopefully not for a LONG time.
I’ve met him! He was the real-deal-SEAL! But the list isn’t counting the old books about VN, which were all written decades after the fact, when those tactics were either already widely known, or were obsolete.
Well, I’ve got a couple of books on my shelf by old MAC-SOG guys, and they are still in good standing with the SFA and go to the reunions, the true test.
We’ll see how these new SEAL book writers fare. Chuck Pfarrer, whom I knew well and respected, is not welcome in many circles.
Back in the early days of Israel's 1948 Independence War, a couple of the Israeliu Kibbutzs operated by somewhat less than orthodox Jews [mostly Socialists] raised hogs. Which would have given the Orthodox Jews fits. Not to worry.
They referred to them thereafter as *giant chickens.*
Love that giant chicken bacon!
Write it down, put it in an envelope marked, “Do not open for a long time after I croak.”
If it was honorable, but secret, that is.
In the book about Simon’s rescue of the Ross Perot workers in Iran, it is mentioned that Simon’s Brother wanted Bull to join him and go fight for Israel.
Simons told him no and the reason was he considered himself an American, not an Israeli.
What, no Dick Marcinko?
/s
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.