Seal Team 6 - The True Story

[Dale00]

It wasn't an assassination.
Obama was a screw-up.
Sawn-off M-4's?
Bin Laden used his youngest wife as a shield
Did I forget to mention that Obama and his administration are screw-ups?

OSAMA BIN LADEN was killed within 90 seconds of the US Navy Seals landing in his compound and not after a protracted gun battle, according to the first account by the men who carried out the raid. The operation was so clinical that only 12 bullets were fired.

The Seals have spoken out because they were angered at the version given by politicians, which they see as portraying them as cold-blooded murderers on a “kill mission”. They were also shocked that President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death on television the same evening, rendering useless much of the intelligence they had seized.

Chuck Pfarrer, a former commander of Seal Team 6, which conducted the operation, has interviewed many of those who took part for a book, Seal Target Geronimo, to be published in the US this week.

The Seals’ own accounts differ from the White House version, which gave the impression that bin Laden was killed at the end of the operation rather than in its opening seconds. Pfarrer insists bin Laden would have been captured had he surrendered.

“There isn’t a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting bin Laden but it devalued the ‘intel’ and gave time for every other al-Qa’ida leader to scurry to another bolthole,” said Pfarrer. “The men who did this and their valorous act deserve better. It’s a pretty shabby way to treat these guys.”

The first hint of the mission came in January last year when the team’s commanding officer was called to a meeting at the headquarters of joint special operations command. The meeting was held in a soundproof bunker three storeys below ground with his boss, Admiral William McRaven, and a CIA officer.

They told him a walled compound in Pakistan had been under surveillance for a couple of weeks. They were certain a high-value individual was inside and needed a plan to present to the president....

...Operation Neptune’s Spear was initially planned for April 30 but bad weather delayed it until May 1, a moonless night. The commandos flew on two Stealth Hawks, codenamed Razor 1 and 2, followed by two Chinooks five minutes behind, known as “Command Bird” and the “gun platform”.

On board, each Seal was clad in body armour and nightvision goggles and equipped with laser targets, radios and sawn-off M4 rifles. They were expecting up to 30 people in the main house, including Bin Laden and three of his wives, two sons, Khalid and Hamza, his courier, Abu Ahmed al- Kuwaiti, four bodyguards and a number of children. At 56 minutes past midnight the compound came into sight and the code “Palm Beach” signalled three minutes to landing.

Razor 1 hovered above the main house, a three-story building where bin Laden lived on the top floor. Twelve Seals abseiled the two metres down onto the roof and then jumped to a third-floor patio, where they kicked in the windows and entered.

The first person the Seals encountered was a terrified woman, bin Laden’s third wife, Khaira, who ran into the hall. Blinded by a searing white strobe light they shone at her, she stumbled back. A Seal grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the floor.

Bin Laden’s bedroom was along a short hall. The door opened; he popped out and then slammed the door shut. “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,” radioed one Seal, meaning “eyes on target”.

At the same time lights came on from the floor below and bin Laden’s son Khalid came running up the stairs towards the Seals. He was shot dead....

...Two Seals kicked in bin Laden’s door. The room, they later recalled, “smelt like old clothing, like a guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house”. Inside was the al-Qa’ida leader and his youngest wife, Amal, who was screaming as he pushed her in front of him.

“No, no, don’t do this!” she shouted as her husband reached across the king-size bed for his AK-47 assault rifle. The Seals reacted instantly, firing in the same second. One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at bin Laden’s head, grazed Amal in the calf. As his hand reached for the gun, they each fired again: one shot hit his breastbone, the other his skull, killing him instantly and blowing out the back of his head....

...Five minutes into the operation the command Chinook landed outside the compound, disgorging the commanding officer and more men. They blasted through the compound wall and rushed in.

The commander made his way to the third floor, where bin Laden’s body lay on the floor face up. Photographs were taken, and the commander called on his satellite phone to headquarters with the words: “Geronimo Echo KIA” – bin Laden enemy killed in action.

“This was the first time the White House knew he was dead and it was probably 20 minutes into the raid,” said Pfarrer.

A sample of bin Laden’s DNA was taken and the body was bagged. They kept his rifle. It is now mounted on the wall of their team room at their headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia, alongside photographs of a dozen colleagues killed in action in the past 20 years.

At this point things started to go wrong. Razor 1 took off but the top secret “green unit” that controls the electronics failed. The aircraft went into a spin and crashed tail-first into the compound.

The Seals were alarmed, thinking it had been shot down, and several rushed to the wreckage. The crew climbed out, shaken but unharmed.

The commanding officer ordered them to destroy Razor 2, to remove the green unit, and to smash the avionics. They then laid explosive charges.

They loaded bin Laden’s body onto the Chinook along with the cache of intelligence in plastic bin bags and headed toward the USS Carl Vinson. As they flew off they blew up Razor 2. The whole operation had taken 38 minutes....

...What infuriated the Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission. “I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’,” he said. “It’s a Beltway (Washington insider’s) fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/09/seals-tell-of-killing-bert-laden/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5b739dcd90-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

 

[dennishoddy]

I have an issue with this statement. "One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at bin Laden’s head, grazed Amal in the calf". Really? They heard a bullet "thud" into a mattress? Sounds like a lot of creative writing to me.
Was he holding her upside down?
The other issue is about putting the rifle on the. Club house wall.
Maybe it's true but I doubt it.

 

[ripnbst]

That's an interesting read.

Why do you take issue with having Osama's AK on the clubhouse wall?

 

[Sheepdog380]

We will never know. The Govt will tell us what we need to believe. I mean, hell, people still think we landed on the moon when clearly it was staged on a Hollywood movie set. Now where is my tin foil hat.

 

[Subsonic]

High probability that they hung up his rifle in their club house as Bush got saddam's pistol in a display case from those guys that caught him. The Seals didn't want to turn this particular rifle over to the white house because they were afraid that holder would give it to the drug cartels to kill more American Law Enforcment Officers.

 

[AKguy1985]

they killed him with an HK416. True story......and osama carried a krink it was always in his videos

 

[Michael Brown]

I have an issue with this statement. "One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at bin Laden’s head, grazed Amal in the calf". Really? They heard a bullet "thud" into a mattress? Sounds like a lot of creative writing to me.
Was he holding her upside down?
The other issue is about putting the rifle on the. Club house wall.
Maybe it's true but I doubt it.

Both amplified and muffled sound are commonly noted phenomena during critical incidents.

This is not unusual in the slightest.

Michael Brown

 

[SMS]

Both amplified and muffled sound are commonly noted phenomena during critical incidents.

This is not unusual in the slightest.

Michael Brown

...add to that the high likelyhood of suppressed weapons and it's even more likely.

That being said, this "true story" is still just a story in a book by a guy trying to sell books and who has made a handsome career out of selling his SEALness.

I don't really expect or need to know the real 'true story'.

 

[okie98]

Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see and you will survive.

 

[gillman7]

I have a friend that is a former SEAL, and the general citizen will never hear the details. However, if you are in the teams, you will get an earful.

I like the books as much as the next guy, but too much of it is ghost written.