They are now household terms.  Heroes.



Quote:

There were 79 people on the assault team that killed Osama bin Laden, but in the end the success of the mission turned on some two dozen men who landed inside the al-Qaeda leader's compound, made their way to his bedroom and shot him at close range - all while knowing that the President of the United States was keeping watch from Washington. The men, hailed as heroes around the country, will march in no parades. They serve in what is unofficially called SEAL Team 6, a unit so secretive that the White House and the Defence Department do not directly acknowledge its existence. Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot dead three Somali pirates on a bobbing lifeboat during the rescue of an American hostage in 2009. The raid early on Monday in Pakistan has nonetheless put a spotlight on a unit that has been involved in some of the US military's most dangerous missions of recent decades. Split-second decision CIA director Leon Panetta said the SEAL commandos went into the mission with only a 60 to 80 per cent certainty that bin Laden was in the compound. Mr Panetta said the commandos made the ''split-second decision'' to shoot him when they found him in his third-floor bedroom. There was no debate among former SEAL members that whoever had shot bin Laden had done the right thing. ''It's dark; there's been a lot of bullets flying around, a lot of bodies dropping; your mission is to capture or kill bin Laden; who knows what he's got tucked in his shirt?'' said Don Shipley, 49, a former SEAL member who runs Extreme SEAL Experience, a private training school in Virginia. Mr Shipley was reacting to earlier Obama administration accounts of an extended firefight at the compound, but on Wednesday administration officials revised the narrative, saying that the only shots fired came at the beginning of the raid, from a courier. ''It happens in an absolute blink of an eye for these guys,'' Mr Shipley said. ''And there's that target in front of you. Second chances cost lives.'' Lalo Roberti, 27, a former SEAL member who teaches at Mr Shipley's school and took part in a gruesome rescue mission in Afghanistan in 2005, concurred. ''For us to take a shot, it has to be bad,'' Mr Roberti said. Inside the navy, there are regular unclassified SEAL members, organised into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is SEAL Team 6, the elite of the elite, or, as Mr Roberti put it, ''the all-star team''. Former SEAL members said the unit - officially renamed the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group - was chosen for the bloody bin Laden raid, the most high-profile operation in the history of the SEALs, because of the group's skills in using lethal force intelligently in complex, ambiguous conditions. All SEAL members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training. 'Hell week' During ''hell week'' recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during 5½ days of non-stop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 per cent of candidates do not make it; at least one has died. For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow. After several years on regular SEAL teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 9000 metres with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those SEAL members, about half make it.

tbc

Quote:

Ryan Zinke, 49, a former member of SEAL Team 6 who is now a Republican state legislator in Montana, said members of Team 6 had a certain personality: ''I would say cocky, arrogant.'' SEALs (the term stands for Sea-Air-Land teams) - were created by president John F. Kennedy in 1962 as a way to expand unconventional warfare. Team 6 has historically specialised in war on the seas, but in the decade since the 9/11 attacks, it has increasingly fought on land in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its size is classified, but Team 6 is thought to have doubled to nearly 300 since then. Overall, there are now about 3000 active-duty SEAL members, split between odd-numbered teams in Coronado, California, and even-numbered teams in Virginia Beach. Team 6, based in an area separate from all the others, at the Dam Neck Annexe of Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has many members in their mid-30s, a decade or more older than the 20-year-olds who populate the military. ''I used to call it the old man's club,'' Mr Zinke said. The officer who designed and oversaw the bin Laden raid, Vice-Admiral William McRaven, is a SEAL member who is soon to take over leadership of the military's Special Operations Command. Eric Greitens, a former SEAL member who has written a book about his experiences, The Heart and the Fist, said SEAL members were misunderstood as the nation's deadliest commandos. Although the gruesome descriptions of the pictures of bin Laden with a bullet in his head would appear to underscore that reputation - and help to explain why President Barack Obama decided on Wednesday not to release them - Mr Greitens called SEAL members ''creative'' commandos who knew ''to bring back as much intelligence as they possibly could''. The cache the SEAL team recovered from the bin Laden compound included more than 100 storage devices - DVDs, thumb drives and computer discs - as well as five computers and 10 computer hard drives. Despite the mission's success, former SEAL members acknowledged the precariousness of the raid and the degree of luck involved. ''If that thing had gone bad, the conversation you and I would be having would be completely different,'' Mr Shipley said. ''There's only two ways to go in these operations - zero or hero.'' New York Times

http://www.theage.com.au/world/creative-commandoes-the-cocky-killing-crew-of--seal-team-6-20110505-1ea5e.html

>>''It's dark; there's been a lot of bullets flying around, <<

OUR bullets...     [Only one guy returning fire.]

>>a lot of bodies dropping

THEIR bodies...

:D

d.

LifeMasque wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 8:57am:

>>''It's dark; there's been a lot of bullets flying around, << OUR bullets...     [Only one guy returning fire.] >>a lot of bodies dropping THEIR bodies... :D d.

All is good then

It'ld have to be a rush to 'chopper into an foreign encampment, find the target and put a cap in osamas sorry ass.

Something for your cirriculum vitae

"Why do you want to volunteer for this suicide mission?"
"It'll look good on my CV!"     - Crock cartoon -

d.

Don't bother running, you will only die tired.  ;D

Been watching JAG again, Sprint?

LifeMasque wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 8:57am:

>>''It's dark; there's been a lot of bullets flying around, << OUR bullets...     [Only one guy returning fire.] >>a lot of bodies dropping THEIR bodies... :D d.

yet they had just a smiggin more chance of survival than those in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

no body actually WANTED this...if they had dropped a bomb on the complex..what then?

ZERO or HERO... I think spells it all out in the end...

if you had a chrystal ball and knew ahead someone you cared about would die at Osmas command..would you really be this arrogant about the way he died I wonder!

the Navy Seals. deserve every praise they get..

I couldnt do what they have done in a million years.. we are lucky to have those that would do it...

just as Osama has been "lucky" if you like to have those that will strap bombs to their bodies and die for his cause.

I notice he never tried that..

becoming a Navy Seal seem to put these guys in a world of their own..

well done guys..

That Seal team was also able to block mobile phone calls
in the area all around the raid!

Bobby. wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 10:27am:

That Seal team was also able to block mobile phone calls in the area all around the raid!

how cool is that ?

Sprintcyclist wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 10:56am:

Bobby. wrote on May 6th, 2011 at 10:27am: That Seal team was also able to block mobile phone calls in the area all around the raid! how cool is that ?

And yet we can't block them in theatres.

Sprintcyclist wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 8:46am:

All SEAL members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training. 'Hell week' During ''hell week'' recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during 5½ days of non-stop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 per cent of candidates do not make it; at least one has died. For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow. After several years on regular SEAL teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 9000 metres with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those SEAL members, about half make it.

So much for the theory that it is a multiple choice quiz!

and they have a dawg too !!!!!!!!


http://images.theage.com.au/2011/05/06/2347005/729dog-jumping-out-of-plane-420x0.jpg

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/animals/team-6s-dog-of-war-20110506-1eayq.html

How cool is that!

And looks like the dog rips its' own chord.
Maybe on command.

Seals like raw fish too.