Bullet-Ridden Bin Laden

| May 4, 2016

A fellow Army SF guy recently wrote an article for Business Insider titled “Here’s the real reason that photos of bin Laden’s body won’t ever be shown.”  In the article, Jack Murphy writes that inside sources claim,

“When all was said and done, UBL had over a hundred bullets in him, by the most conservative estimate.”

Murphy went on to write,

“what should concern you is a trend within certain special-operations units to engage in this type of self-indulgent, and ultimately criminal, behavior. Gone unchecked, these actions get worse over time.”

Where I grew up in the Army, we were trained to shoot a fallen enemy combatant as you approached, but once you came back to them, and they were still alive—unless they were a threat—you had to treat them as a wounded combatant and provide life-saving care.

Obviously, there was a lot of ambiguity in those set of instructions, and most warfighters agreed that a proper amount of rounds would ensure that no medical attention would be needed.  Furthermore, there was a consensus that a breathing enemy is always a threat—the mind is our greatest weapon after all. /S

I know it’s common practice for military dog handlers let their dogs bite a dead enemy combatant while on the objective.  Apparently it helps keep the dogs sharp and permits them to act out their training to the fullest.

Can the same be said about for our Special Operators?

Personally, I don’t have a problem with America’s warrior class putting some frustration rounds into an enemy that was just trying to rob them of their life.

What say you?

Tags: ,

Category: Bin Laden

101 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Poetrooper

“What, nobody made a head shot? Here lemme fix that.”

MustangCryppie

Exactly. I’m guessing that there was a long line to make sure he got that head shot, no matter how many times they needed to make sure.

desert

I would think that many had a hand in weighing down the dirtbag, that way no one could make a target of an individual being the one to kill the scumbag!

Jarhead

I can only hope the answer to the Press was…..”Because that’s ALL the rounds we had on hand?.

Sparks

^^^THIS^^^!!!!!!

UpNorth

▲▲▲Like▲▲▲▲ Jarhead

HMC Ret

Ditto

2/17 Air Cav

That is funny as hell.

D

Awesome

Reb

Jarhead,
Even if the asswipe was torn to one inch pieces, by a thousand bullets, he deserved much more.

I have no tear for him, his family and the other dogs that praised the murderer of many.

He deserved much more, like being tortured by every survivor of those he killed. I didn’t give a shit about him in life or death, only that he didnt suffered enough.

I also think its bullshit he was buried via his religion. I would of thrown the chunks to the dogs…

Skippy

Awesome by the way 🙂

Doug

All the power to them. Hope everyone in the team got a chance to dump a few rounds into him.

Hondo

5 or 6 guys, 1 mag each – yeah, I can see that.

Oh, and I personally have no problem with our guys giving bin Laden a large number of high speed body piercings under unsanitary field conditions. Or with his being fed to the fishes afterwards.

May Shaitan sodomize him hourly for eternity.

Stacy0311

5 or 6 guys 1 mag each? Somebody missed a bunch of shots

Ex-PH2

I was under the distinct impression that the objective was to kill bin Lardass, not to wound his pride. If counting bullet holes is more important than saying ‘the enemy is dead’, there’s something wrong. Why is the number of rounds more important than the fact that he was dead?

Maybe the team was trying to make sure that he WAS dead.

And he’d better stay dead, too.

ex-OS2

Still breathing? Put a round in the dome….

ChipNASA

Properly done,
I think it should have looked something like this..

B Woodman

That Benny Hill theme was priceless. WHoever put together that video knows how to do it righteously.
Thank you. Now that I’ve stopped laughing.

B Woodman

Under ordinary circumstances, with an ordinary enemy, I would agree that once “hors de combat”, yes, you render what medical aid you can, if you can.

But with a loathsome, seething, Enemy Of All Free Western Civilization People Everywhere (even if he’s not tried in a proper court of law), shoot until dead. Then shoot again, just to make sure. And shoot at least one more time, just to seal the deal. And maybe shoot ONE MORE TIME, just to make sure he has enough holes in him that he’s guaranteed to not bloat and rise from his unknown, unmarked watery “grave”.

Skippy

Better to be judged by 12 then carried be 6

2/17 Air Cav

Murphy wants the body to prove OBL is dead. Anyone think he’s not? At the same time, Murphy wants us to trust him and his confidential sources that at least 100 rounds went into the terrorist bastard. I have a choice and my choice is to believe that OBL is dead and to disbelieve the anonymous sources relied upon by Murphy.

Animal

It made PR easier maybe? Who shot bin Laden? We all shoot bin Laden.

The Other Whitey

Go cyclic with every weapon available. Then soak what’s left in bacon grease. Then light it on fire. Then piss on the ashes. Then glass the place with a low-yield nuke after our guys are extracted.

Martinjmpr

Wait, am I the only one who grasps the obvious here?

The SEALs knew that the plan was the dump the body in the ocean.

They didn’t want the body to accidentally float to the surface and wash up somewhere, because that would be undignified.

So they just came up with the most efficient way of making sure there was enough lead in it to sink.

Smart guys, those SEALs! 😀

Skippy

BHWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

Tallywhagger

Finding Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground was a nice touch, improved only by his public hanging. Mussolini was shown an appropriate level of public recognition while Muammar Gaddafi’s corpse was left on public display, bereft of his regular gold-braid military costume. Bin Laden’s corpse, in whatever condition, should have been taken to site of the WTC for appropriate recognition before his remains were interred with the U.N. and properly incinerated with the rest of the structure.

What America needs is another Judge Parker and an updated gallows for the Senate Gallery. Kind of puts a new twist on the idea of holding elected office, for life!

A Proud Infidel®™

Look up how the corpses of Mussolini and his missus were treated. That’s why Bin Lades’s corpse should have been tossed on a NYC sidewalk and left there for 24 hours before it being fed to wild hogs.

Sparks

To the author of the article…Fuck em’ if they can’t take a joke. How many American did Bin Laden orchestrate the deaths of? Should have been a round in him for each victim he killed.

As for the comment, “Gone unchecked, these actions get worse over time.” Great! Maybe if we started going “unchecked” more, the same way ISIS and all terrorists do, they would begin to learn we are serious. You don’t win wars or kill the enemy with harsh language or “polite rounds”. My answer would have been, “Admiral, every time we shot him, his body moved and so we had to keep shooting until it stopped”.

Obama’s apology to the peace loving world of Islam in 3…2…1

Sparks

I forgot to add this. “Oh and by the way Admiral, the Team left this empty magazine for you that you gave them with your name on it. It’s a keeper for sure Sir.”

Ex-PH2

There is something I should add to this, which that Murphy person should know about.

During the Vietnam War, if VC shot and wounded American GIs, and then found them still alive, the VC killed them instead of letting them bleed to death or wait for pickup. That comes from an ex-VC who was 14 when he was recruited. It’s word of mouth, with no verification, but considering everything else, it may be true.

So I don’t know what Murphy’s point is in writing that article other than to stir up more anti-military controversy where there should be none.

JacktheJarhead

Quite frankly, who cares. The Douchebag is dead. I don’t care if they put a 1000 rounds into him. He was an enemy, period. The douche nozzles in the Pravda we call a media might whine about it, but in the end, who cares.

They worry that the “ARAB STREET” might run around shouting slogans and chanting. Again, who cares. It shows our enemy that this is what awaits you. No matter what, we will hunt you down and riddle your ass with bullets.

This guy was an SF soldier and he is talking like one of the Enemy Spokesman? Screw him, I thought SF guys were snake eaters, not tofu tasters. Criminal behavior?!?!?!? We are at war! Where has this idiot been? You think they would put one round into on of our leaders? They would riddle him, take pictures with the corpse and drag it through the streets. All the SEALS did was riddle him.

IDC SARC

They should have gathered the brass, polished and engraved it, then sold them to commemorate the event and fatten the Team’s beer fund.

Martinjmpr

Surprised someone hasn’t done that already. It would be the modern day equivalent of the medieval industry of selling “genuine pieces of the True Cross!”

(I think historians figured out that if you assembled all of the “genuine pieces of the True Cross” that were sold as such, you’d have enough wood to rebuild the cross, a sturdy building to house it in, and a fleet of sailing ships to get you there. 😉 )

Instinct

Well, let’s see. If we had captured him what would have happened?

He would have been put in Gitmo until someone decided that we can’t keep him there forever and let him go because ‘he’s been reformed’.

Yeah.

Martinjmpr

No, he would have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and become the host of his own TV show, “Jihad Talk.” 😀

Inbred Redneck

Bet he would’ve been co-host with Whoopi & friends. Think they’d’ve been willin’ to wear burqas to make him feel more comfortable?

Sparks

Bin Laden may have ended up in Gitmo but only after a photo op with Obama in the Rose Garden. You know, just to show Obama’s peace loving Islamic brothers that he “feels their pain”.

Old 1SG, US Army (retired)

One hundred rounds? Screw ammo conservation. So we’re worried what people might think if they’re shown gruesome pictures of this goat smelling terrorist, Bin Lardass!

Kinda like we need to bury him at sea, with appropriate religious customs and dignity! Not!

We should have placed his stinkin’ corpse in a glass “coffin” and put his arse on display in front of a landfill in NYC or New Jersey. Better yet, find a pig farmer willing have him display in the middle of a pigsty.

We could have even put his stinkin’ arse on a nationwide tour, stopping in major cities to allow our citizens to gawk, spit, crap, flip the bird or otherwise desecrate the sorry SOB.

People would probably have paid to see this!

Whew… I feel much better now!

Bill M

Shoulda fed his body to those pigs. That would have been appropriate. Turn his a$$ into bacon. Probably would have made it halal.

Mick

I’m skeptical about this “100 rounds in the body” claim.

The reason that I say this is because the SEALs would have had a hell of a time policing up and transporting what was left of UBL’s body after 100+ high velocity rounds had impacted it. There would likely have been body parts and pieces sprayed everywhere, and not much left of his head if the guys were also putting multiple rounds into his brain housing group.

Sorry, but I’m just not buying this new story. My guess is that this is simply yet another lame attempt to garner media attention by someone who falsely claims to have “the inside story”.

UBL is dead and gone. Good riddance. Now we just need to eradicate the rest of his ilk.

Hondo

Good point. 5.56mm NATO does quite the job on soft targets at close range. Ditto 7.62mm.

The Other Whitey

Nothing that couldn’t be solved with a few ziplocks and a squeegee, Hondo. Although I definitely agree that this story is probably BS.

2/17 Air Cav

Think a 2 inch hose will do it? You’re the resident expert.

The Other Whitey

For cleanup? A 3/4″ P-line would do it.

Aggravated Mopery

The story smells of b.s.

He’s dead, one shot or 1000, he’s dead. It doesn’t hurt more to get shot after your already dead.

Poetrooper

Agreed, Mick. One of my most vivid combat memories is of a VC machine gunner who my fellow fire team leader flanked and dumped a 20 round magazine of 5.56 into on full auto from about ten meters. The mess left was unrecognizable as human in origin, just bloody meat, bone and black cloth.

So a hundred rounds sounds highly unlikely.

Mick

Concur, Poetrooper.

Another tactical consideration that makes 100+ rounds highly unlikely is the glaring unanswered question as to why these SEAL operators would supposedly knowingly waste 100+ rounds on a high value target that was already down, when they very well may have to use that ammunition to fight their way back out for extraction. Why would they waste the time and ammunition to shoot up UBL’s corpse? The answer is that they wouldn’t.

I worked with SEALs a couple of times while on active duty, and I have a couple of friends who are former SEALs, and those guys are way too disciplined, focused, and professional to go on a childish shooting spree as described here, especially while they’re still on the target in the objective area and time is of the essence.

Also, as reddevil correctly states in his post below, the SEALs would have been focused on keeping UBL’s body (and recognition features) as intact as possible in order to facilitate the later exploitation of UBL’s remains. Someone surely would have had some serious ‘splainin to do if they had actually put 100+ rounds into him just for fun, thus destroying UBL’s features and body and turning it all into nothing but a pile of gore with a bloody turban thrown in on top for good measure.

None of this 100+ rounds claim makes any tactical sense.

From my perspective, this story is all a bunch of complete BS.

Pinto Nag

I’m not buying it, not for one second. It makes our special operators sound like foaming-at-the-mouth psychos, instead of the highly trained experts they are. Dead is dead, and they were in dangerous territory, and they supposedly lost all control and stood around and riddled a corpse? Rubbish. All this is, is some journalist’s wet dream attempt to resurrect the ‘p*ss on the enemy corpse’ hysteria.

If some member of the team stood up and said it happened, and there was VIDEO, I might believe it. Until then — nada.

Sparks

I agree m’lady.

Perry Gaskill

Business Insider is an incredibly crappy website run by Henry Blodget, a disgraced stock analyst whose disdain for journalism ethics is probably exceeded only by Nick Denton at Gawker, or Arianna Huffington at the Huffington Post. The bin Laden story, via SOFREP, is exactly the kind of story BI likes to run in its relentless drive for page clicks, and never mind if the truth gets kicked to the curb.

My own view is that there are probably two good reasons why the White House didn’t release the photos:

One is that according to, if memory serves, initial reports of the shooting, bin Laden took one of the early rounds above an eybrow and it likely took off half of his face. It’s not hard to understand how such a gruesome image might benefit Business Insider’s web traffic, but difficult to explain how it would benefit the public at large.

Another reason for not running the photo is that anytime a public figure approaches that of, at least from a Jihadist perspective, a folk hero, publication of a shot of a bullet-riddled corpse risks turning him into a martyr. This is exactly what happened when Che Guevara got his ticket punched in Bolivia.

I’m not beating up on Jack Murphy with this; he probably didn’t recognize a fundamental flaw in basing his story on two anonymous sources who are not identified as having direct knowledge of events but merely as being “within the community.” Two Twitter ‘tards named SurfNinja and KillerDude aren’t going to cut it. Nor does Murphy provide any balanced counter view to what may be pure speculation. What does the Navy or White House give for a reason, for example.

Hondo

Another reason for not running the photo is that anytime a public figure approaches that of, at least from a Jihadist perspective, a folk hero, publication of a shot of a bullet-riddled corpse risks turning him into a martyr.

And when that happens, his grave becomes a shrine. I’m guessing that’s the real reason his corpse was fed to the fishes – which IMO was precisely the right course of action.

Tony180a

There would undoubtedly be pilgrimages to his graveside which I wholeheartedly support even now. Let the jihadi’s charter cruise ships and make daily trips to the lat/longs where UBL was baptized! Submariners….Standby!

Bill M

I’d like to take a cruise to where they dropped him. Then I could crap over the side.

(Excuse me folks, but the thought of leaving a pile on that POS brings a slight grin to my otherwise sour visage.)

Aggravated Mopery

I don’t like when I see pictures of our dead soldiers dragged through the streets etc.

Why should we act like those savages?

We are exceptional, WE are Americans.

The Other Whitey

Because fuck them, that’s why.

Blaster

Great answer!

aGrimm

Jack Murphy is one of the founders/editors of SOFREP. It’s a good site for lots of decent analysis of SF/SOF and military related news. I’ve been paying for it for a couple years. I was initially impressed with Jack, but something has changed and I am rather unimpressed with him now. Maybe his attending an Ivy League school had a bad effect, but that is a guess. There was definitely a falling out within SOFREP last Fall and very knowledgeable SF/SOF writers resigned. The scuttlebutt reason for the resignations being that Murphy and other editors were stepping over the line. This story smells like Murphy stepping over the line. Smearing our SF guys based on unnamed “inside” sources stinks of yellow journalism.

OldSoldier54

This is starting to sound like what happened with Michael Yon. I supported him until he went off the deep end.

CB Senior

Maybe it was the old “Orient Express” hit. Everybody puts it to him so there is no exact ONE person who did it.

Or you could go with he got off easy. He could have got one for each of our people who died because of this POS.

AskaMarine

Hmmm.

How many lives were lost and families broken because of the 9-11 incidents at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the three planes to include the one that crashed in PA?

Last time I looked, it was over 1,000. And not all of the remains have been identified yet.

So, what am I missing beside the story may be an embellishment?

2/17 Air Cav

That Murphy found a cute way, clothed in his legal question, to release the info, based on unidentified sources, that OBL took 100+ rounds. That’s all.

2/17 Air Cav

Wait. There may be no unidentified sources at all. Did Ole Murph make this up? I mean, his IS the only acct of the good times had by all and he declines to ID his sources. Yep, that’s where I’m staying. He made it up.

2/17 Air Cav

“Photographs and video were released of Saddam Hussein’s hanging…[so]…[w]hy not release a few pictures of Public Enemy No. 1 to prove that he is dead and show the world what happens when you take on the US?”

There were no permitted photos or video of the hanging. They ceased when he stood atop the gallows. There was a cell-phone video taken. It was pretty bad and unauthorized. So, that kills the intro to Murphy’s question. There are two good reasons why OBL’s pics weren’t released. First, it was embarrass Baracka and get CAIR upset with him. Second, it would trigger additional terrorist attacks, w/o question. I’d say Murphy has spent many nights on NoDoze watching loops of the Zapruder film, not to mention reruns of Dallas. The latter b/c he still doesn’t believe that Kristin really shot JR.

Sparks

Kristen shot JR? For real!!! Who knew?

2/17 Air Cav

The truth is Sparks, I had to look it up. I may have watched the show 1.5 times total and really didn’t care who shot JR since no one really did.

Bill M

I shot JR.

Sparks

I gladly would have, it would have stopped my wife from watching.

The Other Whitey

I have yet to see a single episode of “Dallas.” I was raised through the late 80s and early 90s on reruns of “Emergency,” “Airwolf,” “The A-Team” (though I always wondered why they were such terrible shots), original “Battlestar Galactica,” “Bonanza,” “The Big Valley,” “Death Valley Days,” “High Chaparral,” and “The Virginian” (James Drury was ALL that is man!).

I first heard the “who shot JR” thing discussed when I was in high school, around ’99 or so, and thought, “Who the hell’s JR? Never mind, I don’t care.”

reddevil

The real question of the ’80s is ‘Who Shot Buckwheat”?

The Dead Man

That’s funny, the SAS when they’re eliminating the scum of the earth in a targeted attack used to specifically mag dump into their target. There’s a report of an IRA leader having over 70 speed holes installed.

The funniest part was our initial reaction to seeing the recreation was thinking that the History Channel/Military Channel, whatever the hell we had watched it on, were over exaggerating for the audience. Then we did our homework and the guy really had been shot over 70 times.

Guy that wrote the article’s an idiot.

Hondo

Then we did our homework and the guy really had been shot over 70 times.

Now that’s what I’d call being “terminated with extreme prejudice”. (smile)

Pinto Nag

I would submit that ANY time you’re ‘terminated,’ it’s with extreme prejudice!

Roger in Republic

Cough cough. bullshit. cough cough. What? did they all shoot him after the fotos for facial recognition had been sent? And who cares? They would have been justified in cutting him up into souvenir size parts and each taking one home for the kids to take to show and tell. I wish we could kill him three times a day forever.

AskaMarine

Hmmm…I thought there was one Navy SEAL who claimed he shot Bin Laden in the head.

Robert McConnell.

So, when reading the article, is the writer stating Mc Connell shot 100 rounds into Bin laden’s head or others got the rest of the body?

smoke-check

Shut up everyone, Lars tell us all what the right answer is.

Pinto Nag

“Never summon anything you can’t banish.”

The Other Whitey

Lars can eat osama’s tiny dead dick.

David

yeah, and I have inside information from sources I won’t name that Hillary spends half her evenings getting done doggie-style by Trump…and the other half, she’s doing him with a double-ended strap-on. Each claim is just about as believable. Find it hard to believe that in what surely was potentially the hottest target zone in the world that operators would mindlessly blow several magazines of ammo for no good reason.

Jarhead

IF he WAS riddled with 100 rounds, can’tcha just imagine the 72 waiting virgins taking a look and saying, “HOLY shit, this ain’t nothin’ but smelly Swiss cheese with a turban! And THIS is what we were waiting for?”

IDC SARC

I’m just an infidel, but according to what I can make of the Qur’anic verses, it’s actually 72 goats waiting to take revenge.

Baaaaaaaaaaaa!

reddevil

Here’s my sure-to-be-unpopular opinion: First, Jack Murphy is a former Ranger and SF guy with time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He and SOFREP have a lot of credibility and access in the SOF community, and he knows who has credibility in that community and who does not. In other words I believe him: He got this either from operators that were on the mission or someone close to them. Therefore, whether or not his sources are telling the truth, this is a problem. On one hand, assume for a moment that this is all bullshit and the sources from ST 6 are lying to Murphy. Why the hell are they talking about it? What is going on with the SEALS and especially ST6 that they have to talk so much and write so many books? Don’t they get any OPSEC training? Why is so much of what they talk and write about just bullshit? On the other hand, assume instead that this is true and accurate, and several operators emptied their magazines into UBL’s body. Here’s what’s wrong with that: Mainly it shows an incredible lack of discipline and mission focus. Regardless of their personal feelings, they had a mission. I would assume it was a capture/kill mission, although it could have simply been to kill him. Live would have been better, dead is ok. Intact is sort of mandatory so we can exploit him. Exploitation means every sense of that word. Alive, we could have interrogated him, even dead but intact we could have exploited him for propaganda value. Or not. As a bloody pile of tissue we have no options. Someone besides ‘The Shooter’ should have had been the decision maker. By the way, it was tactically stupid. Who was pulling security while this was going on? What about the Rangers and Nightstalkers and PJs and Combat Controllers who were undoubtedly securing in a FARP or orbiting in a CSAR bird somewhere in bad guy country as part of the supporting operation (that we will never read about because those outfits have good OPSEC)? How much extra… Read more »

aGrimm

Reddevil: see my comment above at 6:56pm. I’ve been following SOFREP for quite some time. I love the site, but over time something has changed in Murphy’s writings and he presents these days with a fairly liberal slant, bordering on anti-military and SF/SOF bashing. People can argue this, but that has been my take-away. Lots of other good writers on the site, so I remain a member. A couple really good analysts disappeared last Fall, whom I really miss. As I see Murphy working to get himself into other venues, I suspect that he has big ambitions. Nothing wrong with that unless he fulfills those ambitions via the “dark side”. Frankly, his actions/writings indicate to me that is the direction he is heading. The SF/SOF guys I really trust and believe are the ones who honor the codes of SF/SOF, which includes keeping their mouths shut when it comes to national secrets. Murphy is doing an end-run on those codes and I’ve seen him do it more than once. A person has to ask why would a decorated SF guy like Murphy do this? We all know the answer to that – when honor is left behind for greed and ambition. So I recommend taking Murphy with a grain of salt. If you are a member, search the SOFREP archives and compare his initial writings to today’s writing. I could be wrong, but I’ll bet that my take away of what is happening with him will hold up.

2/17 Air Cav

I prefer the National Enquirer. At least you know from the start that they’re full of shit.

ex-OS2

What 2/17 Air Cav said….

reddevil

I don’t disagree.
I guess my point is that Murphy would know if his sources were the real deal- but I think your point is more that Murphy himself may be exaggerating for effect. That could be the case.

One way or another I find this very disappointing. At the very least we’ve got a bunch of guys who should be Quiet Professionals that can’t keep their mouths shut and are making up a bunch of B.S. stories that don’t really reflect well on them, true or not.

At worst, we have a bunch of operators who do all of the above AND have significant lapses at arguably the worst possible times.

aGrimm

Rec’d +6 good summation of my points.

JarHead Pat

Unless you were there, or we have a live vid feed, shut the fuck up, we don’t know whom to believe what the fuck happened.

Reddevil

Right. Except that a lot of the guys that were there won’t shut the fuck up.

FatCircles0311

Can’t take anything posted by SOFREP seriously.

Ex-PH2

The slime is dead. He’s dead, all right. And he’d better stay dead.

That’s all I care about. Bullets be damned.

OldSoldier54

I could carter less if he had six bullet holes or six thousand bullet holes.

Just like I was unmoved by those Marines peeing all over that dead terrorist.

I do not give a flying fig.

OldSoldier54

That would be “…could care less …”

HMC Ret

True or not, what is Murphy’s agenda? What does he hope to gain with this story? Maybe he has an axe to grind? Dunno, but it unnecessarily puts the SEALs in a bad light. Maybe he just enjoys seeing his name in print. Totally unnecessary.
I will say this: I believe the SEALs were instructed to make certain the guy was DRT. No way were they going to bring him back alive. As one poster said, obummer would have used him for a photo op on the White House lawn. OK, a little sarc there about the photo op.

Ex-PH2

What does he hope to gain? Same as the rest of the attention hogs: more attention. He thinks he has a ‘story’ and it’s mostly BS, but he’s stirring the pot to make something happen. If the SOFREP readership is dropping for some reason, his article might revive it a little.

IMHO, it appears to me that he has made a mountain out of an anthill, and nobody really cares because the rat is D-E-A-D, DRT, dead.

Reddevil

Murphy considers himself to be a journalist. His agenda is to publish what he thinks is newsworthy, get famous for it, and make money- not necessarily in that order.

As a journalist he has an obligation to verify his sources and write a factual story, whether or not it put the SEALs in a bad light.

The interesting question is whether or not the sources realized he was acting as a journalist when they told him their story, or if they thought they were just BSing with a fellow SOF guy.

A lot of Chris Kyle’s exaggerated claims happened when he was drinking and swapping war stories with a bunch of SEALs. No one listening should have taken it seriously and printed them as fact without verifying it all, but they did.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

So in light of all the publicity we see lately surrounding these issues is it safe to say the concept of a quiet professional no longer exists as we once knew it. Back when these things happened and it was just told the public that it happened without all the details known outside the small circle of individuals involved?

If so it would appear that even our SF personnel have succumbed to our current cultural fascination with celebrity. Sadly I don’t know if this is a net positive for the nation or the military.

SFC (R) Blizz

Two things:

1. A CSM taught me a lesson during Bradley gunnery once, “keep shooting until the target changes forms”.
2. The story as I have come to understand it was two guys entered the room with Bin Laden. His news piece would imply that they both changed magazines multiple times or that after he was down, other guys showed up and started shooting the body also. These guys are SEALS, either would be really unsafe in a small room. I just think that they would be to smart to do something like that. I wasn’t a SEAL, but as a CAV Scout in Baghdad, we used the amount of force necessary to eliminate the threat and that was it. That would taken time and would have made a lot of noise. Both would be minimized to what would be necessary. They had a lot of SSE to accomplish and not a whole lot of time to get it done.

Jarhead

Giving it some thought, here is my UNsolicited opinion. SEALS are and always will be the top of the class when it comes to warriors. Not even today’s changing demographics and behavior standards will lower SEALS’ integrity and performance. If you knew you’d have to lug a body out the door and into a chopper, is it logical to want to put as many blood drains in the body as suggested? Might you not expect someone on the receiving end of the body to be a bit upset? Think about it. Presuming the mission was to bring home B L dead or alive, the job was done. Well done at that.
What bothers me FAR worse is the deaths thereafter of some who participated. We’ll NEVER know the truth about that.

J Wright

Re UBL’s remains:

President Obama: Who shot him ?

Team Guys: We all did.
——————————————–

If Only …

royh

Oh, OBL got shot 100 times? That’s a good start.

Yes, I know I’m late.