Monday, August 01, 2011

For God and Country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.

Charlie Sheen isn't #winning Jack Shit.  This is the story of true badassery of epic proportions.  These operators are made of win. 

From The New Yorker:
Excerpted from

Getting Bin Laden

What happened that night in Abbottabad.

by August 8, 2011

“Eternity is defined as the time be tween when you see something go awry and
that first voice report,” the special-operations officer said. The officials
in Washington viewed the aerial footage and waited anxiously to hear a
military communication. The senior adviser to the President compared the
experience to watching “the climax of a movie.”

After a few minutes, the twelve SEALs inside helo one recovered their
bearings and calmly relayed on the radio that they were proceeding with the
raid. They had conducted so many operations over the past nine years that
few things caught them off guard. In the months after the raid, the media
have frequently suggested that the Abbottabad operation was as challenging
as Operation Eagle Claw and the “Black Hawk Down” incident, but the senior
Defense Department official told me that “this was not one of three
missions. This was one of almost two thousand missions that have been
conducted over the last couple of years, night after night.” He likened the
routine of evening raids to “mowing the lawn.” On the night of May 1st
alone, special-operations forces based in Afghanistan conducted twelve other
missions; according to the official, those operations captured or killed
between fifteen and twenty targets. “Most of the missions take off and go
left,” he said. “This one took off and went right.”

Minutes after hitting the ground, Mark and the other team members began
streaming out the side doors of helo one. Mud sucked at their boots as they
ran alongside a ten-foot-high wall that enclosed the animal pen. A three-man
demolition unit hustled ahead to the pen’s closed metal gate, reached into
bags containing explosives, and placed C-4 charges on the hinges. After a
loud bang, the door fell open. The nine other SEALs rushed forward, ending
up in an alleylike driveway with their backs to the house’s main entrance.
They moved down the alley, silenced rifles pressed against their shoulders.
Mark hung toward the rear as he established radio communications with the
other team. At the end of the driveway, the Americans blew through yet
another locked gate and stepped into a courtyard facing the guesthouse,
where Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s courier, lived with his wife and
four children.

Go RTWT.

--Chuck

No comments: