MEDIATIONS ON THE CHINOOK CRASH

Ten years on and the people of America and her Allies simply cannot get their heads around what this war is about . . . its not about taking real estate, and even when we do take real estate is not secure . . . the enemy has no capital city, no flag, no uniform . . . there are no air clashes between mighty carrier armadas . . . no carpet bombing of cities, no tank columns battling it out on dusty plains . . . combat is largely symbolic; it's really a conflict between ideologies. Theirs embraces suicide, suffering and denial now as a ticket to Paradise, ours is the promise of freedom and a good life which the enemy somehow twists and perverts in the minds of their brainwashed followers.

How do you prevail over an enemy that numbers in the millions, most of them illiterate or if they can read they've only read one book in their entire lives and their frothing-at-the-mouth mad mullahs tell them what it means: that they should be more than willing to sacrifice their miserable lives to kill the Infidel? We slay a thousand, ten thousand of theirs and it doesn't matter - they all went to Paradise and who would miss them anyway? They're all loincloth-wearing mud hut dwellers with nothing better to do and all day to do it. They kill ten, twenty or thirty of ours and it's a major coup so body count math simply does not work. Symbolic victories is what it's all about, that and the hearts and minds of our home populations.

 This war could conceivably go on forever; at the very least until the Second Coming, and we could conduct it a lot more cost-effectively than how we are currently going about it.

One way is to say to Hell with Nation-building - haven't we done enough for these people? First of all we liberated them, then we put up with the bombs and bullets of the insurgents they support, we shed the precious blood of thousands of our best & brightest. We can't simply pull out because that's handing victory over to the savages who ran Afghanistan into the Stone Age - not that it was very much out of the Stone Age in the first place - but the current status quo is simply unsustainable. Besides if they get those natural gas and oil pipelines run from the 'Stans down to the Indian Ocean ports, they'll finally have some kind of worth to their land which is otherwise a inhospitable pile of rocks, only good for growing opium and xenophobic zealotry.

The concept would be to maintain some fortresses over there, manned by Special Operations Forces and defended by private military companies. Let these people decide what they want to do with their cities and real estate - the whole place is incurably tribal anyway - while we maintain a permanent state of siege from within our firebases, resupplied by helicopters and Ospreys, straining the enemy's resources while we come and go at will on operations to punch him in the nose and kick him in the ass.

At a recent dinner table conversation in DC, one distinguished dinner guest suggested America needs some kind of mercenary force to conduct these kind of operations. I disagreed; we are not France and a Foreign Legion is not in keeping with our Constitution. There is no shortage of brave individuals willing to come forward to serve their country, and if the Mainstream Media wasn't so adamantly hellbent on surrender at any cost, there'd be a whole helluva lot more.

A reader wrote about Aaron Vaughn and those guys, commented that they're his age, how it's sobering to think about the time and effort that goes into building a spec ops guy like a SEAL (on both sides, trainer and trainee) . And these guys had families, kids to boot.

I was once their age and I went downrange dressed to kill and I had a family at the time (still do of course), my kids were young when I was going in and out of the Bad Countries . . .

When I went through the Special Forces Q Course it was between six to eighteen months long (depending what MOS you went for). On top of that you had to already be a sergeant in the Regular Army - I had five years under my belt as a grunt in the 82d Airborne by the time I went into the Q Course - so you could say it averaged four to five years to make a Green Beret; about the same to make a SEAL.

I read something somewhere that it takes ten years to fully train a Special Operations soldier in anyone's army; when you consider training and schools intersected with operational time I'd say that's about right. To me a fully trained professional should have a specialty insertion technique (scuba or halo), have at least three MOS's (one in their regular forces and two Special Forces), speak at least one foreign language (I have French, Thai and Spanish), graduate advanced Special Operations training courses (combat pistol marksmanship, CQB, breaching and advanced demolitions, tradecraft, technical surveillance, etc), and have some useful civilian credentials as well such as locksmithing, mechanic, etc.

These guys were the highest of their profession, and when you crunch the numbers it is easy to say they are less than 1% of 1% of all the military - the true elite.

Others will step forward to fill their shoes, and the Big Wheel Keeps on Turning.

It was just announced: the Special Operations Warrior Foundation will offer full college scholarships to the children of all of the U. S. military personnel who perished in the recent CH-47 helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

For the past 31 years, the SOWF has supported the families of fallen Special Operations members by providing college educations to their surviving children. Today, the foundation’s board of directors has decided to provide its services to the families of all U. S. troops aboard the helicopter that was downed on Aug. 6.
"This was a tragic day for our military and their families. While the majority of the military personnel onboard the CH-47 were special operators, and they are automatically covered by the foundation, we wanted to offer our services to all who were on that fateful mission,” said retired Air Force Col. John T. Carney, Jr., SOWF President. "The least we can do for the grieving families is to honor the sacrifices of their loved ones and to offer a college education to the surviving children.”

We know now that the Chinook was a regular CH-47, not an MH- series Special Operations bird - I mistakenly posted that it was an MH-47 on the assumption that an outfit like SEAL Team 6 gets around in MH- series birds (the whole time I was in Special Forces I can count the times we flew regular birds on the fingers of one hand, and I was in SF for 20 years.) Suffice to say something went terribly wrong - they were possibly flying in on their contingency plan means of infil - in any case it is an act of class for the SOWF to include the non-Spec Ops personnel in their generous charity; they died on a Spec Ops mission, as far as I'm concerned they're Spec Ops now, they earned it the hard way.


"Only the Dead have seen the End of War." 

- SEAN LINNANE SENDS

"HE WAS A WARRIOR FOR CHRIST AND HE WAS A WARRIOR FOR OUR COUNTRY . . ."

Aaron Vaughn is one of the Navy SEALs who died in the Chinook helo ambush.













The widow of Navy SEAL Aaron Vaughn told CNN: "I want to tell the world that he was an amazing man, that he was a wonderful husband, and a fabulous father to two wonderful children. He was a warrior for Christ and he was a warrior for our country and he wouldn't want to leave this Earth any other way than how he did . . ."

American Morning let Kimberly Vaughn’s offensive reference to Christ in a tribute to her husband get by their censors once before political correctness took hold to cut it a mere five minutes later. In a moment reminiscent of NBC’s “regrettable” omission of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance during it coverage of the U.S. Open two months ago, CNN cut “warrior for Christ” from Kimberly Vaughn’s tribute to her hero husband (one of twenty-two Navy SEALS and eight other servicemen killed in the Chinook helicopter during a mission in Afghanistan).


PERSONAL STORIES OF THE FALLEN FIGHTERS

They came from far-flung corners of the country - some of them motivated by the 9/11 attacks that bin Laden masterminded.

They were intensely patriotic and talented young men with a love of physical challenges and a passion for the high-risk job they chose.

Brian Bill, for example, had seemingly boundless ambitions, according to those who knew him as a high school student-athlete in Stamford, Conn. A skier, mountaineer, pilot and triathlete, he hoped to complete graduate school after his military service and then become an astronaut. "He loved life; he loved a challenge; and he was passionate about being a SEAL," his family said in a statement Monday.

Aaron Vaughn, a 30-year-old father of two from Virginia Beach, Va., met his wife, Kimberly, when she was a Washington Redskins cheerleader on a USO tour in Guam. Vaughn had aspired to a military career since childhood and told his parents after 9/11 that he wanted to become a SEAL. "He felt, and so did the other members of his team, that the very existence of our republic is at stake," his father, Billy Vaughn, told NBC's "Today." "Because of that, Aaron was willing to give his life."

Jason Workman, 32, of Blanding, Utah, also cited 9/11 as his motive for aspiring to join the special forces, childhood friend Tate Bennett told The Deseret News. He completed his Mormon mission to Brazil and Philadelphia, attended college, then joined the Navy with the specific goal of becoming a SEAL. "Not making it just wasn't an option," Bennett said of his friend, who leaves behind a wife and 21-month-old son.

Workman, Vaughn, Bill and 19 other SEALS were among 30 Americans and eight Afghans killed Saturday when a rocket-propelled grenade fired by a Taliban insurgent downed their Chinook helicopter en route to a combat mission. All but two of the SEALs were from SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed bin Laden, although military officials said none of the crash victims was on that mission in Pakistan against the al-Qaida leader.

The crash was a somber counterpoint to the national jubilation that greeted news of bin Laden's death. Yet families and friends of the SEALs killed aboard the Chinook spoke of the dedication and tight-knit camaraderie that tided them through all sorts of ups and downs.

Read more HERE

Today is SEAL Day at STORMBRINGER - they join the Heroes of our Nation in Valhalla, and we honor them.


SEAN LINNANE SENDS

.

31 U.S. troops, 7 Afghans killed as insurgents down NATO chopper

KABUL, Afghanistan— ⁠Thirty-one American troops and seven Afghans died in the overnight downing of a U.S. helicopter, President Hamid Karzai's office said Saturday. The Taliban claimed to have shot down the craft.

The deaths represent the largest loss of military lives in a single incident in the course of the nearly 10-year-old war, and are a blow to Western efforts as the United States and its allies begin drawing down forces in Afghanistan in hopes of ending their combat role in the next three years.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, confirmed in a terse statement that a helicopter crash had occurred and acknowledged insurgent activity in the area at the time. A Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the twin-rotor Chinook helicopter had apparently been brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Karzai's statement identified the slain Americans as special operations forces. Sensitive to operational secrecy, special forces commanders as a rule are slower than other branches to publicly acknowledge combat casualties, which would account for the military's near-silence on the incident more than 12 hours after it occurred.

The helicopter went down after midnight in the Sayedabad district of Wardak province, west of the capital, Kabul, according to Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the provincial governor. He and other provincial officials said the crash followed a firefight that left eight insurgents dead.

Read more HERE: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-afghan-chopper-20110807,0,7157351.story

Photo shows close up of a U.S. Army Special Operations MH-47 Chinook helicopter with its distinctive refueling boom as a crewmember leans over one of the ship's two 7.62mm miniguns.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

OSAMA's SEA BURIAL CAUGHT ON TAPE

Everyone knows that 'burial at sea' story was fishy. Here is the real truth:






Today's Bird HERE


.


.

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, and PANIC IN BLOGGER STREET

Y'all may or may not have noticed a serious glitch in the matrix yesterday - first I noticed was I couldn't log on to Blogger - the Google-based service that I use to do STORMBRINGER. Worse still, Wednesday's post about the last combat veteran of World War I was GONE - which disturbed me because Claude Choules and the generation he came to represent are worthy of much honor and respect. It's a rare moment you'll catch me waxing poetic, and I wondered if I'd ever be able to re-capture that haiku about the Ghost Fleet?


"The wind blows over a page in the open Book of History, and the final veteran of an ancient war passes . . .

A quiet drumbeat, a distant bugle call,

a final gun salute from the Ghost Fleet

to honor him."


When I thought about it a little later on, it occurred to me that I should have ended that haiku with the pronoun, third person plural not singular:


. . . to honor THEM."


. . . but that would be cheating and not in the spirit of haiku . . . a haiku must be like the downward sword thrust - executed once; a fleeting human thought, a moment of time, captured on paper verbatim - never edited.


WOW! I think I just wrote the world's first haiku about . . . HAIKU:


a fleeting human thought

a moment of time

captured on paper, verbatim

never edited.


Perhaps there's an English major out there who'd care to advise a lowly professional knuckle-dragging snakeater on whether it's allowable to alter that last, the Ghost Fleet number?


ANYHOW

It was time to hit the road, but before I did I checked the Twitter-verse and sure enough, Theo - my mentor in Blog-dom - was moaning about Blogger. So I added my two cents worth before climbing into the old Fahrfenugen TDI for another day of fighting Evil and keeping the world safe for Democracy.

I don't do any of the so-called 'social media' - Spacebook, My Face, FaceButt, WHATEVER - I say 'so-called' because I believe they are generally the antithesis of anything social; to the contrary they are destructive to our society, social intercourse and the art of conversation - however I do the Twitter thing because it's a useful communications tool; an abbreviated interface between the Internet, what's going on out there in the real world and the smartphone.

Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon; I posted about it during the Bangkok street battles. Twitter was instrumental during the recent uprising in Cairo, and now it seems the Taliban have infested Twitter to propagandize their cause - that's evil, of course, and I hope the people that own and operate the Twitter thingie get a handle on this - I don't normally do boycotts but this is beyond the pale; Twitter changes their act or I do.


AZIMUTH CHECK

Yesterday's break in blogdom was a refreshing refer and re-alignment of the aiming stakes. Beyond honoring those who serve, those who have served, and those who gave all; the original purpose of Blog STORMBRINGER has been to provide a little outlet for my creative juices. Somewhere along the line this thing has morphed into a life of its own, and creativity has suffered accordingly.

What's happening is the Blog is interfering with my time; family life, workout time (precious little of), the business of work itself, and more significantly my creative writing time. Bottom line is I'd rather do one or two well-written posts per week, and pick up where I left off posting on Theo's Last of the Few than cranking out half a dozen poorly drafted blurbs a week, just to make some kind of daily hit counter that quite honestly has paid less in two years than what I make in two days at my day job.

A couple of weeks back I floated the question of serializing a couple of novels I've crafted over the years, and I'm still keen on developing this.

Suggestions range from integrating my work into the blog and charging per chapter (which would be great if I could figure how to do it); self-publishing - which would be fine if my objective was simply to be published; or getting accepted onto one of the 'reader' devices - which is the way I want to go. Barnes and Noble have a reader thingie, and of course there's Kindle - either way would work for me.


ANECDOTE

I've gone on about the novel long enough - I guess it's time to share a little of what I write. My inspiration has always been the action/adventure novels of Scottish author Alistair MacLean, with perhaps a touch of Conrad thrown in for good measure.

Alistair MacLean wrote what became possibly the best war film of all time: 

Dirty Harry meets Agatha Christie.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; inspiration for Coppola's Apocalypse Now, before its 1902 publication, it was serialized in three parts.

In 2000 I spent the better part of a year mostly by myself in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. I lived alone in a large house of cement, stone and marble, on the edge of the great Sahara. That lonely outpost was where I started the novel I am about to present.

A year rolled by. I'd been in and out of West Africa a couple of times and as fate would have it I was in Washington DC on official business; good friends David & Danielle had me over to their place for dinner. Recently Danielle reminded me of something I said over the dinner table that evening: "Something big is coming . . . we see it coming, there's all kinds of activity on the intell sources . . . I don't know what's going down, but something big is going to happen . . ."

The date of that dinner party was September 10th, 2001, and the next morning I had an appointment at the Pentagon.

This was as close as I got to keeping my appointment that fateful September morning.

The point of my anecdote is this: the novel I crafted featured the world's most wanted terrorist ol' Mister Fish Food himself. Well 9/11 changed the whole premise of THAT work of fiction, and I spent a VERY busy next couple of years chasing ghosts all over Eastern Europe and North Africa, and writing fell by the wayside.

I may or may not have to change the premise of my story; I'd hate to intersect fiction on top of what is promising to be a terrific tale of action and adventure all by itself. Most likely I'll re-write it, craft it in my own terms, and drive on with it.

Here's the teaser:

Prologue

The map the continent of Africa resembles a skull; the fossilized skull of some primitive sub-human ancestor from deep within the dust and debris of Uldabi Gorge. If one starts at the straits of Gibraltar, where Africa comes closest to Europe, and traces a finger southerly, the western coastline of North Africa curves around to the base of the skull. On a human this is the medulla oblongata, where the spinal column joins into the most primordial part of the brain, the part of our being that governs instinct and involuntary muscle movement. On the map this is West Africa, an irregular, variegated coastline. Its solid green represents the low altitudes, dense vegetation, mosquito infested jungle, primordial scum.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast - Cote d’Ivoire - is a modern city on the edge of the West African coastline. Built on islands in an inland system of hyacinth-covered, crocodile- and hippo-infested lagoons and surrounded by emerald forest-covered hills, her modern skyline rises like a fantastic set from some science fiction epic.

The press had been harping about the “riots in the streets of Abidjan” for weeks, but the few clashes I saw out there didn’t come anywhere near what I would classify as a fully-fledged riot. More like spirited demonstrations, almost staged events for what is was worth.

There is no discernable beginning or end to the souk in Abidjan. There is no parking lot, no clearly marked entrance. The roadside stands simply increase in number as one approaches the area of the souk; merchants selling clothing, fruit, shoes, handbags, magazines, masks and African animals of carved wood or semi-precious stone, everything and anything imaginable.

Every hundred meters or so one encounters a woman standing by a large enamel or plastic basin perched on a barrel or a drum, full of antibiotics and other miscellaneous pharmaceuticals acquired from black market sources or the careful gleaning of westerner’s rubbish. Customers sift through the medications, lift up containers of pills in bubble packaging or plastic pill bottles with typed prescription labels to carefully inspect the mysterious drugs until they find something they feel will remedy whatever it is that ails them. Along a street that sells wooden artifacts one may find stall after stall selling hundreds of small statuettes featuring white men dressed as doctors, policemen, soldiers. Hopeful patients can place such statuary in their home, burn candles and offer liqueur, tobacco to the image. This is gri-gri; juu-juu or voodoo. If the pills don’t work, a gri-gri doll will.

The center of the souk is in a crumbling shell of concrete that goes up at least three stories; I never determined how far the complex goes in laterally. The roof in some places is made of the same steel-reinforced cement as the walls, mostly however the merchants stretch swathes of cloth between the walls to provide shade from the sun. The floor beneath one’s feet is sand, the interior is maze-like. A narrow set of stairs goes up the side of the building; merchants are tucked into every nook and cranny, poking out to offer their wares as one passes by.

It is hot and humid, airless within the depths of the souk. The senses are assaulted by a barrage of sights, sounds and smells. Bolts of vividly colored printed cloth, stalls featuring thousands and thousands of colored glass beads, more wooden statues and carved animals; hippos, crocodiles, warthogs, rhinos, gazelle, elephants, lions, zebras. Animals made of the printed cloth. Suitcases and shipping trunks. Hand tools, made in Taiwan. Korean mink blankets featuring Oriental geometric patterns or the old favorite, the white Siberian snow tiger, stacked to the ceiling in their vinyl packaging. West African music, the ancient ancestor of rock and the blues, blares it’s hypnotic rhythms out of cheap boom boxes and ancient transistor radios; the air reeks of spices, fruits, perfumes, the smell of dusty wood, and always, everywhere, the smell of thousands of sweating bodies.

A niche in the wall features shelf after shelf of ivory; tusks, statues, bracelets, bangles, necklaces, earrings, rings. More ivory lays beneath glass display cases. The owner is an ancient black in purple robes. He wears a fez, his eyes have a wisdom that is a thousand years old. He puts his hand on mine, draws me close. His dark skin looks almost blue against my arm. “Monsieur,” he says quietly, displays a mouthful of stained and rotting teeth. “Today is not a good day for you in the streets of Africa.”

© 2011 by Sean Linnane

Well, there it is. If you like my work, go over to the right there and click on email STORMBRINGER - and let me know if you'd be willing to click on it for a dollar a chapter.

Cheers - S.L.



Yesterday's Bird HERE



.

THE RAID - More Concepts

"The US Navy SEAL team which executed the raid on Osama bin Laden was handpicked by Barack Obama."


This gem surfaced early on in the Whitehouse disinformation campaign surrounding The Raid, and I threw out the fifteen-yard bullshit flag on this one right away.

Fact of the matter is Obama spent more time planning his Final Four picks than he did on ANYTHING remotely associated with military operations - the single subject area he is uniquely UN-qualified to say a word about, much less even pretend to know doodley-squat, even less so than free-market economics.


If you want to know the real reason SEAL Team Six got the mission was this thing had become practically a red-cycle tasking within JSOC. They've had a team on standby for the OBL hit for a decade now, and the SEALs lucked out - in that they were on stand down while everyone else was out kicking ass and taking names when word came down the pike that we actually had a fix on HVT bin Laden and The Company was requesting JSOC to go in and do the hit.

So the SEALs were the assault element and they're such publicity hogs they made sure word got out and they got all the credit - dollars to doughnuts if it was Delta the press would still be hypothesizing who did it - the CAG has a Code of Silence that even La Cosa Nostra envies. Remember a little operation involving PW Jessica Lynch?


While we're on the subject, my buddy Skullhead - of the Apache - is having a problem with the choice of codename for bin Laden, and as an honorary member of the Lakota, I must admit that I see it his way.

Skullhead writes:

i am seeing a mix reaction on the name the target was given, some native americans find it offensive. i can see the choice they made being the fact that Geronimo was hunted for many years in unfriendly terrian. he live in the back country and surived off the land. the target in this case was hunted and did the text book thing hide in plan sight. its the long hunt that would inspire the name and the enviroment. the real deal never lived better than his people, the target was living better than most of his followers. any way they could have used a better name like AID (another idiot down)

Today's Bird HERE



.

THE RAID

Up until this point in time, if you said'The Raid' within the SF community, you were referring to the Son Tay Raid. As of last Sunday evening, that has been changed forever. And as secretive and shrouded in mystery as Son Tay was, this latest thing generates more questions and quizzical aspects with each and every pronouncement of Team Obama.

OK now that the dust has settled lets go over some of the details that the Left-Leaning Mainstream Media (LLMM) invariably get wrong due to their wholesale lack of military experience - while posturing themselves as Subject Matter Experts on everything Spec Ops - combined with their slobbering love affair with the current occupier of the Whitehouse.


o Did the Presidents' team actually watch the operation unfold in real-time on the screen in the situation room?

This photo suggests they did, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comment that it was "the most intense 38 minutes of her life" contributes to this aspect of The Raid. But on Wednesday CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that the screen went black for 25 minutes right in the middle of the operation.

o Was Hillary reacting in shock and awe at the killing of Osama bin Laden, or is she covering a cough - as she claimed - or is she overwhelmed by the beauty of it all when they switched over to a Royal Wedding rerun during those 25 minutes of blackness? You decide.


o Is Osama bin Laden REALLY dead? Where's the photo? "No body, no crime." The death of Adolf Hitler was also announced on 1 May, and yet everyone knows Hitler is still alive in Argentina - for you non-Truthyers here's video proof:






Today's Bird HERE


.

THE JOKES HAVE STARTED

A MAN WALKS INTO A BAR AND ORDERS A BIN LADEN . . .

Bartender asks, "what’s a Bin Laden?"

Man says, "2 shots with a splash of water."


- from Theo's worthy site Last of the Few

Q: How come they used Seal Team Six instead of Delta to conduct the OBL raid into Pakistan?

A: Simple. They wanted to make sure he wasn't captured alive.


(Credit for that one goes to Team STORMBRINGER charter member VA Shepherd)


Rumor is Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and Bill Daley were the driving forces for the raid; Obama was against. Reports are that Obama "had to sleep on it" before making the call. Sleep on what???

The leak of above less than 72 hours after the raid was executed points to a high level of frustration within the Obama Administration and the National Intelligence community. Was Obama's hand in fact forced?

Obama is getting kudos for ordering a raid vs. a bombing that would have obliterated everything. The intel haul was the real coup; did this even occur to the community-organizer-in-chief beforehand???

Announcement of the raid was made in the middle of Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" show . . . a mere coincidence I'm sure . . . no way Obama would use this for political gain! The best thing a Tea Party Merry Prankster team could pull off right now would be to unveil a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner at Obama's (already scheduled) Ground Zero appearance . . .

. . . not that there's anything wrong with that . . .


The following observations from SKULLHEAD - ex-Delta operator and Knight Chevalier of Team STORMBRINGER Sanctum Sanctorium:


This was a great op for the group (JSOC) and looks like it went of with out a hitch. Yes Seal Team 6 got the poster picture for it, however I do know that the ODD ( Operational Detachment - D a.k.a. Delta Force ) was present and most likely it split the count, enough to put the group on solid ground and timing.

I told you he was in Pakistan and living high on the hog. We also knew they were helping him; that is how they are and will always be. We should have severed ties and destroyed their nuke program a long time ago. I also believe the op was already moving and the President was told to sit and wait because it was going to happen whether he liked or not; that big a HVT (High Value Target) was not getting away.

A classic tactic for tracking an urban target: put them on the run and wait for them to hole up, let them get confortable and study their habits, then you get to remove them from the earth at a time & place of your choosing. Same thing happened to Pablo (Escobar); smells of ODD all over this - we know the true story will come out when the current regime is no longer going to be embarrassed, plus we don't exist therefore we were not there just Seal Team 6 and the CIA.

Funny how things have to be laid out for people in the news and we all know they are full of sh*t as well as the current occupiers of the Whitehouse - how long do you think it will be before this guy blows the ODD apart and screws that up? Credit should be given to the boys on the ground - they did the job. I remember a couple of over the rail disposals they did for us way back when, they should advertise free funerals at sea for terrorists, we will even pick up - no reservations needed. You get a free bath so you're fresh as a daisy for the virgins.

They will come at us again . . .

SKULLHEAD SENDS

THE BIN LADEN HIT

At this time hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied military men and women are giving thanks they have lived to see this day. The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of our courageous fighting men adds meaning to the sacrifice of so many on dusty, distant battlefields, at military outposts, depots and staging areas far from home, and on the home front of what has become a long, drawn out war.

In time we will learn the details of what was obviously a classic raid. At this time anything said or written claiming detailed knowledge of the operation that terminated the world's most wanted terrorist is pure conjecture. We don't even know for sure who pulled off this operation - SEAL Team Six got the credit, but as a part of JSOC - the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command - it is inconceivable they did it alone. The support apparatus for such a complex mission is huge; special operations aviation assets are not organic to SEAL units, for example. Doctrinally, the 75th Ranger Regiment would provide outer perimeter security; communications, tac-air support, reconnaissance and sniper overwatch could be provided by a host of JSOC assets.

To discuss the planning involved would fill a field manual; basically two types of planning occurred from the moment bin Laden's presence in the compound was suspected and confirmed, and warning orders issued to the assault force; deliberate and contingency. Deliberate planning is the long term, carefully detailed plan that we assume was carried out. Contingency planning is the stand-by plan in case conditions at the objective - in this case the Osama compound - suddenly altered; preparations for movement, or the arrival of significant enemy forces into the battlespace.

In creating a plan, the one-thirds/two-thirds rule is employed; one third of time and assets are dedicated to actual actions on the objective - two-thirds to planning, rehearsals, getting in and getting out - infil and exfil - the most difficult and resource-intensive aspect of any mission. Critical decision points include contingency plans for if helicopters go down; how many birds can be lost before the mission is no longer 'do-able'? The mission to rescue the American embassy personnel in the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 was aborted at Desert One because mission abort criteria had been met. Point of No Return takes into consideration how far from the objective can a team still carry on their mission - on foot - if a bird goes down enroute?

Other significant considerations involve the presence of non-combatants on the objective, - or encountered enroute to the objective - and an altered Rules of Engagement regarding the High Value Target (HVT); i.e. Osama bin Laden. This was obviously a take-no-prisoners mission, but considerations would also have been made for any enemies who survived the initial assault.

The way the rules work is as long as you're assaulting across the objective - from the Line of Departure to the Limit of Advance - anyone and anything identified as an enemy combatant within the kill zone can be engaged - i.e. shot and killed. It's when you go back to with the prisoner search teams that individual shots to the head are frowned upon. If Osama had thrown up his hands in the right time, place and manner, it is possible that he might have been taken alive.

Possible, but not probable.

There's something very primitive about a raid. Speed, surprise, and violence of action epitomize a successful raid. The assault would have been heralded by a massive breaching charge. Tac air may have been used as a diversion; a two-hundred pound Mk 82 general purpose aviation bomb goes off on the far side of the compound "HOLY SHI'ITE MUSLIM, WHAT WAS THAT?" - and then WHAM! and the assaulters are suddenly pouring in through the front door, moving at a careful hurry to their points of domination and performing their priorities of work; secure the room, eliminate threats - two rounds center mass each, and one to the head - secure the living, search the dead.


"War is simple, direct and ruthless." - George S. Patton

Who can possibly know what was going through the mind of the man who pulled the trigger on bin Laden? Only that man will ever know exactly what he felt the moment he realized he had his muzzle on the world's most evil human alive. Osama took two rounds to the pumpkin, which tells us combat occured at pointblank range. One thing I guarantee our man was thinking on the way in was the only way out of that place was to fight his way through it. Then adrenalin kicked in and took care of everything else after that. His comrades, the same.


AFTERMATH

Now the endless analysis from the press corps; how we could've, should've, would've done this, that and the other thing. Right now it's my dime so I'll indulge a little here and tell you what we should've done that we didn't do:

We should've put Osama's body on display, just like we did with Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi - a.k.a. the Zarkman - dead leader of Al-Qaeda In Iraq, and with those two pieces of human scum Uday and Qusay Hussein. The war we are engaged in involves heavy symbolism, and significant value is gained by dehumanizing the enemy, cutting the enemy's leadership down to size. This is why we televised Saddam Hussein's medical exam, and released pictures of the Butcher of Baghdad in his underwear; this busts the legend down to size. The best thing we could have done for the Iraqi people's liberation was hand Saddam over - which we did - and the best thing after that is they released pictures of him swinging on a rope.

The next thing we need to do after showing the pictures is to follow up on the actionable intelligence gained in the raid, and start rolling up terrorist cells one by one. We need to stack up terrorist bodies like cordwood, and those who have the bad luck to get captured alive we need to salt away in Guantanamo for the rest of their miserable lives. The message needs to get out on the Arab Street: there ain't no death and glory in Jihad. Only death.

MESSAGE TO JIHADIS:

Your glorious leader is now fish food, at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Your Allah may forgive Osama bin Laden; everybody knows it was United States Special Operations who arranged the meeting.


SEAN LINNANE SENDS





. . . and because this blog is for Crusaders and Infidels, today's Bird is HERE


.

SCRATCH ONE TANGO

OSAMA BIN LADEN DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES FOLLOWING 5.56mm ROUNDS TO THE HEAD

Americans go hogwild in wanton celebration, while ivory towered academics, elitists and pseudo-intellectuals choke on their lattes.

That's right Intelligentsia - it's a real world out there, full of evil people who only want to do you harm, and Osama bin Laden was their poster child. Even your darling Community-Organizer-in-Chief with his weirdo Muslim name could not hold back the forces of freedom.

Details continue to emerge about the operation - a classic raid incorporating the principles of speed, shock, surprise and violence of action.

Bin Laden was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault.

Three adult males were also killed in the raid, including one of bin Laden's sons, whom officials did not name (one of bin Laden's sons, Hamza, is a senior member of al-Qaida). A woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, in keeping with cowardly terrorist modus operandii.


AN AMERICAN VICTORY IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR

Witness the celebrations in city squares, ballparks across America; at Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Whitehouse, and at Ground Zero:

An unidentified celebrant climbs a light pole as crowds celebrate on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House in Washington, early Monday, May 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Crowds at Ground Zero in New York City in the early hours today, shortly after President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Operations Forces in Pakistan

Americans waved flags and sang the Star Spangled Banner, while others chanted 'USA! USA!' and 'Na-Na-Na-Na - Na-Na-Na-Na . . . Hey, hey, goodbye . . . '


This is what Americans want - following decades of death and destruction visited upon us by al Qaeda - the monster Osama bin Laden killed in direct, personal combat by American warriors.

Americans don't want NASA transformed into a 'Muslim Outreach Program' - EFF THAT - we want to be told that Osama was tracked to his lair by NASA space-based assets so we could "smoke him out of his hole" and ventilate his skull.

Proud to be an American: the scene at Times Square early today, with many American flags waving in celebration


MESSAGE TO FREEDOM's ENEMIES:

We will get you.

You have attacked us where we were weakest, most vulnerable; 9/11, and before that the embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Early frustrations in our operations against you in Tora Bora - some of the hardest terrain on Earth - gave way to the liberation the countries that harbored your evil forces. We have killed and captured the top terrorist leadership - those of you we captured alive sit rotting in Guantanamo - and now the charismatic spiritual leader of your sick, twisted ideology is dead and his body tossed over the side of an American aircraft carrier. Osama bin Laden is fish food at the bottom of the sea - YEAH ! ! !

You can run, but you can't hide. We will get you in the end - we always do, and we always will.

And with our allies - the great UK/AUS/CAN/NZ Commonwealth; NATO, and the rest of the Free World - we will continue track you down, find you, fight you and kill you; one by one for now until the end of time if need be until your Evil is expunged from the face of the Earth.

We will never surrender to terror.



"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning . . ."

- Winston Churchill, after the first Allied victory against the Axis at El Alamein, 4 Nov 1942.




Today's Babe HERE


.

WAR WITHOUT END - Part III

The War on Terror from the perspective of an Israeli soldier.


Continued from Yesterday and the Day Before.


From June 1967 on, the West, America and Israel, has only paid lip service to God. America fights in the name of “freedom”, which of course is a noble and true concept, but what is the source of that freedom? God. Our Creator. Israel fights for “peace”. What about the God of Peace? You’ll never hear those words from an Israeli leader.

If America does not fight in the name of the God of Goodness, of the God of Freedom, then the Jihadists will fight in the name of the God of Jihad. They will declare Jihad on you until you fall back in confusion and horror.

Fogel Family stabbed to death by Arab Terrorists in Itamar 11 March 2011

They will kill your women, your children, your men, soldiers and civilians, even your babies. It makes no difference to them.


You will be shocked by the scope of it and ask yourselves how and why. In the morning you will ask when is evening coming already, and in the evening you will yearn for the morning out of fear. (Leviticus) But they will keep doing it until we understand that we are the good in the world.

Patton understood that in World War II. That’s why we won and Nazism is dead.

General George S. Patton - Soldier / Spiritualist - the greatest American general since Stonewall Jackson.


But Nazism was spiritually weak. It fought not in the name of God, but in the name of Hitler. Once broken militarily, it fell easily. Not so Jihadism. Break it militarily, and it will keep going after you until you wake up spiritually. The Jihadists are weak militarily, but spiritually they are very, very tough.

To be clear, I am not saying that America has to militarily conquer the world in the name of God. I am saying that America, when she democratically chooses to act with force, should not do it in the name of Freedom, but in the name of the God of Freedom. I am also not saying the Israel has to destroy the Dome of the Rock in the name of the God of Israel. That would be insane. I believe in the God of Freedom, and anyone should be able to worship wherever they want, even if it’s on my Temple Mount. What I do believe, though, is that Jews and Christians should also be able to worship on the Temple Mount freely, which currently they cannot.

Anyway, what is happening in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya at this very moment is a war in a spiritual trap first set at the Temple Mount in 1967. America is fighting in a battlefield it does not comprehend, at least not yet. She cannot win with her current thinking. Neither can Israel.

The enemy is fighting in the name of God, and we, America and Israel, are not. This is a problem.


I love America. I was born there. I lived there for 24 years. It is the best country that has ever existed, and I thank her for everything she has done for me and for the Jewish People, who as everyone knows sometimes get very evil hosts.

But unfortunately, America is lacking spiritual inspiration. And whether Israel likes it or not, in the end we will have to be that inspiration. When the Jews return to the Temple Mount in the name of God Who is the source of all Freedom, the West will wake up. Yes, even Europe will wake up and save itself. The God of Freedom will win, terror will end, and America will take her place at the head of the world forever.

As we say in Hebrew, “Be’Ezrat Hashem” - בעזרת השם - With God’s help.

May God bless America and all the Armed Forces.


The author is a former Israeli soldier. Born and raised in America for 24 years, he moved to Israel in 2007. Here he shares his view of the War on Terror from the perspective of a religious Israeli soldier.


LISSEN UP Y'ALL DEPT.

For what it's worth, I personally share the beliefs expressed here. During the course of my military adventures I had the blessed good fortune to visit Jerusalem, twice; to walk in the footsteps of warriors, kings, prophets and the Messiah. When I went up to the Temple Mount, I made my prayers - in secret - on behalf of all True Believers; for it is my personal belief that there is no difference - spiritually - between the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. That is to say that we all have one God, we are all People of the Book, and as a Christian it is my belief that ultimately the Messiah will reveal himself to all of us - the staggered timetable is for a reason, apparently, and that reason will also be ultimately revealed . . . not for me to quiz the bus schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SEAN LINNANE SENDS

CIA WAR OF THE DRONES

The CIA is escalating its drone attacks in Pakistan, borrowing Predator and Reaper drones from the Pentagon to wage the fight against militants which the U.S. says the Pakistani military is unable or unwilling to do.




Last month, drone attacks increased to five per week, on average, up from about two or three a week. "When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," one U.S. official said. American forces say that to make progress in Afghanistan, it must destroy the terrorist sanctuaries across the border, but the sharp spike in attacks is also intended to foil a possible terror plot, led by Osama bin Laden, in Western Europe.


Wall Street Journal



.

PLAYING INTO THEIR HANDS

GROUND ZERO KORAN BURNING - 9-11-2010:



Koran burnings are a page right out of the Islamic Extremists playbook - behavior like this is exactly what they want us to do.


THINK ABOUT IT:

The United States military burned Bibles in Afghanistan - nobody over here even batted an eyelid.

In the 20th century, Christians have been persecuted by radical Muslim and Hindu groups and by atheistic states such as the Peoples Republic of China, Cuba and North Korea - where are the headlines?

Taliban drilled holes into the torsos of two 1700 year-old Buddhist statues, placed dynamite charges inside the holes and blew them to smithereens - where are the violent, fist-waving mobs of Buddhists burning Taliban effigies?

For the crime of being a Jew, American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - for this act the Democrats wish to reward KSM by giving him a show trial in downtown Manhattan.

As of 2010 (source: Open Doors UK) an estimated 100 million Christians face persecution, particularly in the Muslim world, North Korea and the hands of Hindu extremism and Islamic terrorism in India, with a rising tendency - not a word from the Mainstream Media

In the Gaza Strip, rampaging Hamas jihadists stormed churches using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) burned every Bible and destroyed every cross they could get their hands on - you have to do a Google search to learn of this - and the Obama Administration gives these people 30 billion dollars of foreign aid.


BUT . . .

. . . some knucklehead cracker Bible-thumping Holy Roller down in the backwaters of Florida threatens to burn ONE KORAN and you get:





Thousands protest Koran burning plan in Afghan north





This just in; from the same guy who says it's okay for the 9-11 Nineteen Fan Club to build a Terrorist Victory Monument - correction, I mean Islamic Super-Mosque - oops sorry I meant to say Muslim Community Center right down there on Ground Zero:

Obama Says Koran Burning Can Badly Damage U.S. Abroad





Islam MIGHT be the "Religion of Peace", but it sure as Hell isn't the "Religion of TOLERANCE":


Koran-Burning Plan is an Attack on Islam: Reports


HAVING SAID ALL THAT . . .

The reason why burning the Koran, and attacking the Muslim religion in general is a bad idea is twofold. First of all, freedom-loving people do not burn books; Nazis do that:




. . . and secondly, despite this awe-inspiring and righteous motivational poster:



. . . the message it transmits is patently FALSE.

The Crusades were an unmitigated military disaster that went on for the better part of three hundred years. The Crusades were a result of the cultural madness and insanity that was medieval Europe; and more Christians and Jews were killed by Crusaders than Muslims - in fact, the Muslims WON the Crusades - NOT an era of history to be emulated, by any means.


I say this, as a Christian, as an enlightened, civilized person, and as a professional soldier who has seen three religious wars, for what they really are: Northern Ireland, former Yugoslavia, and Israel. If we succumb to the seductive temptation to revert to a religious war, then two things will happen:


A) We will have just played right into THIS guy's hands:




and B) he will have just won . . .


THINK ABOUT IT . . .

Islam is the world's second largest religion after Christianity. According to a 2009 demographic study, Islam has 1.57 billion adherents, making up 23% of the world population:

We can't fight them all.

This is why an all-out religious war plays right into the terrorist enemy's hands. This is EXACTLY what they want. The objective of the Islamic Fundamentalist's worldwide terror campaign is nothing less than ARMEGEDDON.

A better alternative is that we continue to conduct ourselves as open-minded, rational people of logic and compassion; and that the moderate Muslims continue to side with us - think: "Divide and Conquer" - and that ultimately these Muslims become Christians. As fantastic a concept as this may seem, it is well within the realm of possibility, and in fact may already be taking place.


THINK ABOUT IT:

The Apocalypse might be inevitable - but why be in a hurry to fight it on their terms?

SEAN LINNANE SENDS



.