Tag Archives: United States Navy SEALs

Interview with SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden

compound-osama

I don’t know how they did it, but Esquire was able to track down and interview the Navy SEAL that waxed Osama bin Laden. Here are some interesting notes pulled from the article.

He joined the Navy at nineteen, after a girl broke his heart. When the recruiter asked him what he wanted to do, he said he “wanted to be a sniper.”
He gave his gun magazine to the female CIA analyst that we all know from the Movie Zero Dark 30. He had only fired 3 rounds. All lethal shots. All at Osama.
The article mentions how other Seal Team 6 members took turns firing a personal shot into the body after he was killed.
After serving 16 years in the Navy, he has nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family. How is this possible? He’s leaving early, so all coverage stops.
He and his wife are officially separated, but continue to share a house on very friendly, even loving terms, largely to save money.
His wife and kids have trained for emergencies in the home. They have guns and know how to use them.
Out of fear for his family’s safety, and here is the “bolt” bag of clothes, food, and other provisions for the family meant to last them two weeks in hiding.
They are planning on changing their names to protect themselves from would-be attackers.
He’s about to leave the Navy and is in financial hardship, and the government isn’t doing much to help.
He was told that if his name was ever released publicly, his family could be moved into witness protection and he could be given a job driving a beer truck in Milwaukee. Of course, he’d have to cut off all contact from his family and would never see any of them again. He’d lose everything.
His children to not mention bin Laden’s name and that it’s a curse word. Instead they refer to him as “Poopyface”.
They took an Ambien on their way to Afghanistan, first stopping in Germany.
He wrote letters to his kids before the mission in case he didn’t survive. Tears hit the paper as he wrote. He gave the letters to an intel guy not on the mission, with instructions. He would shred them if he made it back.
The last briefing included a story from the movie Hoosiers.
He did the treadmill while they waited for orders from Obama to go. He listened to “Red Nation” by the rapper Game. “It’s about leaving blood on the ground. We were the Red Team and we were going to leave some blood.”
During the copter ride to the compound he counted to a thousand forward and then backwards to pass the time.
He had to pee really bad so he pissed in a water bottle on the chopper. He realized after he shot bin Laden in the face that he still had a bottle of piss in his pocket.
After killing the target he grabbed bin Laden’s son, placed him next to his mother, and washed his face.
He watched the president’s speech about the raid with bin Laden’s body in view while eating a sausage-egg-cheese-and-extra-bacon sandwich.
When an administration official who asked had the kill shot, the actually shooter spoke up and only said “We all did.”
The dog in the raid actually survived being shot in the chest on a previous mission.
When we first started the war in Iraq, SEALS were using Metallica music to soften people up before we interrogated them. “Metallica got wind of this and they said, ‘Hey, please don’t use our music because we don’t want to promote violence.’ “I thought, Dude, you have an album called Kill ‘Em All.

Buy Zero Dark Thirty on DVD
Buy books about the raid

Want to fake kill Osama bin Laden?

Bin Laden killed repeatedly in Twin Cities suburb game

Bin Laden killed repeatedly in Twin Cities suburb game

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a former Navy Seal, Larry Yatch, is offering people who fantasize about killing other people a chance to participate in a reenactment of the Seal raid that executed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani compound last year.

This isn’t a real military operation. It’s a high-end role-playing game. People pay $325 to re-enact the bin Laden raid. Although the mission is fake, Yatch, Sealed Mindset’s president, is a real Navy SEALs vet. He opened the 10,000-square-foot studio with his wife Anne in April. So far, 137 people have signed up to pretend to kill a man wearing a white robe and a fake beard.

They should try to capture him alive, unless he starts shooting back. “If he presents a lethal threat, take him out,” Yatch instructed. “I don’t want to have to write a letter to any of your parents, okay?”

The company offers 73 defense classes each month and “live scenario trainings” designed to mimic actual threats. Yatch has set up fake kidnappings, fake carjackings, and even a fake shooting by a disgruntled employee.

Read story from MPR.

Check out this Navy Seal stuff.
Books about Seals and Bin Laden.