The SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden Tells his Story!

am sure many will recall this thread about the member of DEVGRU who was shot Bin Laden speaking out, well his full story has been published by Esquire online so I thought that members might find it interesting. Its quite long, so below i have quoted what I think to be some of the highlights

The Shooter is quoted as saying

There was so much going on — the Libya thing, the Arab Spring. We knew something good was going to go down. We didn't know how good. The first day's briefing, they actually kind of lied to us, being very vague. They mentioned underwater cables because of the earthquake in Japan or some craziness.

They hinted at Libya. They said it was a compound somewhere in a bowl and we were going to have two aircraft get us there and we don't know how many are inside but we have to get something out. You won't have any air support.

I assumed it was WMD, a nuke, because why else are they sending us to Libya?

Kinda makes you wonder why he thought there was a lose nuke kicking about.

They actually had security sitting outside. No one else was allowed in. A JSOC general, Pak/Afghan and other D.C. officials, and the ST6 commanding officer were there. The SEAL commander, cool as ever, said, "Okay, we're as close as we've ever been to UBL." And that was it. He kind of looked at us and we looked at him and nodded. There was none of that cheering bull#. We were thinking, Yeah, okay, good. It's about time that we kill this mother(SNIP). It was simple.

This is what I came for. Jealousies aside, one of us is going to have the best chance of killing this guy.

again quite interesting, he is claiming that a Pakistani or Afghan official was present at the briefing. He also discussed what would happen should they be surrounded by Pakistani troops

We would surrender. The original plan was to have Vice-President Biden fly to Islamabad and negotiate our release with Pakistan's president.

This is hearsay, but I understand Obama said, Hell no. My guys are not surrendering. What do we need to rain hell on the Pakistani military? That was the one time in my life I was thinking, I am (SNIP)ing voting for this guy. I had a picture of him lying in bed at night, thinking, You're not (SNIP)ing with my guys. Like, he's thinking about us.

We got word that we'd be scrambling jets on the border to back us up.

Ok, so if this all went south they were going to surrender and then Biden was going to negotiate their release, just aswell they didn’t get caught then with that E&E plan

On shooting Bin Laden he says this:

I'm just looking at him from right here [he moves his hand out from his face about ten inches]. He's got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he's famous for. And he's moving forward. I don't know if she's got a vest and she's being pushed to martyr them both. He's got a gun within reach. He's a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won't have a chance to clack himself off [blow himself up].

In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he's going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath.

And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I've ever done, or the worst thing I've ever done? This is real and that's him.

I am sure if anyone is interested they will read the rest of this for themselves. I found it interesting, he does however take a dig at everyone and is clearly disgruntled as how he as been treated.


The Man Who Killed Bin Laden

Anyway let feel free to post thoughts or any other quotes of interest.

It's interesting that UBL was never charged nor wanted in connection with 9/11...

reply to post by superman2012


Well he was cited in KSMs incitement and he himself was already wanted for the 1998 attacks.

Your right however he was never formally charged for 9/11 but he was for other crimes.

No offense to the shooter but it just seems like a rather boring story. Our guys out there do heroic things everyday and this just seems like a routine shooting, if there is such a thing in their world.

I'm glad he made it out safely though and thank him for his service.

reply to post by Hopechest


Yeah I kinda thought the same, he seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder over Mark Owens Book "No Easy Day" and moaning about other things still a interesting read though

reply to post by Hopechest


I am sure you have done so much more when it comes to interesting stuff.

books and films of the stories of events like 9/11, OBL's shooting etc come out so quickly nowadays...

is it not just part of the mythologising such "events", allowing a version of a story, however lacking in accuracy it may be, to be fixed in the mind of a significant number of the public who after all eat up such nonsense. look at how many people believe that the details of the plot of a movie like braveheart are historically accurate. make a hit movie and your version of events enter the public's consciousness.
these are prime cases of victors (re) writing history, and ensuring that they define what people "recall" of certain events.

fishy aint the word

Sorry, no disrespect to the OP, but this is a poorly written piece of fiction.

Bin Laden been dead for over a decade now. This fictional account should be buried at sea.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


This is a very telling story.

Is our security so far breached that they have to lie during a briefing of the navy SEALS who are actually on the mission about the mission?

Are there navy seals suspect of working for someone or something else? Is there more to that story?

reply to post by FissionSurplus


Your not disrespecting me, I didn’t write it.


Although i do believe that DEVGRU did kill OBL when they say they did.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
reply to post by FissionSurplus

 

Your not disrespecting me, I didn’t write it.


Although i do believe that DEVGRU did kill OBL when they say they did.

Why do you believe them?

We already know that Obama cannot tell the truth and they do not have a shred of evidence. Any evidence that they did have, they allegedly tossed out to sea. Why do you choose to believe their narrative?

A Pakistani officer in the briefing, interesting, as was Obama's decision to not leave the Seals behind no matter what. And the scene where the shooter is face to face with bin Laden, 10 inches away, and shot him point blank three times (no wonder no photos were released).

bin Laden's major mistake in the raid was not having a hidey-hole dug for himself, his son, and the courier. If they had hidden in a hole covered with a carpet or something, and ran to it at the first sounds of the two helicopters landing, they would have lived through the raid. bin Laden used a hidey-hole when he was hiding in the plains when the Afghans and Americans were shelling the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, so he lost his edge by living in that home and not arranging that as priority one.

I had the first thread on the Esquire tease of this story a couple of weeks ago, and then someone else put up a thread over mine, so I was waiting for the story and details to come out. Thanks for a good thread!

reply to post by Aleister


yeah i found the pakistani officer being present also very intersting

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
reply to post by FissionSurplus

 

Your not disrespecting me, I didn’t write it.


Although i do believe that DEVGRU did kill OBL when they say they did.

Or they thought they killed him. Even if the "bin Laden was dead long ago and kept on ice" theory is right, it doesn't mean the Seals knew. They would be led to believe even now that it was bin Laden. And the fact that he didn't have a hidey-hole, as I mention in my post above, weighs on the side of "It wasn't him but some innocent grocer". Weighing on the side of it was him are the materials found in his rooms, that famous gun being there, and all the secrecy surrounding this compound. And on a question on the raid, why, with all the commotion going on as portrayed in the recent film, didn't hundreds of people from the "West Point of Pakistan" which was less than a mile away hightail it over there to see what was going on?

no other takers?