Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American military history, whose bestselling memoir American Sniper was adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster of the same name, claimed to have been awarded two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars for valor during his time as a Navy SEAL. This claim, it turns out, was a false one.
Remember Matthew Bissonnette (a.k.a. “Mark Owen”), the former Navy SEAL who helped find and kill Osama bin Laden, later wrote a book about it, and eventually came under federal investigation for allegedly mishandling classified material? Bissonnette’s increasingly complex legal ordeal initially involved the Department of Justice and U.S. Navy before it was handed over to the latter’s internal police force, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, in the summer of 2014. The N.C.I.S. probe quickly threw the small community of elite military members into chaos. SOFREP, a website catering to that community, reported at the time: “The investigation has created a massive stir among the SEAL community. Rumors and accusations are flying on social media forums, lines in the sand have been drawn and friendships have ended.”
The Daily Mail is reporting the name—Robert O’Neill—of the retired Navy SEAL who plans to appear on Fox News and reveal that he shot Osama bin Laden. O’Neill’s father, Tom, confirmed his 38-year-old son’s identity to the Mail a week ahead of the Fox News interview scheduled to air on November 11 and 12. The Mail’s report comes two days after the special-forces website SOFREP—and an anonymous Gawker commenter—both claimed that the Navy SEAL was Robert O’Neill.
Police say that two former Navy SEALs whose lifeless bodies were discovered on the Maersk Alabama earlier this year died after a night of partying, drinking, and taking heroin.
Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALS on May 2, 2011. About a month later, Relativity Media purchased the rights to the fictional Navy SEAL-centric action movie "Act of Valor," for a sum that was "arguably the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast." That unknown cast is made up partly of active duty Navy SEALs. The movie's trailer was "shown on the official website of the video game Battlefield 3." The movie will be released on President's Day.
The same Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama Bin Laden last May successfully rescued two people from Somali pirates yesterday. What did you do?
Who killed Osama Bin Laden? Why, anti-Cardassian rebels fighting in former Federation colonies, obviously. Didn't you catch the broadcast on German channel N24? The news organization seems to have pulled a fan-made logo for the "Maquis Special Operations," a rebel terrorist group featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and presented it as the emblem for the Navy SEAL group that shot Bin Laden in Pakistan. Host Mick Locher even analyzed it! "And they also have the ‘Team Six,' that carried out the mission," he noted. "They don't have the skull in their emblem for nothing." Well, not, they don't, it's just that the skull, as close examination will reveal, is a Klingon skull. [TrekMovie.com via Fox News]
Everyone thought that Jim Moats, a pastor in Newville, Pennsylvania, was a retired Navy SEAL and a Vietnam war hero. He had a plaque to that effect hanging in his office, and he wore the trident medal symbolizing SEAL membership. For a profile in yesterday's local paper, Moats told of being "waterboarded" by SEAL instructors, and of being busted down to a kitchen worker after getting in a fight. "I had almost no discipline. I was as wild as they came. That was my nemesis," Moats said. "They weren't looking for a guy who brags to everyone he is a SEAL. They wanted somebody who was ready but had an inner confidence and didn't have a braggadocio attitude."
On the Day After Dead Bin Laden Day, America woke up and asked: "Who was the anonymous heroic machine gun-wielder who personally pulled the trigger to shoot the bullet into the bad man we dislike?" Let's inventory what we know:
