By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), commonly known as DEVGRU and informally by its former name SEAL Team Six (ST6), is one of the United States' two secretive Tier One counter-terrorism and Special Mission Units (SMUs); the other such group is 1st SFOD-D (Delta Force). - Source: Wikipedia
Special operations commanders and some members of the Obama administration are courting the media with details on secret missions, such as the 2011 SEAL raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to fit a political or public relations agenda, critics say.
The Pentagon has already reviewed this book. When we don't like a book, most of us in the business of literary criticism give it a bad review and suggest that people not buy it. The Pentagon's reviewers have threatened to prosecute the author. That has made book reviewing a full contact sport. Unfortunately, it will also increase sales; that is poor strategy on the part of the bureaucrats.
While top military leaders publicly bash a former Navy SEAL for his book about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, his foxhole comrades convey their displeasure in a more subtle way.
The dramatic rescue of an American aid worker and her Danish colleague in Somalia by Navy commandos was a terrific encore to the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan nine months ago. However, all the White House-driven publicity for both events has helped turn the once-secret SEAL Team 6 into a household term, with likely negative consequences.
The Navy SEAL operation that freed two Western hostages in Somalia is representative of the Obama administration's pledge to build a smaller, more agile military force that can carry out surgical counterterrorist strikes to cripple an enemy.
"Good job tonight," President Obama told his defense chief as he arrived for his annual State of the Union message. Unknown to a global television audience watching Tuesday night's speech moments later, a hostage rescue operation had just played out half a world away with an elite Navy SEAL team's rescue of two hostages in Somalia, one of them an American.
The same U.S. Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness early Wednesday and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage. Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed.
The U.S. military and the CIA failed to agree on implementing a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Give special-operations commandos the lead for all covert military action.
The highly secretive Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden will likely be honored in the only way such a covert group can be: in private with nobody but themselves and their commanders in the know.
