It’s been interesting hearing the details of the SEAL’s latest mission in Somalia. And it must have been fun for the White House to share them with us.
But not everyone is so pleased, according to an operator who has recently left the service:
Adm. William H. McRaven, America’s top special-operations commander, wrote in his 1996 book “Spec Ops” that there are six key principles of success in special operations. Of paramount importance—especially given the risk and sensitivity of the missions and the small units involved—is what the military calls “operational security,” or maintaining secrecy. If the enemy learns details and can anticipate the manner and timing of an attack, the likelihood of success is significantly reduced and the risk to our forces is significantly increased.
This is why much of what our special-operators do is highly classified, and why military personnel cannot legally divulge it to the public. Yet virtually every detail of the bin Laden raid has appeared in news outlets across the globe—from the name of the highly classified unit to how the U.S. gathered intelligence, how many raiders were involved, how they entered the grounds, what aircraft they used, and how they moved through the compound. Such details were highly contained within the military and not shared even through classified channels. Yet now they are available to anyone with the click of a mouse.
It’s difficult for military leaders to enforce strict standards of operational security on their personnel while the most senior political leadership is flooding the airwaves with secrets. The release of classified information has also opened a Pandora’s box of former and retired SEALs, special operators, and military personnel who have chosen to violate their non-disclosure agreements and discuss intricate details of how such operations are planned and executed…
Do the president and his top political advisers understand what’s at stake for the special-operations forces who carry out these dangerous operations, or the long-term strategic consequences of divulging information about our most highly classified military assets and intelligence capabilities? It is infuriating to see political gain put above the safety and security of our brave warriors and our long-term strategic goals. Loose lips sink ships.
Yes, but they are ships that belong to the little people. No real harm done.
“Less said, less dead” is another appropriate WW II aphorism..
Got to admit that when I read the opinion piece in the Journal this morning I was more disgusted than usual with the cadre of White House academics and their inability to keep secret information secret. Babbling little boys and girls using the courage of brave men to pump up their own inflated egos. Here’s a message for you men and women on the WH staff. This is serious, and sometimes life threatening business. All of us out here in realityLand know that you can’t do much that is useful in Real Life. The least you can do is to shut up when it’s important, and to respect those with special and impressive skills. Stop blathering secrets which might endanger these brave hardworking heroes.
Marianne
The President and his advisors understand very well; they just don’t care.
“The President and his advisors understand very well; they just don’t care.”
Oh they care alright, just not about what you think they are supposed to care about.
The more this goes on, the more I am convinced that Obama and his advisers are not just simply blind ideologues, believing in the truth of socialism.
No one at that level of power is that blind to the stupidity of Socialism. Even the former Soviets were not. They had no illusions that Marxism and all that junk was BS. At that level it just became all about power. Maintaining and increasing it.
Obama claimed to idolize Lincoln. And I think he did study him very well because he has taken one quote of Honest Abe’s to heart.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
-Abraham Lincoln
When you consider that Obama has surrounded himself with those who hate America and have declared war upon America. When his political career was launching in the living room of an anti-American terrorist, When his spiritual mentor is a Black racist, filled with vile hatred for America, Obama has taken Lincoln’s words to task.
America cannot be destroyed by external military might.
So Obama is doing it (INTENTIONALLY) from within.
Every act he does that is just the opposite of what needs to be done (Jobs, the economy, Military spending, Healthcare, the czars appointed over every aspect of our society now) is intentionally calculated to HARM AMERICA.
This is not blind faith in a BS socialist system.
This is not ignorance and stupidity
This is cold hard calculation to destroy America and everything we stand for.
I keep thinking back to the Oath nearly every reader here has taken;
“…that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,”
Surely ADM McRaven can’t be laboring under the misconception that he and Obama are on the same side.
Piss on a dead TaliTubby, it’s the end of the world!
Let loose a secret that can (and probably will) cause deaths and mission failures, big whoop, it’s good for those in power.
I am absolutely disgusted with those in the White House that can’t see beyond the end of their nose, or ego.
Gotta remember that President Doofus is a ” USER ” – He uses people for his own shallow & feckless political gains. Who cares if it puts others at risk? There will be a special place in HELL for him and all who act in this manner.
Good points – I’ve been wondering about this since I saw an ad for a new movie that features active duty SEALS and supposedly reenacts several actual missions. As much as I expect I’ll enjoy the movie, it seems like an unbelievable security breach.
Gee, maybe the White House is using deception/misinformation? They are pretty darn good at it on the domestic political side….I mean, does anyone believe a word they say.
This administration has no military experience so they don’t have a clue about “classified” or need to know. Only thing they understand is “will it help me get re-elected!”
They have no skin in the game as they have never played the game. Playing the game is for those poor beknighted souls that didn’t do their sums in Hi Skool and so had to take anything they could get and go to Irak or Trashcanistan and risk their lives, unlike the brilliant souls that could get into Harvard and learn all their liberal distribes.
Doing time in the ranks is just so beneath them.
The only ‘successes’ of obama have come from military efforts and operations. It’s easy to see why he is prone to run to the media like any incompetent middle manager eager to strike first at taking as much credit for any bone that falls into his lap.
And so Kid, who should we vote for? You got anyone out there that would support and defend the US military above political gain?
Hi Babs, I have no idea you’re values or your chosen leaders, so I say the following with complete neutrality on honesty.
That sounds like a simple question doesn’t it. Who do we vote for. Condensing it as much as I can, I see it this way:
1963 and LBJ brought upon us the socialist/soft communist agenda in Earnest. FDR and Woodrow Wilson before him.
Democrats:
LBJ steals the SS money to initiate welfare and a host of other social programs to make people dependent and country weaker. Jimmy Carter came along and gave us the Dept of Ed and Energy. LBJ gave us HUD, and FDR gave us Fannie Mae. The real stab to the heart was Woodrow Wilson who signed off on the Federal Reserve. An entity with zero supervision or accountability to Congress the Supreme Court, or any other oath taking US Government entity. Insane isn’t it?
Bill Clinton shipped our jobs off the Mexico, China, and India while decimating the military and intelligence communities and gaining fantastic popularity for presiding over a raging stock market technology bubble driven by the build out of the internet and Y2K. (I worked that industry during that time frame and saw it from the inside)
Republicans:
Richard Nixon gave us the EPA and GW Bush gave us the DHS TSA, and Medicare Drug – a huge expansion of the federal government.
No republican has turned back even a page of the Democrat/communist/socialist agenda, Not even the great Ronald Reagan (who in his defense did have a Dem congress). The most the Republicans have done is delay the Democrats for 4,8 or 12 years(in the case of R. Reagan and GHW Bush).
The Dems simply pick up where they left off when they are back in power which explains why we are where we are today. A broken liberalized education system for the most part (nothing is all inclusive), a department of energy whose mandate was to reduce our dependance on foreign energy (oil) and after 40 years has accomplished little other that screwing up our toilets and light bulbs and a youth population, that by my reckoning, doesn’t even know how the government is supposed to work, thinks the Constitution is irrelevant today, and has grown to despise capitalism, the system that created the greatest country in the world and held it aloft longer than any other system in history. A huge monster entity of redundant and zero to negative ROI federal departments and agencies that are choking us. I read recently, that if interest rates were to rise a few points, we wouldn’t even be able to pay the interest on our national debt.
So, my answer is vote for the Tea Party members who run as Republicans until sufficient numbers are in office to either prove they mean what they say about a Constitutional Republic or prove themselves also worthless sellouts.
I’m not optimistic. The big Banks run things imo, aided by a 100% Democrat media arm known as mainstream media, and will destroy any candidate which has the potential do us some good. In fact, I think they’d assassinate anyone that fits this mold should they get into power.
When you play the game of thrones, you either win or you die.
EEFI’s a B***h. That’s why it was so important for the former USSR to monitor pizza deliveries to the Pentagon. and why Tom Clancy caught so much hell when he published Hunt for Red October. Open source data can be aggregated to deduce classified information.
These clowns don’t even appreciate that. Except for the part where we can see Bin Laden’s corpse, of course.
NSW is SPECWAR.
We are SPECOPS. It matters. A lot. We never ever pretend to be them.
You know, I don’t like this administration any more than the rest of you, but you are being hopelessly stupid blaming Obama or his buds for this. The pattern was well-established during the Bush administration. Although the pattern was already established during ops in AF, my wake-up call came in 2003. The various TFs at work in Iraq were kept in the tightest OPS channels, they didn’t even go to CENTCOM except in the appropriate protected channels. But a certain political hack in the SECDEF’s office, one usually praised as a hero despite his complete and utterly self-serving ignorance, kept pinging on CENTCOM until finally, when the bullets were flying, CENTCOM ordered the daily SOF OPS rollup to be delivered to said REPUBLICAN hero.
And the next day the details were all there in the Washington Post.
Obama’s just continuing a trend started by Rumsfeld, the politicization of SOF, in the vain desire that a quiet group of professionals could solve the “war on terror” on the cheap. Get pissed at Obama for any particular leak, absolutely, but he’s just carrying on in a tradition established by his REPUBLICAN forebears.
Those in uniforms are mere pawns on the board of politics.
Hey Lex, link us a story we don’t have to spend hard earned scratch to read brother!
Anyone who has spent the last few decades – as I have – observing Illinois, Cook County and Chicago politics cannot be surprised at this. It’s all about getting re-elected and enriching your friends so that they will funnel money to your re-election campaign so that they can continue to enrich themselves. The public be damned. The public purse be damned. It’s no coincidence that Illinois is absolutely mired in debt, in large part because of huge pension obligations to public unions that the legislature has refused to fund because that would cut off their ability to funnel money to the law firms and contractors and relatives making up their political machine. Illinois has the worst credit/bond rating in the U.S., and considering the comeptition that’s amazing. This is the crucible of corruption and self-interest that our President’s political career was formed in.
Note, BTW, that I say nothing of political party. Political party labels in Illinois are just labels of convenience to deceive those who aren’t paying attention. As John Kass (columnist in the Chicago Tribune) says, it’s the Combine. Republicans downstate, Democrats in the City and Cook County, it doesn’t matter. If you’re in the Combine your job is to fleece the public assets, funnel them to other members of the Combine and don’t let anyone else in unless they’ve been vetted and approved by the people who run things.
one of the problems is the republican chant that democrats are weak on foreign policy. It encourages democratic presidents to publicize military action. what is needed is some legislation limiting what can be said about recent operations and limiting retired specialists from commenting on current operations for a limited time–cannot be too long or we run into first amendment problems. Some publicity is good to deter our enemies but not too much. I also worry about Panetta speaking off the cuff and affecting state department projects.
And if there is a failure–say that it is not important (like Osama bin laden when cheney spoke).
If only loose lips sunk re-election campaigns.
I’m sure their attitude is “who cares if a few of them die. They won’t vote for us anyhow.”
The Obama administration folks see everything through the prism of building and maintaining their power. Nothing more. We’re nothing more than peons and serfs to them. They went to Hahhhh-vud. They’re our betters and we’d best mind them. Like the war on sugar.