Charged with conspiring to kill Americans after 9/11
osama bin laden
One Killed in Army Helicopter ‘Hard Landing’
Military spokesman says it was not a crash, as pilot still had some control
Mich. Man Demands $25M for Knowing bin Laden’s Location
Said he tipped off federal officials to Abbottabad in 2003
Two Years After bin Laden Raid, the Future of Special Operations
The raid that took out Osama bin Laden two years ago Wednesday was only a few minutes old when it nearly fell to pieces.
We’ve all heard the story: one of the helicopters lost lift and crashed into an animal pen before Navy …
BattlelandSpecial Operations
Operation Neptune Spear: The New Textbook for Special Operators
One year removed from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, hundreds of hours of programing and print pages are being devoted to to telling us what it all means. In this week’s issue of TIME, journalist Peter Bergen and historian …
BattlelandTerrorism
Last Stand in Abbottabad: The Untold Story of Osama bin Laden’s Hideout
This week’s TIME cover story is an exclusive, detailed feature by Peter Bergen about the final days of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by Navy SEALs in a raid nearly one year ago. In the following excerpt, Bergen, who spent much …
BattlelandTroops
Squawking SEAL
CNN chum Barbara Starr has the inside skinny on the new book purporting to detail the inside skinny of how the Osama bin Laden raid went down – as told by a former SEAL. Author Chuck Pfarrer claims to have spoken to some Navy SEALs who conducted the raid. It seems his story has more holes in it than the post-raid bin Laden.
BattlelandPentagon
A Toast…
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is going to have some fine vino come New Year’s Eve. The $10,000 bottle is a payoff on an offer made by a California restaurateur. It seems Panetta, then CIA director, dined last New Year’s Eve at the tony Sardine Factory owned by pal Ted Balestreri in Panetta’s hometown of Monterey:
“I was talking
…
BattlelandTerrorism
Drones + Biometrics: Weapons That Conquer Globalization’s Frontiers
Cool NYT story on the US military’s use of biometrics (eye scans, etc.) to create unforgeable identification records of roughly one-in-five fighting-age Iraqi and Afghani males, creating databases that can be perused in seconds by a handheld device at a border crossing. Naturally, there is much interest and some desire to use the …
BattlelandSpecial Operations
Why Businesses Lack a SEAL Team 6
Contrary to Stan McChrystal’s SEAL-hiring spree, there aren’t many businesses run like the famed special-forces team that killed Osama bin Laden last month. This piece from the Harvard Business Review explains why. “Most organizations can’t grow the professionalism of elite special forces units because they are constantly shifting …
BattlelandWeapons
Oh No! China Has Our Super-Secret Osama-Getting Helicopter!
That’s bad news. We always knew we couldn’t trust our Pakistani allies to keep valuable technology like the heavily-modified MH-60 Black Hawks, used to ferry Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani lair, from the reverse-engineering whizzes of the Middle Kingdom. You may recall reports that the commandos had to abandon one of the …
BattlelandVeterans
A “Gift of Desperation”: A Marine Reflects on Combat and bin Laden, Who Put Him There
Standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the honor graduates from our Officer Candidates School (OCS) class, I accepted my award from the Commanding General with a crisp salute. My transformation from a frat boy trolling Rugby Road at The University of Virginia to a man deemed worthy to lead Marines was finally complete. It was …
BattlelandTerrorism
The Good bin Laden-Busting SEALs of Approval
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_JvYhXn1s&feature=player_embedded#at=60]
OK — admit it. It’s been awhile since the nation had such a sense of accomplishment. But the Navy SEALs — admired not only for their bravery, but for their willingness to do so invisibly — have touched a lot of folks around the country. What lawmaker …