Navy Seal Hero’s

UPDATE 8/10 1745hrs

Please check out my updates:

Navy Seal Hero’s, Update V
Navy Seal Hero’s, Update IV
Navy Seal Hero’s, Update III
Navy Seal Hero’s, Update II
Navy Seal Hero’s, Update

UPDATE 7/10 2100hrs

The body of the last missing Navy SEAL has been recovered:

The body of a U.S. Navy SEAL has been found and recovered in Afghanistan, a senior defense official said Sunday. This would account for the fourth member of a reconnaissance team that disappeared two weeks ago in Afghanistan. Only one of the four survived. The body of the SEAL was found near the other two bodies and all three had died in a shootout with insurgents, according to an initial assessment from the field, the senior official said. This senior official said that “no way” had the SEAL ever been in captivity, contrary to Taliban claims that he had been abducted.

END UPDATE

It looks like a group of our Navy Seals may have come real close to a high level target. Could of been Bin Laden or Omar but whoever it was they were close:

The first sign of trouble was a radio message requesting immediate extraction. A four-man team of US Navy Seal commandos had run into heavy enemy fire on a remote, thickly forested trail in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

Trouble turned to disaster when a US special forces helicopter carrying 16 men was shot down as it landed at the scene, killing all on board.

Almost two weeks later, a mission that led to the worst US combat losses in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001 has turned into an extraordinary manhunt. It has also opened an intriguing new front in the coalition’s battle against terrorism.

The story of Operation Red Wing, a US-led search for Taliban and al-Qa’ida guerillas in the mountain wilderness of Kunar province, contains remarkable human drama and an unresolved military mystery.

For five days, amid the hostile peaks and ravines along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, a lone US commando eluded the guerillas who had killed at least two of his colleagues and destroyed the Chinook helicopter.

When the unnamed Seal finally collapsed from exhaustion he was found by a friendly Afghan villager who summoned US forces. The subsequent search for his colleagues turned up two bodies and the manhunt for the fourth commando continues this weekend despite claims by Taliban guerillas yesterday that he had been captured and beheaded.

[…]It was late in the evening of Tuesday, June 28, that Lieutenant Michael Murphy and the three members of his specialist team reported an encounter with the enemy.

Pentagon spokesmen said Murphy’s unit was engaged in general reconnaissance as part of a sweep through the region amid fears that the Taliban and al-Qa’ida had quietly been regrouping and were preparing for an Iraq-style insurgency.

Other special forces sources said small Seal units such as Murphy’s were primarily designed for concealment and stealth, which indicated a more specific mission.

Its insertion represented an extraordinary risk, said the author of an influential military blog known as Wretchard. They would be operating in an area known to be a stronghold of the Taliban, where any contact with the enemy automatically meant they would be grossly overmatched.

Another source noted that Murphy’s unit bore all the hallmarks of a long-range sniper team sent to hunt down a particular target. US Navy Seals are trained to spend long periods operating clandestinely. The fact that the US did not send in several hundred troops for a sweep instead of the four-man reconnaissance team strongly suggests the team’s mission was to fix a very high target before it could flee from an airmobile assault, Wretchard said.

Whatever the team’s real objective, it found itself trapped in heavy rain with darkness falling. Seal veterans boast that they never call for help unless absolutely desperate. Exactly what befell Murphy and his team remains unknown, but commanders at Bagram airbase near Kabul wasted no time in dispatching eight more Seals on a helicopter crewed by eight members of an elite army unit.

One of those Navy Seals killed in the mountain battle was Danny Philip Dietz

The body of Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Danny Philip Dietz, 25, a SEAL who joined the Navy three months after graduating from high school, was recovered on the Fourth of July, the military said.

[…]The Coloradan’s wife, Maria L. -Dietz, said in a statement released at his SEAL base in Virginia Beach, Va., that he “was not just my husband, but he was my other half, my friend, my role model and my hero.”

Recalling when her husband was deployed in April, she wrote, “The same day he left for Afghanistan, as tears rolled down my cheeks, he told me with sparkles in his eyes, ‘All the training I have (undergone) for years is going to pay off with this trip, and I am going to do something special for this country and for my team.’

She wrote further that her husband “probably wouldn’t have wanted to die any other way, but only trying to protect his fellow teammates and his country.

“I want the world to know that it has lost an incredible man, an outstanding Navy SEAL, and a hero,” Dietz said. “People around the world don’t hear much about the U.S. Naval Special Forces men and what they do for this country, but, as a proud SEAL team wife, I can tell that the world as a whole owes those men more than it can imagine.”

The other Seal was Lt. Michael P. Murphy

Lt. Michael P. Murphy, the Navy SEAL from Patchogue who was found dead in Afghanistan on the Fourth of July, will be awarded the prestigious Silver Star, a Navy spokesman said yesterday.

In addition to the Silver Star, Murphy, 29, also will be awarded the Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, and the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, said Cmdr. Jeff Bender, spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in San Diego.

“We’re just proud of everything he’s accomplished in such a short period of time,” said Murphy’s father, Daniel Murphy.

The rest of the dead are as follows: (via Starboard)

* Staff Sgt. Shamus O. Goare, 29, of Danville, Ohio.

* Chief Warrant Officer Corey J. Goodnature, 35, of Clarks Grove, Minnesota.

* Sgt. Kip A. Jacoby, 21, of Pompano Beach, Florida.

* Sgt. 1st Class Marcus V. Muralles, 33, of Shelbyville, Indiana.

* Maj. Stephen C. Reich, 34, of Washington Depot, Connecticut.

* Sgt. 1st Class Michael L. Russell, 31, of Stafford, Virginia.

* Chief Warrant Officer Chris J. Scherkenbach, 40, of Jacksonville, Florida.

* Master Sgt. James W. Ponder III, 36, of Franklin, Tennessee (based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky).

* Chief Petty Officer Jacques J. Fontan, 36, of New Orleans, Louisiana.

* Senior Chief Petty Officer Daniel R. Healy, 36, of Exeter, New Hampshire.

* Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen, 33, of San Diego, California.

* Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffery A. Lucas, 33, of Corbett, Oregon.

* Lt. Michael M. McGreevy, Jr., 30, of Portville, New York.

* Petty Officer 2nd Class James Suh, 28, of Deerfield Beach, Florida.

* Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey S. Taylor, 30, of Midway, West Virginia.

* Petty Officer Second Class Eric Shane Patton, 22, of Boulder City, Nevada.

All of these guys are hero’s. God bless them.

There was a recent commentor on LGF who says he has inside information that they were indeed after Bin Laden and that they got him. Of course this can’t be verified and it might be hogwash but…(h/t The Ten O’Clock Scholar)

#44 Sydney Carton

Now that Drudge has broken it, I suppose it is ok to reveal that Charles has been sitting on this story for almost a week.

I e-mailed him last Sunday to share a report from a personal source that the missing SEAL team had in fact been after bin Laden.

We agreed that this should be withheld until the whole team had been accounted for. I also informed a couple of highly trusted lizardoids of the same report.

My source also reported that there is reason to hope that the sniper team was successful, but the command in Kabul does not have definitive proof.

This is what I was referring to in my many references to “loose-lips” in relation to this story.

Curt

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