Chris Kyle, one of our greatest War on Terror heroes, died after a deranged lunatic shot him. Now the guy who lodged a bullet in Bin Laden's head, is disabled and jobless. It's hard to believe that all of this is a coincidence. If I was a conspiracy nut, I would believe that Al Qaida sympathizers in the Obama administration are harming and assassinating our most valorous troops. This is a very long article, but certainly worth reading. It sheds light on the shameful treatment of returning Vets. I don't doubt this navy seal served his country and is in exactly the position he says he's in. The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed February 11, 2013, 6:00 AM For the first time, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden tells his story â speaking not just about the raid and the three shots that changed history, but about the personal aftermath for himself and his family. And the startling failure of the United States government to help its most experienced and skilled warriors carry on with their lives The man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden sat in a wicker chair in my backyard, wondering how he was going to feed his wife and kids or pay for their medical care. It was a mild spring day, April 2012, and our small group, including a few of his friends and family, was shielded from the sun by the patchwork shadows of maple trees. But the Shooter was sweating as he talked about his uncertain future, his plans to leave the Navy and SEAL Team 6. He stood up several times with an apologetic gripe about the heat, leaving a perspiration stain on the seat-back cushion. He paced. I didn't know him well enough then to tell whether a glass of his favorite single malt, Lagavulin, was making him less or more edgy. We would end up intimately familiar with each other's lives. We'd have dinners, lots of Scotch. He's played with my kids and my dogs and been a hilarious, engaging gentleman around my wife. In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the Navy at nineteen, after a girl broke his heart. To escape, he almost by accident found himself in a Navy recruiter's office. "He asked me what I was going to do with my life. I told him I wanted to be a sniper. "He said, 'Hey, we have snipers.' "I said, 'Seriously, dude. You do not have snipers in the Navy.' But he brought me into his office and it was a pretty sweet deal. I signed up on a whim." "That's the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart." I would come to know about the Shooter's hundreds of combat missions, his twelve long-term SEAL-team deployments, his thirty-plus kills of enemy combatants, often eyeball to eyeball. And we would talk for hours about the mission to get bin Laden and about how, over the celebrated corpse in front of them on a tarp in a hangar in Jalalabad, he had given the magazine from his rifle with all but three lethally spent bullets left in it to the female CIA analyst whose dogged intel work and intuition led the fighters into that night. When I was first around him, as he talked I would always try to imagine the Shooter geared up and a foot away from bin Laden, whose life ended in the next moment with three shots to the center of his forehead. But my mind insisted on rendering the picture like a bad Photoshop job â Mao's head superimposed on the Yangtze, or tourists taking photos with cardboard presidents outside the White House. Bin Laden was, after all, the man CIA director Leon Panetta called "the most infamous terrorist in our time," who devoured inordinate amounts of our collective cultural imagery for more than a decade. The number-one celebrity of evil. And the man in my backyard blew his lights out. ST6 in particular is an enterprise requiring extraordinary teamwork, combined with more kinds of support in the field than any other unit in the history of the U.S. military. Similarly, NASA marshaled thousands of people to put a man on the moon, and history records that Neil Armstrong first set his foot there, not the equally talented Buzz Aldrin. Enough people connected to the SEALs and the bin Laden mission have confirmed for me that the Shooter was the "number two" behind the raid's point man going up the stairs to bin Laden's third-floor residence, and that he is the one who rolled through the bedroom door solo and confronted the surprisingly tall terrorist pushing his youngest wife, Amal, in front of him through the pitch-black room. The Shooter had to raise his gun higher than he expected. The point man is the only one besides the Shooter who could verify the kill shots firsthand, and he did just that to another SEAL I spoke with. But even the point man was not in the room then, having tackled two women into the hallway, a crucial and heroic decision given that everyone living in the house was presumed to be wearing a suicide vest. But a series of confidential conversations, detailed descriptions of mission debriefs, and other evidence make it clear: The Shooter's is the most definitive account of those crucial few seconds, and his account, corroborated by multiple sources, establishes him as the last man to see Osama bin Laden alive. Not in dispute is the fact that others have claimed that they shot bin Laden when he was already dead, and a number of team members apparently did just that. What is much harder to understand is that a man with hundreds of successful war missions, one of the most decorated combat veterans of our age, who capped his career by terminating bin Laden, has no landing pad in civilian life. Back in April, he and some of his SEAL Team 6 colleagues had formed the skeleton of a company to help them transition out of the service. In my yard, he showed everyone his business-card mock-ups. There was only a subtle inside joke reference to their team in the company name. Unlike former SEAL Team 6 member Matt Bissonnette (No Easy Day), they do not rush to write books or step forward publicly, because that violates the code of the "quiet professional." Someone suggested they might sell customized sunglasses and other accessories special operators often invent and use in the field. It strains credulity that for a commando team leader who never got a single one of his men hurt on a mission, sunglasses would be his best option. And it's a simple truth that those who have been most exposed to harrowing danger for the longest time during our recent unending wars now find themselves adrift in civilian life, trying desperately to adjust, often scrambling just to make ends meet. At the time, the Shooter's uncle had reached out to an executive at Electronic Arts, hoping that the company might need help with video-game scenarios once the Shooter retired. But the uncle cannot mention his nephew's distinguishing feature as the one who put down bin Laden. Secrecy is a thick blanket over our Special Forces that inelegantly covers them, technically forever. The twenty-three SEALs who flew into Pakistan that night were directed by their command the day they got back stateside about acting and speaking as though it had never happened. "Right now we are pretty stacked with consultants," the video-game man responded. "Thirty active and recently retired guys" for one game: Medal of Honor Warfighter. In fact, seven active-duty Team 6 SEALs would later be punished for advising EA while still in the Navy and supposedly revealing classified information. (One retired SEAL, a participant in the bin Laden raid, was also involved.) With the focus and precision he's learned, the Shooter waits and watches for the right way to exit, and adapt. Despite his foggy future, his past is deeply impressive. This is a man who is very pleased about his record of service to his country and has earned the respect of his peers. "He's taken monumental risks," says the Shooter's dad, struggling to contain the frustration that roughs the edges of his deep pride in his son. "But he's unable to reap any reward." It's not that there isn't one. The U.S. government put a $25 million bounty on bin Laden that no one is likely to collect. Certainly not the SEALs who went on the mission nor the support and intelligence experts who helped make it all possible. Technology is the key to success in this case more than people, Washington officials have said. The Shooter doesn't care about that. "I'm not religious, but I always felt I was put on the earth to do something specific. After that mission, I knew what it was." Others also knew, from the commander-in-chief on down. The bin Laden shooting was a staple of presidential-campaign brags. One big-budget movie, several books, and a whole drawerful of documentaries and TV films have fortified the brave images of the Shooter and his ST6 Red Squadron members. There is commerce attached to the mission, and people are capitalizing. Just not the triggerman. While others collect, he is cautious and careful not to dishonor anyone. His manners come at his own expense. "No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job," Barack Obama said last Veterans' Day, "or a roof over their head, or the care that they have earned when they come home." But the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation: Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family. Continued: http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313?click=pp
That he gets "nothing" is not true. If he is truly destitute, he's eligible for VA benefits to treat his injuries for nearly free. Leaving with only 4 years until retirement probably wasn't very smart. He could have applied to leave SEAL duty and go to the fleet.
makes no sense, the navy usually gives these guys a pasture job so they can retire, so why leave with only 4 years left? no savings either? 16 years of tax free combat pay and no savings?
I won't be surprised if the wife spend all the money. The guy was on mission for more than 300 days each year. I don't think he had much time to waste money. She divorced him recently, so he probably lost those savings for good. He's now old, maimed and dependent on his ex-wife. I don't think he is in a position to tell the truth about how she managed his hard-won money.
Here's my very biased opinion. Anyone who served in combat should never pay taxes again, have free heathcare at ANY hospital they choose, pursue any educational opportunity at any school for free, and be given prime consideration for job opportunities for which they are qualified. However, with all that said, that's not it works today and he knew that. 16 years in and you get out? I can't believe he could not have landed some soft job for the remainder of his hitch. Now if they wouldn't give him a soft ride, that's B.S., but as it stands now he gets the typical VA Bennies, which are sub standard in most cases.
Anyone who served in combat should never pay taxes again? So if someone serves as a 21 year old, then gets out and starts his own company, or goes to work for another and moves high up in the corporate world, he should still get a waiver on taxes?
In a word, yes, or at least get some kind of tax break. I might be willing to have a qualifier of a serious combat injury to qualify, not that it's up to me. It'll never happen anyway. I guess it should be considered lucky if you're not spit on, should one make it home.
War hero SEAL certainly could have stayed in at some BS desk job, or maybe an instructor. These guys think different though, that's why they are SEALs. I saw pilots leave just because they were due to be rotated out into a desk job.
I hesitate to post as it is a fully charged topic. Anyone in the military today has volunteered. If you didn't get that you might be in combat when you signed up for the military, you must have been an idiot. My Dad was a combat veteran in WWII and in Korea. He volunteered for WWII, but was told he wasn't out when he thought he was when Korea came about, but he went. He never took a dime based on his service, but also understood the crap these kids see, and have to live with for the rest of their lives. He thought some benefits were approriate, but giving away the farm was ridiculous. Don't sign up if you don't want to possibly deal with hell. Kind of harsh, but seriously, it is the military, the point is they are their at the will of a president, and to not imagine that you will be sent to hell is simply crap. I think they shold be offered most any service available to come back and get involved in society, but there does need to be a cap somewhere. I've been to 2 funerals where the person served and received full military honors. One being my Dad, and I bawled my eyes out when they fired off those guns in salute. Thank you to all who have served.
in the 90s my brothers roomate was team member. I had friends on the teams. For a variety of reasons, of the ones I met including the aptitude and attitude I would guess less than 25% could do desk jobs. These guys were as they said back then were high speed guys... how do you make a high speed guy do a desk job. Also, think about what these guys did and were willing to do. Many of them were different. Many of them gave off a vibe that let you realize if you saw them out... you better be with them or leave the area. When they were looking at you sometimes you can tell they were not really looking at you but through you. How does a guy like that do a desk. --- no one should pay income taxes. they were made up to support the private banking and dollar created by the FED. We can keep the fed but we should get rid of interest on govt borrowing and property taxes. why the hell should the govt be taking our income. The govt has plenty of other ways to raise money.