Navy SEAL team likely honored in secret for raid

JULIE WATSON, Associated Press
Updated 02:46 a.m., Wednesday, May 4, 2011

SAN DIEGO (AP) — 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.

Quietly recognizing heroic actions for clandestine operations is not new in the military. Some service members wear war decorations but refuse to talk about how they earned them. Others stash away their medals, either because they've been ordered to hide them or they have chosen to for their own security.

And there are those heroes who have never lived to see a medal, their families sworn to secrecy until they were honored posthumously. For the elite few who dropped from the sky into the walled compound in Pakistan, they must carry on without breathing a word about their participation in Sunday's spectacular raid that eliminated the world's most-wanted terrorist.

It is a secret that surely must burn in their souls, but military officials say they have no doubt it will be kept. The stakes are too high.

The Navy still hasn't confirmed its SEALs carried out the much-lauded, 40-minute operation. But privately, Rear Adm. Edward Winters, at Naval Special Warfare Command in California, sent an email congratulating his forces and reminding them to keep quiet because "the fight is not over."



Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Navy-SEAL-team-likely-honored-in-secret-for-raid-1364720.php

:patriot:

Lot of training, lot of risk.

Edit:


The raid that killed Osama bin Laden will go down in history as the most important covert operation since the Sept. 11 attacks, earning the elite Navy SEAL team that carried it out permanent bragging rights for finishing off the most-wanted terrorist on Earth. "Officially, Team Six doesn't exist," says Sawyer, 47, who advises Hollywood and acts in movies about the military. Photo: Reed Saxon / AP

Gee, that makes the Sept 11 attacks sound like a covert operation, doesn't it?

them.

But it will have to be this way.

Well done, SEALS.

THanks to you guys, SEALS. You serve a useful purpose as a bad-ass group of killers. :patriot:

had probably trained on video games that featured a Bin Laden character, and what must have been going through their heads when they came face-to-face with the real person in real life.

These guys are pretty bad ass. I saw a special on TV and it's amazing what they can withstand. Almost superhuman.

20 yrs from now,in every American Legion of VFW in this country,there will be ONE ASSHOLE telling how HE was the one who shot OBL!

about it.

where it was supposedly determined that for every actual SEAL that exists, approximately 100 others falsely claim to be a current or former SEAL!

let's not make them and their families a target for future jehad's. Their ID's should be kept secret.

from the US Naval Academy. He was picked for SEAL training, survived and joined the team stationed in Virginia Beach. I honestly don't recall now if it was SEAL Team 6 then or not. He was a SEAL for over 5 years and the family, his own parents included, heard very little from him about it. Every once in a while we'd hear that he was going overseas for what he characterized as training sessions with special forces from other countries, usually in Asia. SEALS are the best at keeping very quiet about their jobs, and the best at doing their job well.