04 September 2012
No Easy Day
Tonight I read "Mark Owen"'s No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden
It is about what you'd expect it to be: half is the author's thoughts SEAL training and half recounts the day of the May 2, 2011 raid. Impressively, he managed to sleep for most of the 90 minute helicopter ride from Afghanistan to bin Laden's compound.
Owen says he wrote the book to engage the next generation of SEALs, and no doubt he did that. But the book makes it pretty clear that he wanted to set the record straight about the raid and the SEALs. The SEAL Unit Six team was pretty unhappy with the way Obama tried to spike the football and claim credit for it.* Not only did they feel like their own security was violated, they didn't appreciate the way the White House/media reports portrayed them. Owen wanted to set the record straight, and while the prose was occasionally a little lacking, I think he achieved his aim.
* Owen pretty strongly implies that he voted for Obama.
Posted by Evan @ 09/04/12 11:58 PM | Comments (0)