SEALS

If you haven't heard yet, the American captain who was taken hostage by Somali pirates last week has been rescued by a Navy Seal team. If you haven't heard that, where have you been? Anyway, I keep seeing and hearing on the news what an awesome and heroic rescue operation this was. And when I first heard about it on the radio, I was thinking, 'Wow, the Seals must have really done something cool. What took them so long?' Well, the more I read about it and watched on CNN what happened, the more I ask the question: What's so heroic? They sniped the pirates. Wow. That seems so easy, if you ask me. Especially when I heard how far away the shot was. 100 foot shot. That's not that far. Ever since basic training we've been shooting targets at over 300 METERS which is equal to 328 yards which is equal to 984 feet. I've seen Clay who has no military training whatsoever make a 300 yard shot at a deer and hit it square on. Was this really "great marksmanship" by the navy seal snipers like CNN reported or was it the easiest shot these guys would ever take in their life. I think Squirrel hunting would have been harder then shooting these pirates.

Well you might say, 'Well Nathan, it was at night. That right there makes it a difficult shot." Nope. That actually makes the shot easier. See we had a saying in the Infantry that would surely apply to the Navy Seals...it goes like this: "We Own the Night." The reason why we own the night has nothing to do with us as soldiers or our training. It has everything to do with our technology in our country. See we have these little infrared lasers on the end of all of our weapons that shoots a green laser out that can only be seen with our night vision goggles. You don't even have to look down the end of your rifle. You just point the laser on the head of the dude you are "aiming" at and pull the trigger. You could shoot from the hip with this technology and still take your target down.

Don't get me wrong, I’m not trying to take anything away from the Seals. They are awesome dudes, and some of the most highly trained dudes in the world. I've personally worked right alongside a seal team in my time in Iraq, and they are very cool. What I am trying to say is that the media has no idea what they are saying half the time, and this is another example of them blowing something out of proportion.

I was waiting for the seals to do something to save the captain, I knew they would. But I expected them to do something a little cooler, something a little more up to their awesomeness, like swimming undetected to the lifeboat and snapping the pirate’s necks or cutting their throats. That would of been awesome, and worthy of calling it a heroic mission. Instead it was like shooting a fish in a barrel...or a pirate in a lifeboat. Where's the coolness in that?