the first thing i thought was that B.O. was scared of killing young muslim men unless he had to. he is quite image concious, you know.
WTF are you talking about red? I never said that every Marine was a sniper. We train our snipers to perform that duty. Every Marine infantry battalion has a detachment of "trained" Marine snipers. They are assigned to HQ company and were on the Boxer, or her sister ship, assigned to the MEU or MEB. If the decision had been made to use snipers, firing from the ship, then there was absolutely no reason to bring over a SEAL team. The Marine snipers could have performed that duty flawlessly. Also, there is no longer such thing as a "ship's detachment" of Marines. We travel on amphibious assault craft with the Navy while on deployment. Ship's detachments ended in the late eighties...very early nineties. There is no longer a Marine permanent party on naval vessels. No SEAL is a Marine unless the Marine left active duty in the Corps and joined the Navy. He is a Marine until death but his functional capacity would now be as a SEAL team member...not a Marine.
Clearly. I was articulating there being best shooter -vs- a group of shooters you hold as the best. You mention Marine snipers being the best as a fact. I would like to know the facts and the scale upon which they are drawn. It's an Army thing...:hihi:
Well said. I share your puzzlement over why such time was taken if only rifle shots were decided. Perhaps they waited to assess and eliminate other options? Which brings me to my other puzzlement. If Red's time frame is accurate, why did it take so long for the Seal team to arrive on site? The entire purpose of DEVGRU is counter terrorism, and as such are expected to be wheels up within hours of an incident. The guys on that particular Seal team are always "on call", unless their duty parameters have changed dramatically in the last few years. Granted, it is not run the same as when they were "Six", but their mission has not changed. If they were not on sight for nearly 3 days, it's because they were not given clearance to operate. They don't need any particular ship to be present, unless they are locking out of a sub. These guys were either on site, and stopped from ending this sooner, or they were held up in their deployment - by someone. And Red's comment about possible Delta shooters being present seems highly unlikely. The two groups are highly competitive, and it's unlikely the Navy would have surrendered a maritime operation over to the Army. Not to mention that Delta does not have a fraction of the maritime training a Seal does. But whether Obama held things up or not, I prefer him to have a tough reputation, and by extension, America. It serves the country no good if our President is perceived to be weak. We got our citizen back and lost no military men doing it. I'm good with it.
I was replying to MC, who said that "I can attest that you'll be hard-pressed to find any Marine who would not have confidently taken the shot." Perhaps, but the SEALs arrived on the same day (the 11th) as the Boxer. We had been talking about riflemen available on the Bainbridge on the 9th or 10th. Interesting . . . they left about the same time that the navy quit carrying nuclear warheads on board surface vessels. This meant that the only riflemen on the Bainbridge were sailors with ordinary M-16's trained to do security work in port. Nonetheless, many Marines have served in the SEALS. It's not a knock on the Marines. It's a compliment to the SEALS.
Ahh. Touched a nerve. I was in the 4th Mobile Comm Group providing ground communications in support of combat operations. Not exactly a grunt but a hell of a lot closer to the action than your hippie ass...AND...I'm not the one acting like I worked in the Pentagon War Room...Chief!
