Ted Gundy: An 'Old' Sniper Still Has What It Takes, And the 99th Infantry Division Stops the Wehrmacht

The 2011 story had passed me by but I was given another shot at it by a friend who passed on the footage.  My first reaction when I saw the headline for this piece was encouragement that someone that old could retain his skills to that degree.  I'm not nearly his age (though the clock is always ticking), but even with my trifocals, maybe I can still reach out and touch someone just like I used to – but not as well as this ace. 

Then I watched the footage.  Here is Ted Gundy, an 84-year-old Army veteran of World War II.  More specifically, he was a sniper during the Battle of the Bulge, and that experience led him these many years later to make an inquiry about how the snipers of today can make such long-range shots.  The Public Affairs people saw a great opportunity and he was invited by the US Army Marksmanship Unit to tour the new National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia (which I heartily recommend).  He was made an honorary member of the AMU and was then taken to the range for some updating on the techniques of modern long-range riflery.

Private Gundy, as before

But first, as a wonderful homage and touching token of honor, Val Forgett III of Navy Arms presented him with an authentic reproduction of the great Springfield M1903 A4 .30-06 rifle that Private Gundy carried and used so faithfully during the dark, cold, and doubtful days of the biggest battle in US Army history, until he lost it – and his right leg – as a result of a German artillery shell a few weeks later.  So, an old sniper and new rifle: the next step was obvious. 

The AMU took him to the range to try it out, at a 300-yard metal outline target, for the first time in 67 years.  He carefully took three shots and all three hit the target, all incapacitating with the last round walked into a dead-center-of-mass heart shot.

Private Gundy with upgrade

He next took his turn at a new XM2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle (ESR), an upgrade from the M24, firing a .300 Winchester Magnum (.300 Win Mag) round.  Army snipers operate today as a team, so the AMU walked him though the modern configuration and set him up with a spotter to take on the same target at 1000 yards.  (Mind you, he has only fired three rounds at 300 yards from his '03 up to this point.)

The result is an astounding three-shot group of less than five inches.  Better yet, check and see where they all impacted. 

The Greatest Generation indeed.  Thanks to Shooting USA's Impossible Shots for providing the footage, and my camping friend Don Kaag for turning me onto it. 

To add some more information to the basic story, you can see that Private Gundy (Ret) is wearing the insignia of the 99th Infantry Division.  Allow me to fill in some details that he would not, in case anyone is wondering if he saw any action. 

In December 1944, the new, inexperienced division was dug in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.  The general attitude in the Army at that time was becoming complacent and believed that the Wehrmacht, rolled up after the break-out from D-Day and suffering from the almost-decisive Battle of the Argentan-Falaise Pocket, was essentially finished and it would only be a matter of time before the war was over.  At the beginning of the war, the Ardennes Forest was considered to be impenetrable, which is one of the principle reasons that the Wehrmacht drove right through it in their surprise introduction of the blitzkrieg that ended up with the capitulation of Belgium and France and the sight of the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force withdrawn through Dunkirk.  Despite this painful lesson, the Allies strangely considered this region to be a quiet sector again.

It was at this point on the night of the 16th that the Germans, led by the 6th Panzer Army, launched its Ardennes Offensive, or the Battle of the Bulge.  The 99th was among four divisions that took the shock of the surprise attack.  The 106th Infantry Division was destroyed and the 28th Infantry Division badly mauled, but the veteran 2nd and the green 99th held, throwing off the German timetable and materially contributing to the eventual American success in the showdown of the Western Front.  The 99th bore the brunt of the 3rd Fallschirmjäger and the 277th Volksgrenadier Divisions, and elements of five other divisions, which tore into the 99th at several places, most particularly into three separate battalions, and captured a fuel depot.  The 99th, outnumbered five to one, took 20% casualties yet inflicted injuries on the Germans at a ratio of 18 to 1.

Their reserves committed, every man of the division fought, including a bayonet charge of cooks and engineer minemen through an artillery barrage to relieve an encircled company, clerks fought off panzers with rifles and bazookas in what had been a rest area, spontaneous counter-attacks were launched because the noise of the continuous incoming artillery was so loud that no one could hear orders, Americans fought back with German weapons and ammunition when their supplies dwindled, an engineer battalion broke out of an encirclement by building a road under fire, artillery fire was called in 'danger close' along the entire front, hand-to-hand combat was common, a communications section assaulted high ground in order to send out valuable information before being beaten back, quartermaster troops fired machineguns while passing out cold-weather uniforms.  The stories go on, and all during one of the worst winters in modern European history.  After the war, once all the details could be investigated, the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon of the 99th's 394th Infantry Regiment became the most decorated platoon in history for its defense against the attack of the 1st SS Panzer Division, throwing off by some 18 hours the advance so vital to the German effort.

Gundy's modesty leaves me ignorant of his precise role in the fighting, other than that he was asigned to B Company of the 393rd Infantry, but I am assured that he is one of the untold thousands who did their duty to their utmost under overwhelming odds.  He accepted the gracious honors of his visit in the name of his compatriots of the division, and at the age of 84 he represented them exceptionally well.

Employment Figures Continue To Worsen

The economic numbers continue to sink even as the Democrats try their Whack-a-Mole approach to suppress the figures that put a drag on their "Happy Days Are Here Again" campaign*. 

Figures just out for March show a jobs increase of only 88,000 (the worst since last June), despite an official estimate of an increase of 200,000.  The official experts cite this as an effect of the Sequester, and point to examples of the Post Office – shrinking no matter what state the economy is in – cutting some 12,000 jobs.  But the postal jobs are not included in the figures, and in actuality the government otherwise added some 9,000 jobs.  But at the same time (and unacknowledged), the result of the payroll tax increase last January is coming on line as well (remember Obama and his promise that your taxes won't go up "one dime"). 

Remember, job increases have to go up by some 250,000 each month just to compensate for population increase alone, much less added jobs that would indicate an improving economy – which this is not. 

What does the administration tout?  The official unemployment rate dropped from 7.7% to 7.6%, but they do not add that the rate dropped because of the increasing number of people giving up on the job market and dropping out of the running, thus not part of the count.  The administration continues to campaign (it never really stops campaigning) on the relentless story that it has added "millions" of jobs, yet refuses to acknowledge the millions of jobs that have been lost.  It's like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. 

Last month the unemployment rate rose, so what did they publicize?  Why, the increase in the expected number of jobs, by 268,000.  They will grab at whatever number looks good and ignore the others, even when they have to reverse their definition of sound numbers from only a month before. 

You have to peek behind the curtain to find figures that give a better sense of reality.  The standard unemployment number (U3) is only a snapshot using specific stats.  The overall unemployment figure (U6) adds in the 'permanently unemployed' (those who have dropped out of the job search) and the under-employed (those who have settled for part-time work, lower-paying jobs, or who depend on a spouse who is still employed).  That figure looms at 13.6%.

                                                                                          (westernjournalism.com)

Evan Feinburg of Generation Opportunity, which tracks the economy's effect on the younger generation, puts the effective unemployment rate for workers aged 18 to 29 at 16.2% – one in every six workers in that age group.  Is it any wonder that McDonald's is only looking to hire college graduates? 

College graduates, typically within that generation, find more bleak news.  According to the Department of Labor, the number of college graduates working hourly jobs in 2012 was 13.4 million, an increase of 19% from 2007.  Some 284,000 college graduates worked in minimum-wage jobs in 2012 and of that number, 37,000 have advanced degrees. 

According to the National Employment Law Project, some 60% of jobs lost during the recent recession were mid-level wage jobs.  During what some would call a recovery, some 58% of new jobs were low-level wage. 

The Obama administration's efforts to cut spending in other than their ludicrous scare tactics in the Department of Homeland Security (among other examples), is actually (and only) realized in their large down-sizing of the Department of Defense, dropping over 100,000 active-duty servicemembers into an already-bloated population of the unemployed. 

*****

*(The song, incidentally, is one of the more darkly ironic ones in history.  It premiered in 1929, just prior to Black Tuesday and the crash of the stock market when – tell me if this sounds familiar – the stock prices had been increasing despite the decline of other economic indicators.  The song became popular again when the Democrats used it as their theme song in FDR's successful 1932 campaign.  The following two years were the worst of the Great Depression.)

The Facile Ignorance of the New York Times Regarding the Resurrection

Here is another item that would seem to piggy-back onto Google's deliberate shunning of Easter and their decision that Cesar Chavez deserved a larger share of acclaim.

Not being a devotee of the New York Times (and for good reason), I rely upon the kindness of such commentators as the wonderful Mark Steyn of National Review Online (among many other far-flung sources) to keep me posted on the dithering nonsense that passes for objective commentary from the Newspaper of Record.  Mr Steyn passes along, by way of Michael Walsh of NRO, another example of a correction in the NYT that simply makes matters worse.

Ancient history

Messrs Walsh and Steyn draw reference to a story therein by Elisabetta Povoledo, of the Easter message of the new Pope Francis.  (Ms Povoledo is the NYT's correspondent in Italy, and they apparently cannot be bothered to post a correspondent to the sovereign Vatican City for matters dealing with the Roman Catholic Church.)  The correction reads in its entirety: 

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Christian holiday of Easter.  It is the celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, not his resurrection into heaven. 

My first reaction was that I was glad that they specified the "Christian holiday of Easter" for the understanding of the ignorami who would otherwise confuse it with the Muslim version of the same name.  I am not alone: Mr Walsh's knee jerked in much the same fashion.

But I was then floored by the one-two punch of "resurrection into heaven".  To echo our gentlemen above, what does that even mean?  One does not resurrect to something, but from, specifically death, or the tomb.  True, Jesus (an appropriately secular name; use of the name Christ conveys a religious meaning that the NYT finds uncomfortable) by scripture and doctrine ends up in heaven, sitting on the right hand of God ("from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead"), but the original rendition by Ms Povodero leaves out the inconvenient history of what happens between "resurrection" and "heaven", which is the cornerstone of Christian theology. 

The Apostles' Creed speaks controversially of his descent into Hell (some Protestants, like the Methodists, leave this line out).  Others disagree, for how can Christ tell the thief on the cross (the Repentant Malefactor as Matthew Henry puts it) that he shall be with him in Paradise "this day"?  There is some evidence that the idea was not present in the earliest forms of the Creed.  (Admittedly, a very sparse explanation of the argument.)

Yet nonetheless, what actually counts is the history that Christ rose alive from his tomb, advised the two Marys, ministered to his Apostles along with his Disciples on different occasions, appeared before Cleopas and his friend, and to "more than five hundred brethren at one time".  This, as Paul preached, is the underpinning of the Christian faith as he states in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, particularly its last verse: "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."

For the New York Times: Significance?  Anyone ... anyone? (Patheos.com)

(This led to Pentecost, and the movement spread to "thousands" in Jerusalem as explained in the book of Acts, likely contributing a role in the uprisings against the Romans some years afterward and the retaliation which destroyed the city in AD 70, but the Christians by then had already taken strong root in places such as Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Damascus.)

Mr Walsh sums it up thusly:

They say you tend to believe what you read in the newspaper until the story concerns something you actually know something about.  The Times has just proven to 1.2 billion Catholics around the world that it knows nothing about their religion.  Read it on all subjects accordingly.

Mr Steyn quite agrees: "How could any expensively credentialed J-school grad type those words?"  But he continues the exposure of how the NYT reporter can be so incandescently obtuse:

Where I think Michael understates the case is when he says that it reveals the Times as know-nothings to 1.2 billion Catholics.  Leaving aside the massed ranks of Anglicans, Methodists et al, it exposes the Times to believers and non-believers alike as culturally ignorant.  The Bible underpins a big chunk of western art, music, and literature, and not to know its basic concepts is to condemn yourself to bobbing around in the shallows.

He goes on to provide just two germane examples, from humorist P G Wodehouse ("There was a death-where-is-thy-sting-fullness about her manner which I found distasteful."); as well as the World War I ditty Bells of Hell ("O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?  O grave, thy vic-to-ry?") – brought back to my generation by the mordant musical Oh, What a Lovely War in 1969. 

Both are taken from "Paul's 'characterization' (as the Times would say) of the Resurrection to the Corinthians".  He goes on to bemoan how tone-deaf and unmoored the Times correction is from our cultural inheritance, "regardless of one's 'faith tradition' (as Al Gore would put it)".

Steyn makes the added observation that he has published a few pieces in the NYT and he knows "a bit about the extraordinary layers of editors between the author and the page, and it's remarkable that not one person up the chain raised an eyebrow over 'resurrection into heaven' before it hit the streets. . . .  [The New York Times] has just announced itself to the world as civilizationally illiterate."

Walsh's admonition to read the NYT "on all subjects accordingly" brings to my mind a comment I have written about before, that of the late Michael Crichton and his Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, and Crichton's words bear repeating:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved.  You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.  (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows.  You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well.  In Murray's case, physics.  In mine, show business.  You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward – reversing cause and effect.  I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories.  Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read.  You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.  I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life.  In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say.  In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.  But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper.  When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't.

Google: Easter Is Trivial, and the Arrogance of Information Control (Update: Chavez Opposed Illegal Immigration)

What is that you say?  Today is Easter, the most sacred of Christian holidays?  Well, one might expect that people would take note of that event, even if it has been in steadily decreasing numbers due to the political cleansing of topics such as this in the public marketplace.

Take Google for example.  They have been criticized for their tone-deaf attitude about the daily-changing art work on the web page of their search engine, their 'doodle', and how they seek to avoid commemorating dates that are important to the conservative population.  In 2007, they received criticism for skipping such holidays as Memorial Day and Veterans Day, though they had previously commemorated Bastille Day.  As a sop, they provided an appropriate piece for Memorial Day, but followed it within a week by showcasing June 6 – D-Day – as the anniversary of the first drive-in theatre.  Subtle?

So how do they portray today and its primary event?

That's right.  The Christian observance of Christ rising from the dead, the most important holiday of the Christian calendar, has to take a back seat to the birthday of Cesar Chavez.

Google is an almost persistently militant example of the Commentariat and the shaping of American opinion, too big to bother with criticism.  It insists that it is 'net neutral' yet has a CEO in the form of Eric Schmidt who approaches the industry with an appreciation of the social phenomenon of the internet, seeking out who you are, who your friends are, what you are doing, how to spend your time and where do you spend your attention, so that Google can provide a "more targeted search for you". 

If Google can manipulate your search to meet what they consider to be your needs, they can manipulate it to meet their needs as well.  After all, Schmidt went on to say in another interview with the Wall Street Journal that "I actually think that most people don't want Google to answer their questions.  They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Why is it that whenever I research a topic that has anything to do with politics (and that's a lot), I consistently receive rankings that front load the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, NPR and the like, with the occasional Fox News (now too big to ignore) thrown in?  Google says that it is their algorithm, based on popularity, but with the American populace consistently right of center, that is becoming increasingly difficult to believe.

Maybe Bing, their principal competitor, should be the one to turn too.  They at least provided a mosaic of Easter Eggs.

*****
Update: The word speads, but notice the line-up (as of the moment of this writing) of the articles on the subject between Google and Bing.

*****
Update: Chris Salcedo at PJ Media provides information about Chavez, and reminds us that he was far from being the Hispanic leader as he is usually portrayed.  He was Hispanic, but his leadership was focused exclusively on being a union leader.  When it interfered with his union organizing, and reaping of union dues, then illegal immigrants be damned.

Esquire's "Shooter" Did Not Kill Bin Laden

The story just didn't smell right.

Phil Bronstein wrote last month in Esquire of how the man who shot Osama bin Laden (whom he calls the Shooter as a cover name) was being "screwed" – his word – by the military after he resigned from the service.

                                                                                              (Zero Dark Thirty)

The story gained immediate attention not so much for the most compelling reason – inside information about the notable case of taking down the world's most notorious terrorist – but for the purportedly shoddy way that the military treats its veterans.  Not just any veteran, mind you, but the important ones.

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 healthcare for his wife and kids, no protection for himself or his family.

Bronstein's lengthy article is long on insider information about the raid itself, but exists primarily as an exposition of what he bewails as a man practically betrayed by his country.

But there are small items that beckon to my hackles.  Bronstein and his Shooter continually speak of SEAL Team 6 ("ST6"), the original name of the unit, but members of the community have referred to it as DEVGRU for many years (short for Naval Special Warfare Development Group).  Use of ST6 is like referring to the CIA as the Company, branding the user as someone whose closest connection is through spy thrillers or, appropriately, journalists who claim to have the inside scoop.  Likewise, he refers to the SEALs as being Special Forces, another grating slip: Special Forces within the US military is a specific term for the Army Green Berets; the SEALs and associated units within the Navy are called Special Warfare, and the overall term for the military as a whole is Special Operations.  Individuals within this community who take the fight directly to the enemy are called operators.  In an interview with Matt Lauer, Bronstein mispronounces the name of the dog brought on the operation.  (Other sources – yes, more than one – pronounce it another way, with a story attached as to why, which at least begs the question.)

There are other niggling items, but what hits me first is Bronstein's claim of how he came to the story.  First is his reflective, back-handed claim about his bona fides.

This was my first face-to-face meeting with the Shooter, following several phone conversations and much checking into my journalism background, especially in war zones.  [Translation: these professionals accepted me as someone of note.]

At other times he refers to himself as a war correspondent.  The best that I and some others can come up with is that he reported from "conflict areas around the world as a foreign correspondent for eight years, such as Peru, the Middle East, El Salvador and the Philippines."  According to his bio as the Chairman at the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, that would be between 1980 and 1988.  He spent time in El Salvador during the war against the Farabundo Martí insurgents but he couldn’t have spent much time in the field.  Likewise, he spent time in the Middle East during the Kuwait War – in Israel.  He covered the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 to some acclaim.  The Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorists were active in Peru during that time but there is no evidence of field experience there either.  Interviewing participants in a conflict does not yield a comparison to Ernie Pyle.  All in all, rather thin gruel for someone who styles himself as a war correspondent.

This adds to a wink-wink, nudge-nudge image as one who is in on the secrets, and falls into what I call the Bob Woodward approach – a well-accomplished journalist who nevertheless falls to the temptation of citing important revelations from a source who is either highly classified or dead, therefore unverifiable.  Then there is the Dexter Filkins (author of The Forever War) method: unidentified or obscure indigenous sources, who he accepts at face value in their claims of veracity, whose views somehow translate into the widespread attitude for the entire community or region.  They also immediately yield up deep and highly opinionated views about the Americans they have worked with for months to this reporter whom they have just met, for no other reason than his personal aura of being a journalist.  (And is anyone vexed that he gets away with statements that he was walking around Ground Zero the day of the attack, talking on a cell phone?  Is there anyone on the scene that day who finds that . . . odd?)

Bronstein's work at the CIR has already been focused on compensation issues for the military.  It's no wonder that he would latch onto this angle for the public, but the story of the Shooter's shoddy treatment more than strains the credulity of the active duty and veteran audience.

Any private, seaman recruit, and airman basic knows that he has to serve for at least twenty years to receive a pension, and a military pension is one of the few remaining really good benefits available.  While on active duty his take-home pay (considering that for this job he has to be at least a Chief (or E-7 in pay rate), and adding in his time in service, dependents status, extra incentive pay such as dive pay, jump pay, hazardous duty pay, and others) would certainly be north of $6000 per month.  If he were to retire at twenty years as an E-7, he would receive at least $2100 per month, not counting disability pay for the ailments he listed.  Still in his early- to mid-40s, he is highly employable, and the military retirement pay, while it can't buy you an island in the Bahamas, is nevertheless a generous extra stipend to his follow-on salary, and certainly belies Bronstein's quote of a fellow team member:

But if I come back alive and retire, I won't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out for the rest of my life.  Sad to say, it's better if I get killed.

Not true, on several levels.

There are transition assistance classes to aid servicemembers in their move to civilian life, far more organized and informative than in my day, but even in that shadow of a program available to me, someone had to sign off on my paperwork that I had taken the class.  The Shooter couldn't just blow it off.   The classes would tell him, for example, of the five years of free health care available to him as a combat veteran since the National Defense Authorization Act of 2007.

The Shooter tells of the strain on his family, a true enough fall-out of life in the Spec Ops community, but now he and his wife are fearful that the family will be targeted because of the part he played in the operation.  What better reason to keep his mouth shut?  News of the forthcoming publication of No Easy Day by 'Mark Owens', a nom de plume but a fellow DEVGRU participant in the raid, was enough for the press to crack through the veneer of the pseudonym to discover the author's real name, Matt Bissonnette, in about a day.  Real professionals take operational security very seriously, to protect themselves and others.

The Navy response to the accusations in Bronstein's article was swift and to the point.  No less than Rear Admiral Sean Pybus, Commander Naval Special Warfare Command, released a statement that included:

This former SEAL made a deliberate and informed decision to leave the Navy several years short of retirement status.  Months ahead of his separation, he was counseled on status and benefits, and provided with options to continue his career until retirement eligible.  Claims to the contrary in these matters are false.

[Pybus is] very disappointed with the few people who use their SEAL cachet for self-serving purposes, particularly through falsehoods and certainly when the safety and security of themselves and their active-duty teammates and families are put to risk.

RADM Pybus went on to say that the command would still help the Shooter "address health or transition issues, as we would for other former members. . . . Naval Special Warfare has bright and motivated people engaged in difficult, but satisfying work.  They are very familiar with their compensation and options."

The answer as to why the Shooter placed himself in this position is buried in the article:

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.

It didn't work out.  His teammates moved on to other endeavors.  He is left to suffer the consequences of the risk that he took, which is not at all uncommon.  I myself had a couple of great opportunities evaporate in like fashion, but you move on.  Yet he feels that he is owed something for the role that he took in his claim that he was the one who killed bin Laden.

First of all, he was not the designated shooter for the mission.  Practically any of the 23 operators could have found themselves in the position of taking out Geronimo, and based on how they stacked up and spread out as they secured the various rooms en route to the third floor, the Shooter was the one who ended up confronting the target, in his words.

Second, as much as I respect the members of the Spec Ops community, we all have to remember that combat is a shared burden with the conventional forces as well.  The straight-leg infantry at COP Keating, to give just one example, performed gallantly under over-whelming conditions and received recognition for their valor up to and including the Medal of Honor.  Declaring that the Shooter, no matter what his skills and qualifications, is somehow eligible for special compensation to remedy a decision that he himself made hardly seems equitable.

The outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in answering a press question about the Esquire article, drew the same distinction: "Acts of that kind of bravery and courage go on often every day in a war zone."  He rhetorically questioned whether everyone who performs courageously in such dangerous circumstances should have a "separate fund to try to assist them", and added that "the reality is, men and women in uniform put their lives on the line every day to sacrifice for this country."

But the story ravels still further.  Brandon Webb of the web log SOFREP.com, and a respected former SEAL in his own right, tracked down the background of the story and reports that the Shooter was not, in fact, the one who took the kill shot.  He was in on the op certainly, and was one of the few involved in the take-down on the third floor, but his claim beyond that doesn't add up.

The actual shooter at Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSW DEVGRU or SEAL TEAM 6) has continued to maintain his professional integrity and has not come forward with the story, and likely never will.  Looks like Esquire and Bronstein are the ones who are really screwed, not their interviewee; our sources say he's off cashing large checks from unsuspecting donors who bought the Esquire pity piece.

Webb goes on to add:

• The 'Shooter' was removed from his DEVGRU Squadron for talking about the operation openly after being warned to 'can it'
• He was encouraged by leadership to remain in the SEAL community to finish out his career and gain his full retirement benefits. 
• Apparently against his concerns about personal security he has been very active on the public speaking circuit.

Webb obtains further information from another SEAL, such as the agreement among the operators to try to avoid a head shot, so as to help in identifying the body.  He also questions the Shooter's claim that only two of them, the point man and himself, stepped up to the third story to engage bin Laden and what turned out to be several wives.  There was no need to hurry (well, people in those situations are very well aware that the clock is ticking) and whoever was up there would have had more time to prepare a defense.  The shooter says that the point man, after firing a couple of rounds at bin Laden's partial target, then swept two of the wives in the hallway away from the door, but the source states unequivocally that "there were ZERO women in the hallway" (they were in the bedroom) and the point man would not drop his muzzle unless he were certain that his target was down.  He also uses the later witnessed blood spatter to show that the point man, much shorter than the Shooter and bin Laden, was the actual executioner.

Esquire, predictably, puts out the tired drivel that it stands by its story (though without explaining how).  Between Bronstein and the SEALs, you should know where to put the smart money.

Attempt to Extort Military Tuition Assistance Fails

Obama's approach to the Sequester fits perfectly with Thomas Sowell's portrayal of just one of the standard ploys of the Left (who Sowell castigates as "the Anointed"): define whatever problem that Obama wants to address, in this case the Left's manipulation of the economy to forward his end of "fundamentally transforming America", as a "crisis", though it is a crisis of his making.  Solutions must be proffered and acted upon immediately.  ("Sign the bill now!  Read it later, if at all.")  Their solution is the only way.  (If you are opposed to Obamacare, then you want to destroy the entire health care structure of America; never mind that there are answers other than the Democrat plan.)  When their plan fails, then the response is to bewail how much worse it would have been if the other side had prevailed.  (Y2K leaps immediately to mind, among others.)  Define every political distinction in this way.  ("Never let a serious crisis go to waste.")

The Democrats' budget approach is to spend as if there is no tomorrow – literally.  The Senate Democrats were so busy spending that they couldn't bother to propose a budget for more than four years, and the one on the table now is a joke.  The only responses they have is to insist that taxes be raised on the "wealthy", dividing the people into classes and penalizing success, while repeatedly declaring that taxes on the rest of us "won't go up one dime".  (Has that been your experience or forecast, dear reader?)  The only spending cuts that they will talk about is to the Defense budget, despite the fact that the Sequester is to take half of its cuts from that department, but the other half from domestic spending in the bloated area of entitlements has been ignored.  Consider also that Defense constitutes only some 18% of the budget, whereas Medicare takes 30% and Social Security 25%, in this heavily skewed formula.

Now add to this the time-honored tradition of the Washington Monument Ploy, wherein the entrenched bureaucrats hold hostage the commonweal through shutting down the most necessary and visible functions of government in order to extort the response that they want – more money, leaving their pet projects intact without explanation, all while shamelessly insisting that the fault lies with the opposition.

Clinton was able to pull this off with the able assistance of the press in the government shutdown in 1995, blaming the Republicans in Congress.  But the Obama White House has been far less successful so far in this iteration, being called at every turn.  Their cynical release of thousands of illegal aliens has been a festering problem which gets worse each time they try to explain it away.  Their pettiness shows through with antics such as closing down the White House to tours for schoolchildren or cancelling the Easter egg roll.  It all looks so much worse compared to business-as-usual hemorrhaging of money such as Joe Biden's recent trip to London and Paris, with accommodations for his entourage costing north of $1.1 million for two nights (not including the travel and security expense).

Another attempt, this a two-fer, involves shutting down  the Tuition Assistance Programs within the Army, Air Force, and Marines, while the Navy was seriously considering doing the same.  This shows a careless disregard and contemptible attitude to those who have borne the brunt of our fight against the Islamic Supremacists these past twelve years, but also a blatant disregard to our own capabilities.  The quality of our fighting forces is far more attuned to advanced capabilities and technology that ever before, and their requirements are equally high.  The TAP is not primarily for servicemembers who depart the military – that would be the GI Bill, either the Montgomery or the Post 9/11 version.  Instead, the TAP keeps members current on any variety of skills while they are on active duty, and helps to sharpen the point of the spear of our war fighters.

This need for current and continuing education was critical to me back in the seemingly ancient days when I served, but this is brought home to me practically every day through two of my sons, one who is in the Army Ordnance Corps in the technical side of vehicles and their impact on logistics (he always has something surprising and elucidating in this field in which I have so little experience), and the other is a Special Operations Combat Medic (I confess wondrous ignorance here as well), trained to operate independently, well beyond the impressive battlefield medical system.  Both jobs and a myriad of others demand a sharp skill set, kept keen through a supportive education system.

Cutting back in this area is profoundly insensible.  Our greatest weapon and thus our greatest protection is through the quality of those who serve.  Restricting educational opportunities hurts us where it counts the most.  Not only would our quality degrade, but we would lose those who we need the most, the ones who see their duty clear and actually strive in the arena, as Theodore Roosevelt would say, not the presumptuous Best and Brightest of the chattering class who cannot deign to dirty their hands.  It makes about as much sense as saying that we will effect cost savings by stopping the production of ammunition, except that in this case it seriously affects the lives of our servicemembers for whom the Defense Department is ethically responsible.

"And yet, there they were."  Perhaps Gary Trudeau's greatest Doonesbury strip, in a rare moment of lucidity, as the dust was settling in the Kuwait War of 1991 (click to enlarge)

Yet now we know that this attempt as well has come under the derision of the public, and Congress has seen fit to re-instate the TAP.  The Defense Department has been told to keep the program intact and to seek savings elsewhere.  The Washington Times sums it up in its conclusion of its article:

It also represents a priority that the services should place on educating its personnel.  In an era of congressional stalemate, the latest move to include the program in the continuing resolution shows bipartisan agreement that active duty personnel are worth the investment.

*****
(Thanks to Weapons Man for the Biden boondoggle information.)

Light Bulbs: Federal Bureaucracy Bombs Again

Erika Johnson of Hot Air writes to give us another example of how Big Brother invariably gets it wrong when telling the American public what is good for them, and uses lighting technology, specifically the light bulb, to explain why.

We were first mandated to do away with incandescent lights in favor of the government 'experts' demand that we buy compact fluorescent bulbs, the ones that give off that cold, eerie, uncomfortable light and, as she explains it, "are impractical, more expensive, and it turns out they might actually be a cancer risk, no big deal or anything."  Not to mention the damage to the environment caused by the same vaporized mercury that is a key part of the bulb.  Then there is that annoying wait time for the bulb to warm up to become bright enough for human eyes – I have had to install one outdoors, and my routine in the evening is to turn it on, then attend to another chore to give it enough time to be sufficiently bright to take out the trash.

And the government's response to inquiries about these health and environmental concerns; the plan for properly disposing of them?  Well, nothing really – it didn't occur to them that there was such a problem when the CFLs were mandated in order to help save the planet.  By law, you practically have to file an environmental impact statement in order to get rid of them.

So what is our alternative? 

Why, that would be the LED lights that do so well in flashlights, smart phone camera flashes, and indicator lights on electronics.  There are light bulbs as well now. Consumers have been deterred by their high cost, but it is almost a law of economics that the cost of electronics and technology decreases over time, and that applies here as well.  She cites the New York Times: 

. . . LED bulbs are a gigantic improvement over incandescent bulbs and even the compact fluorescents or CFLs, that the world spent several years telling us to buy. 

Funny way to put it, isn't it: the "world"?  What the 'newspaper of record' means to say is that it was the federal government through the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandated that we do as we are told by buying the CFLs.  As usual, the market does a far better job than a centrally controlled economy by appealing, as Adam Smith put it so well many years ago, to the people's rational self-interest. 

LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we're talking maybe 25,000 hours of light.  Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. … 

You know how hot incandescent bulbs become.  That's because they convert only 5 to 10 percent of your electricity into light; they waste the rest as heat.  LED bulbs are far more efficient.  They convert 60 percent of their electricity into light, so they consume far less electricity. … 

The one Home Depot nearby (the local apparatchiki at the city and county level are loathe to allow other 'box stores' as competition because they're, you know, exploitative) lists 40-watt LED bulbs at $9.97, and 60-watt versions at $12.97.

The great Walter Russell Mead picks up the story too. 

LED bulbs turn on to full brightness instantly.  They're dimmable.  The light color is wonderful; you can choose whiter or warmer bulbs.  They're rugged too.  It's hard to break an LED bulb, but if the worst should come to pass, a special coating prevents flying shards. 

He concludes, as does any person of common sense, that "we don't need the Commissar of Home Lighting that foisted mercury-laden CFLs on us to now promote LEDs."  The market is doing that on its own.

Now if only we could get rid of the Al Gore toilets.