Big-mouthed Seal should have kept his mouth shut about shooting a corpse dead for a decade.

[Ben]

With all the press and hype surrounding Rob O'Neill's interview
on Fox News Channel, I thought I would give my two cents.

I served as a SEAL for 10 years, and I know Rob personally. He's
a hell of an operator, a great guy. I haven't seen him for
years—work taking us to different parts of the world, just
missing each other—but the time I've known him I can say he is
an upstanding guy and was a tremendous asset to the SEALs.

When I saw Rob's interview about the mission that took out Osama
Bin Laden, I was speechless. I thought he was very articulate in
the interview, but he broke some incredibly important rules in
doing it that could have a deadly domino effect.

People ask, well, what’s the difference between Marcus Luttrell
writing Lone Survivor and Jason Redman writing The Trident and
Rob O'Neill going public claiming he's the shooter of Osama Bin
Laden?

First, Marcus and Jason went to SPEC WAR (Navy SEAL command) to
get the proper authorization to release the information to the
public. The facts and details they wrote about and spoke about
were cleared. Second, Rob was in SEAL Team 6, which is a Tier 1
asset. The other guys were in different SEAL teams, which have
different rules and regulations than Rob’s team. When you go to
training with SEAL Team 6, you sign a form that states that you
will not disclose anything that happens while you are there.
When you leave that command, you sign the same thing again. All
SEALs live by this code.

There is very good reason that you need to go through the chain
of command before putting out information like this: simply put,
it jeopardizes lives. Rob and his teammates finished the
mission, but there are hundreds of people (support personnel)
behind the scenes who made this happen. If pictures were to get
out and our enemies can identify those who helped in the mission
success, their lives and the lives of their families could be in
danger. In my mind, there’s no amount of money or publicity
worth that risk.

My hat is off to everyone who maintained proper OPSEC
(operational security), who did their jobs and kept their mouths
shut. It's like in a football game, if a quarterback throws a
pass to a receiver and they score, that's great, but you can't
forget the linemen who did all the work to allow that pass to be
thrown. That’s not including the thousands—let me repeat
that—thousands of man hours and tax payers dollars that went
into rehearsals, gathering intel, doing everything that needed
to be done to get us to the right place to complete this mission.

From knowing Rob as a brother in the SEAL teams, I’m just in
shock that he came out with this. And I’m equally shocked that
he hasn't yet faced any disciplinary actions. We'll have to wait
and see how the government handles the situation.

Rob O'Neill is a great SEAL, but he broke the golden rule. To
put it bluntly: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and he
didn’t keep his shit in Vegas.

Ray "Cash" Care is a former Navy SEAL who proudly served his
country for 12 years. He is currently Scout's Senior Tactical
Editor.

http://warrior.scout.com/story/1482135-bin-laden-s-shooter-
should-have-stayed-silent