US Navy SEALs police their own

Looks like the US Navy SEALs have started policing their own regarding the leaking of the info about ops recently conducted....I feel that this is as it should be as they should understand OPSEC is vital to their continued success...

I understand the need to salute these American Jedi Knights but their safety and the safety of those who support them is paramount to any PR campaign... The new movie " ACT OF VALOR " and other media shows have shown enough about what they can do when under duress without the divulging of more detailed info about specific operations IMHO.

Bravo Zulu to our US Navy SEALs. I salute you and appreciate all you do each day.


Navy SEAL Commander Advised to 'Get the Hell Out of the Media'
By Huma Khan ABC News

A retired general today assailed the commander of the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden for drawing too much media attention to operations that he argued should be kept under wraps.

Special Operations Commander Adm. Bill McRaven was confronted by retired Lt. Gen. James Vaught, who said he didn't understand why the recent raids by the Navy SEALs, such as the one to kill Osama bin Laden or to rescue U.S. hostage Jessica Buchanan, were all over the media.

"Since the time when your wonderful team went and drug bin Laden out and got rid of him, and more recently when you went down and rescued the group in Somalia, or wherever the hell they were, they've been splashing all of this all over the media," Vaught, 85, said. "I flat don't understand that.

"Now back when my special operators extracted Saddam [Hussein] from the hole, we didn't say one damn word about it," he continued. "We turned him over to the local commander and told him to claim that his forces drug him out of the hole, and he did so. And we just faded away and kept our mouth shut.

"Now I'm going to tell you, one of these days, if you keep publishing how you do this, the other guy's going to be there ready for you, and you're going to fly in and he's going to shoot down every damn helicopter and kill every one of your SEALs. Now, watch it happen. Mark my words. Get the hell out of the media," he concluded, as laughter broke out at a meeting of the National Defense Industrial Association in Washington, D.C.

Vaught commanded the failed mission to rescue the hostages in Iran in 1979. Eight service members died and four were injured in "Operation Eagle Claw" when the helicopters on the mission collided in the remote Iranian desert. Vaught, whose role made him the first commander of Delta Force, was not active duty during the Hussein raid, which was also conducted by the Delta Force, the secretive counterterrorism unit.

McRaven jokingly responded that he became a Navy SEAL because his sister was dating a special forces member and because he was infatuated with John Wayne's movie, "The Green Beret."

"The fact of the matter is, there have always been portrayals of SOF [Special Operations Forces] out in the mainstream media," he said. "We are in an environment today where we can't get away from it. It is not something that we actively pursue, as I think a number of the journalists here in the audience will confirm. But the fact of the matter is, with the social media being what it is today, with the press and the 24-hour news cycle, it's very difficult to get away from it."

He added that it was difficult to avoid media coverage in today's 24-hour news cycle and that it could actually help Navy SEALs do their job better.

"We have had a few failures. And I think having those failures exposed in the media also kind of helps focus our attention, helps us do a better job. So sometimes the criticism … the spotlight on us actually makes us better," McRaven said.

The Navy SEALs have received heavy media attention in the past year thanks to the bin Laden raid and the rescue in Somalia. A movie titled "Act for Valor" focusing on the elite special operations force is due for release next month and Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is making a movie about the raid that killed the world's most wanted man.

McRaven was in Washington, D.C., today talking about an expansion in the role of special operations forces in Afghanistan. Special operations troops, McRaven said, would likely be the last to leave the country and the Pentagon is even considering a new special operations command, but that has not been decided yet.

"I have no doubt that special operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan," McRaven said. "As far as anything beyond that, we're exploring a lot of options."

ABC News' Meg Fowler contributed to this report.

Hurricane Irene arrives or is it Hype-icane Irene

Hurricane Irene arrived this morning to New England with more HYPE than anything else. Like most cases of weather in New England, they build up the storm to biblical proportions, and then it arrives with a "thud" of all hype and no storm.

Southern areas were hit harder and the storm has caused 10 deaths to date. Many were storm related like one man who dies when his home caught fire due to wind related downed powerlines.
I would rather have the storm be a dud as that way no one gets hurt and there is no damage to homes and such but the media shouldn't play this up like it will be the "Storm of the Century" when they likely know it will be just another basic storm by the time it hits ther greater New England area.

We reguarly get 30-50 mph winds here with coastal storms so the weather bears watching but this storm was a bigger issue for those down south than here in southern Massachusetts.

Get Real: Hurricane Irene Should Be Renamed "Hurricane Hype"
Forbes.com OP-ED

Over the years the National Hurricane Center (NHC) has employed the world’s best experts on Atlantic tropical cyclones, from “Dr. Bob” Simpson, to the mediagenic Neil Frank and on to the current director, Bill Read.

The lifesaver-in-chief was probably Frank, who indefatigably crisscrossed the nation educating the public to the dangers—hidden and obvious—that accompany these curiously seductive weather systems. His era was one of many innovations, including extensive use of satellites, and tailoring the “names” of storms to the culture where they roam in order to attract attention.

One of Frank’s nightmare scenarios goes like this: A strong hurricane threatens a heavily-populated resort area with few escape routes, such as the North Carolina Outer Banks. Vacationers reluctantly abandon their $20,000/week palaces on Pine Island for 36 hours in an immobile SUV conga line, drenching tropical showers, and no toilets. The storm falls apart or unexpectedly turns away from land. Lotsa folks rent for more than a week, so they return, an equally strong storm shows up, and they don’t leave. The title of this movie is “how to die in a 10,000 square foot house-boat”.

We have just lived through something pretty close to this nightmare. Last April 27, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 41 died because they disregarded a weather warning.

While the number of strong tornadoes is hardly changing (there may even be a slight decline), the number of tornado warnings has increased exponentially as Doppler radar picks up twisting circulations embedded in thunderstorms that could produce a ground tornado.

The number of false positives has so cheapened the currency of tornado warnings that few now bother to interrupt their work when one is given. While the very good forecasters at the National Weather Service were not at all happy when veteran TV meteorologist James Spann blamed a large number of Tuscaloosa deaths on the very high false alarm rates, he had a point.

Now on to Hurricane Irene:

Up until now (Friday evening) Irene has been very similar to 1985 hurricane Gloria, though a bit weaker. But the level of hype—because of its projected path near all of the I-95 major cities—is similar to that of 26 years ago.

When Gloria proved less deadly than expected CBS’s Dan Rather—a serial hurricane hyper who made his career on 1961 Hurricane Carla—he yelled at poor Neil Frank on live TV

What had happened is that the night before landfall, Gloria took a sudden 40-mile jog to the east. The cyclone slid harmlessly east of the big cities, showing her weaker western side instead of the destructive northeast corner.

Irene has put on a remarkably similar show. Within the limits of forecasting error, Irene’s projected path makes it was impossible to rule out a major disaster. But, as a dangerous Category 3 storm within two days of land, something similar to what happened to Gloria occurred. Instead of going slightly off course, the power of her winds dropped markedly, at least as measured by hurricane hunter aircraft. Because it is prudent to not respond to every little tropical cyclone twitch (such as Gloria’s jog or Thursday’s wind drop), the Thursday evening forecast was virtually unchanged, the Internet went thermonuclear, and the Weather Channel’s advertising rates skyrocketed. From that point on, it became all Irene, all the time. With this level of noise, the political process has to respond with full mobilization. Hype begets hype.

A day later, the smart money is still riding a very Gloria-like track, but with a cyclone that will be weaker than projected (and hopefully kill fewer than the eight people who died in Gloria) though power outages east of where the center makes landfall (probably on Long Island) may be extensive.

As I complete this, there’s another tropical depression out in the Atlantic, and a couple more on the way in the very near future. Suppose one of these takes a similar path, except that it improbably threads the needle of the Mid-Atlantic Bight and makes landfall immediately to the west of New York City as a Category 3 storm. How many people will the hyping of Irene have killed?

That’s how Hurricane Hype followed by Hurricane Insanity leads to hurricane death.

I see a solution, in all places, in Washington DC, where a group of crackerjack weather forecasters, led Jason Samenow, have set up the Capital Weather Gang (www.capitalweathergang.com). It’s become the go-to group for potentially severe winter storms here (including hurricanes), and, because they are serving a smaller community than, say, NHC, they aren’t under the massive scrutiny of a politicized media. Is it time for similar diversity to develop all over the high-stakes world of tropical cyclones?

Or would that be an abject disaster? Consider if there are five competing hurricane forecasters, four suggesting evacuation while the fifth says “stay put”, and the fifth one is wrong. Surely most people would choose to stay, with disastrous results. Given the nature of the Internet, such an experiment is sure to run in the near future

Recalculating....

I like the new commercial where the guy who plays "mayhem" pretends to be the guy's GPS and sends him the wrong way.....The guy yells out " recalculating..." right before he sends the guy off in the wrong direction......

I think the MEDIA needs to stop doing the same thing....

ART IMITATES LIFE - POTUS BECOMES NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

HISTORY

16th September 1938: Neville Chamberlain (1869 - 1940) prime minister, arrives back at Heston aerodrome after his appeasement meeting with Adolf Hitler.

TODAY - ART IMITATES LIFE...


POTUS repeats history, not because his political foes are as bad as Germany, but simply because he is as feckless, incompetent and as clueless as Neville Chamberlain was....He had control of both houses of Congress and he still couldn't get it done....He was self-absorbed and turned a deaf ear to the real needs of the American people - instead he spent our treasure on the STIMULUS, which is nothing more than a slush fund for his political friends, and a Healthcare Bill that is the most wasteful and screwed up bill ever produced by Congress...They weren't even reading the bill before they passed it....His Presidency was like handing the keys to a brand new car to a teenager, then watching as POTUS drove our country into the ditch and then tried to blame it on everyone else.

The American people could have elected better but bought into the dreck that the media fed them and that brings us to today, with an American President that emboldens our enemies and imperils us as he cannot even handle things at home...

Maybe he should have listened to another voice out of history.....

“ Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.”

Andrew Carnegie (Scottish born American Industrialist and Philanthropist. 1835-1919)

It is OBVIOUS that POTUS never had any principles to start with....his favorite thing to do is admiring himself in the mirror while looking down his nose at those in our country who try to work hard and earn a living.

So if POTUS is Neville Chamberlain, where is our WINSTON CHURCHILL now that we need him more than ever????