And then failed to report it to Congress. That's the big story here. Biden was the one that briefed Congress on the matter.

SEALs are not trump own special forces, they work for the US government

Its just the reality of a modern standing military. The people who are going to sign up are a mixture of:

1. Just looking for an excuse to kill, generally brown, people
2. Rabidly patriotic
3. I am trying to find a polite and non-ableist way to say this but... not good at learning?

And "real" special forces (so not Rangers which are mostly just a badge they give anyone dumb enough to volunteer for an infantry combat role) kinda inherently have to be long term contracts/lifers. So not even the "I am gonna shoot a brown kid to get my college paid for" crowd.

One of my guilty pleasures are the Insider "military expert rates BLAH" videos. And most are complete and utter bullshit from what is obviously a larper who had a desk job. But the more legit people consistently say insane shit like "Full Metal Jacket made me want to join the marines" or "The moment I watched that shower scene in The Rock, I knew I had to be a Navy Seal".

Pilots were one of the last holdouts where it genuinely made sense for the best and brightest to do a tour or two to get the hours they need to get licensed. But even that is long gone as people realize the good jobs are still going to go to nepotism and the best they can hope for is to haul cargo to places nobody wants to actually go.

But the military still insists on doing these high risk super low night flights with pilots who are inadequate and maintenance crews who "learn by doing" and so forth. Like, you know that mechanic who forgot to put the cap back on your buddy's oil filter? These are the people who didn't even think they could get a job doing that.

Well yeah, didn't they wreck their helicopter and have to blow it up?

I see no reason not to believe the official story in this case. Bringing him back alive would have served no useful purpose, and would have led to him getting a ton of publicity that would have only inspired his followers. Most Americans were likely happy to see him die the way he did given the 9/11 attacks.

They've been taught to shoot first check later for many decades. They know that anyone they kill will be marked as a combatant later - we're only hearing about this story at all because some Navy / intelligence staff involved want people to hear the story so they don't, "underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake."

Now to me - a humble nobody - it sure seems that while the Seals did take risks of course (lives on the line) - they signed up and worked hard at the chance to take those risks. The far wider and more serious risk was igniting nuclear war or similar huge conflict with South Korea though no fault of the South Koreans. Fuck the "we need people to hear this so they know we're risking our lives" shit. People need to hear this because it's illegal and dangerous and shouldn't happen at all.

Rocket man!

They don't need to, trump just tells them directly

Everyone wants to be 007 but the real world is more like a Le Carré novel. The work is tedious and often boring, if you find yourself in a ‘daring’ raid then something has gone real fuckin sideways in your intel gathering network.

Besides, it’s not like the SK frogmen don’t already know every inch of that coastline with their eyes closed but keep their safeties on because of the Chinese response, so yeah why the fuck were our SEALs even there?

And just before (probably the shit.justworks crowd...)

Huh? What's your issue with my instance? How is shitjustworks pro-north-korea???

This was a very fucking stupid idea, which is probably why Trump OK'd it.

North Korea doesn't need nukes to level Seoul. They have artillery pointed at the city so in case a war starts they can just start firing. Some analysts think they could fire up to 10000 shells in just a minute. Even if the artillery will eventually get hit by air strikes they could cause a lot of damage.

So we normalise it? Ok, nice. Break enough laws and it becomes meaningless. Noted.

Back in power with no fucking checks whatsoever. Free reign to do absolutely anything.

As an ex special ops soldier, I’m going to tell you that top military units are comprised of a mix of human types, just like any other batch of folks. Some great, some bad and everything in between. Any particular unit might be worse due to bad leadership, do bad things due to immoral commands, or from some vagary of luck have an overabundance of shitheads.

All this to say, top units can have decent people in them with good intentions.

Seriously. Like they thought the shore was deserted and they completely fucking missed a boat with people waving flashlights around?

All they had to do was look before approaching and be like, nope, there people there let's go.

Those Epstein files must really scare them to release all this stuff as a smoke screen.