Everything Golden / Extreme Ownership

Migrants warm themselves by the fire in front of an abandoned warehouse in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017. Hundreds of migrants are sleeping rough in parks and make-shift shelters in the Serbian capital in freezing temperatures waiting for a chance to move forward toward the European Union. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Migrants warm themselves by the fire in front of an abandoned warehouse in Belgrade, Serbia today. Hundreds of migrants are sleeping rough in parks and make-shift shelters in the Serbian capital in freezing temperatures waiting for a chance to move forward toward the European Union.: photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP, 10 January 2017

SERBIA - A migrant walks out of a makeshift shelter at an abandoned warehouse in Belgrade. By @iandrej #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 10 January 2017

GAZA STRIP - A girl peers through the door of her house during protest against electricity shortages in Jabalia refugee camp. By @mohmdabed: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 10 January 2017

GAZA CITY - A Palestinian girl takes part in a protest against ongoing electricity shortages. By @MahmudHams #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 10 January 2017

#Palestina A member of a military wing of #Hamas holds his weapon during a rally in #Gaza. By @MahmudHams #AFP: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 25 March 2016

Pallbearers carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony for the late former Portuguese President Mario Soares at Mosteiro dos Jeronimos (Jeronimos Monastery) in Lisbon, on January 10, 2017.

Pallbearers carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony for the late former Portuguese President Mario Soares at Mosteiro dos Jeronimos in Lisbon today: photo by Patricia De Melo/AFP, 10 January 2017

Residents of a community in suburban Navotas sift through the smouldering debris following an early morning fire, in northern suburb of Manila, Philippines. Fire officials said the fire razed more than 600 shanty homes leaving more than 1,500 families homeless.: photo byBullit Marquez/AP, 10 January 2017

THAILAND - A woman wades through a flooded village in the Chaiya district. By @TheLilyfish #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 10 January 2017

Wildcat Falls Sunday Afternoon | by D.H.A. Wallace

Wildcat Falls Sunday Afternoon: photo by David Heron Wallace, 8 January 2017

Zoya watches streams feeding Lake Anza Jan 10 2017 | by Ed Oswalt

Zoya watches streams feeding Lake Anza: photo by Ed Oswalt, 10 January 2017

Please tell us that's not a selfie Photo @somogettynews #Sessionsdarkside #protestmarginalized: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

Another storyfull #Sessions shot by @somogettynew. Frames GOP Senators as offensive line #FaitAccompli #laughingallthe waytothejusticedept: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

As we keep illustrating, #Trump era not about ideas, but gestures. Talking body language, how familiar. #Sessions @mollyriley @AFPphoto: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

Another Sessions pic by @somogettynews, almost too obvious to be appreciated.#tvshow #closedloop #echochamber: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

#Sessions framed by Asian-Amer grandchild and 2 African-Americans is standard viz propaganda. MTV mean tweet and backlash helps even more. Photo @AFP: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

Besides wall of African-Americans and 1 of mil uniforms, @AFPphoto captures (in contrast w grand kid) how painfully rigid and stiff #Sessions is: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

With opposition's hands tied, personality = protest #visualcultures #Sessions #KhizrKhan @somogettynews: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

With opposition's hands tied, personality = protest #visualcultures #Sessions #AlSharpton @somogettynews: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 10 January 2017

Report claims Russia wanted to blackmail Trump w/ evidence of him hiring sex workers to perform "golden showers": image via Reading The Daily Beast @thedailybeast, 10 January 2017

Are there any other kind? #GoldenShowers: image via Donald J. Drumpf @RealDonalDrumpf, 10 January 2017

Regina Smith️ Retweeted Kathleen Cavalaro

Being a parent in a Trump era can be hard. Thank goodness there are resources available #goldenshowers

tweet via Kathleen Cavalaro@kcavalaro, 10 January 2016

ReginaSmith️ added,

My childhood is ruined I'm ok with that This is worth it #GoldenShowers #ThanksDonald

tweet via ReginaSmith @regina_smith67, 10 January 2017

What the hell happened last night? #goldenshowers #trumpleaks: image via Scott Dworkin @funder, 10 January 2017

Kanye’s new hair makes a lot more sense now #goldenshowers: image via Chelsea Handler Verified account @chelseahandler, 10 January 2017

Personally, we don't see what the big deal is. Our Postal Dude's been doing it since 2003! #peeotus #goldenshowers: image via RunningWithScissors @RWSbleeters, 10 January 2017

Extreme Ownership: Canoeing, Trophy Taking, and the Symbolic Assertion of American Power

TOP 10 Most Watched of 2016: #5 @JockoWillink - Extreme Ownership - FULL Top 10 LIST #NavySEALS #SEALS #leadership: image via London Real @LondonRealTV, 4 January 2017

The Crimes of Seal Team 6: Matthew Cole via The Intercept, 10 January 2016 (excerpts)

Canoeing verb To split open someone's skull with a single bullet to the forehead, exposing the brain matter and leaving a "V" shaped space: tweet via Matthew Cole @matthewcole, 10 January 2017

Bloody the Hatchet

One clear sign that all was not right with the command was the way sadism crept into the SEALs’ practices, with no apparent consequences. A few months after Objective Bull, for example, one of Hyder’s operators began taunting dying insurgents on videos he shot as part of his post-operation responsibilities. These “bleed out” videos were replayed on multiple occasions at Bagram Air Base. The operator who made them, a former SEAL leader said, would gather other members of Red Squadron to watch the last few seconds of an enemy fighter’s life. “It was war porn,” said the former SEAL, who viewed one of the videos. “No one would do anything about them.” The operator who made the bleed-out videos was forced out of SEAL Team 6 the following year after a drunken episode at Bagram in which he pistol-whipped another SEAL.

*

In keeping with Red Squadron’s appropriation of Native American culture, Howard [Red Squadron commander Hugh Wyman Howard III] came up with the idea to bestow 14-inch hatchets on each SEAL who had a year of service in the squadron. The hatchets, paid for by private donations Howard solicited, were custom-made by Daniel Winkler, a highly regarded knife maker in North Carolina who designed several of the period tomahawks and knives used in the movie “The Last of the Mohicans.” Winkler sells similar hatchets for $600 each. The hatchets Howard obtained were stamped with a Native American warrior in a headdress and crossed tomahawks.

At first the hatchets appeared to be merely symbolic, because such heavy, awkward weapons had no place in the gear of a special operator. “There’s no military purpose for it,” a former Red Squadron operator told me. “But they are a great way of being part of a team. It was given as an honor, one more step to strive for, another sign that you’re doing a good job.”

For some of Howard’s men, however, the hatchets soon became more than symbolic as they were used at times to hack dead fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others used them to break doorknobs on raids or kill militants in hand-to-hand combat.

During the first deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it was common practice to take fingers, scalp, or skin from slain enemy combatants for identification purposes. One former SEAL Team 6 leader told me that he feared the practice would lead to members of the unit using the DNA samples as an excuse to mutilate and desecrate the dead. By 2007, when Howard and Red Squadron showed up with their hatchets in Iraq, internal reports of operators using the weapons to hack dead and dying militants were provided to both the commanding officer of SEAL Team 6 at that time, Capt. Scott Moore, and his deputy, Capt. Tim Szymanski.

Howard, who declined to answer questions from The Intercept, rallied his SEALs and others before missions and deployments by telling them to “bloody the hatchet.” One SEAL I spoke with said that Howard’s words were meant to be inspirational, like those of a coach, and were not an order to use the hatchets to commit war crimes. Others were much more critical. Howard was often heard asking his operators whether they’d gotten “blood on your hatchet” when they returned from a deployment. Howard’s distribution of the hatchets worried several senior SEAL Team 6 members and some CIA paramilitary officers who worked with his squadron.

Head on a Platter

After the Chinook miniguns strafed the vehicles and stopped them, [Navy SEAL Britt] Slabinski and his team of snipers landed and moved to a rise several hundred yards away from one of the trucks and began firing sniper rounds at the militants. In that brief firefight, the SEALs killed nearly 20 foreign al Qaeda fighters, some of whom carried U.S. military equipment taken from Takur Ghar. Slabinski told MacPherson that Wolverine had been “really good payback.”

“Just a phenomenal, phenomenal day. We just slaughtered those dudes.” After describing one particular fighter who from a distance had resembled Osama bin Laden, Slabinksi continued: “To this day, we’ve never had anything as good as that. Oh my gosh. We needed that … there was not a better group of people to go and do that. The guys needed that to get back in the saddle because everyone was gun shy.”

“I mean, talk about the funny stuff we do. After I shot this dude in the head, there was a guy who had his feet, just his feet, sticking out of some little rut or something over here. I mean, he was dead, but people have got nerves. I shot him about 20 times in the legs, and every time you’d kick him, er, shoot him, he would kick up, you could see his body twitching and all that. It was like a game. Like, ‘hey look at this dude,’ and the guy would just twitch again. It was just good therapy. It was really good therapy for everybody who was there.”

According to two senior SEAL Team 6 sources... the leadership dynamic in Blue Squadron was a failure. By 2007, the command’s leadership was aware that some Blue Squadron operators were using specialized knives to conduct "skinnings." Using the excuse of collecting DNA, which required a small piece of skin containing hair follicles, operators were taking large strips of skin from dead enemy fighters. The two leading officers at the command, Moore and Szymanski, were informed that small groups in each of the three squadrons were mutilating and desecrating combatants in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, “Devil’s Guard,” published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. The book purported to be a true account of an S.S. officer who with dozens of other soldiers escaped Germany after World War II, joined the French Foreign Legion, and spent years in Vietnam brutalizing the insurgency. The novel, which glorifies Nazi military practices, describes counterinsurgency tactics such as mass slaughter and desecration and other forms of wanton violence as a means of waging psychological warfare against the “savage” Vietnamese.

“These fucking morons read the book ‘The Devil’s Guard’ and believed it,” said one of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders who investigated Slabinski and Blue Squadron. “It’s a work of fiction billed as the Bible, as the truth. In reality, it’s bullshit. But we all see what we want to see.” Slabinski and the Blue Squadron SEALs deployed to Afghanistan were “frustrated, and that book gave them the answers they wanted to see: Terrorize the Taliban and they’d surrender. The truth is that such stuff only galvanizes the enemy.”

One telling illustration of what had gone wrong with Blue Squadron occurred on December 17, 2007, during a raid in Helmand province. Slabinski had told his operators that he wanted “a head on a platter.” Although some of the more seasoned SEALs took the statement metaphorically, at least one operator took Slabinski at his word, interpreting it as an order.

Later that night, after Blue Squadron’s assaulters had successfully carried out the raid, killing three or four armed men and recovering weapons and explosives, Vasely and Slabinski conducted a walk-through of the compound. Vasely, who was wearing night-vision goggles, looked through a window and saw one of his operators, his back turned, squatting over the body of a dead militant. Vasely later told investigators he saw the operator moving his hand back and forth over the militant’s neck in a sawing motion. Alarmed at seeing what he believed was a decapitation, he told Slabinski to go inside and see what the young operator was doing. By the time Slabinski entered the room where the dead militant lay, according to three former SEAL Team 6 leaders, the operator had severed much of the dead man’s neck.

A Kind of Sport

On the second floor of the SEAL Team 6 headquarters in the Dam Neck naval annex, a computer, known as the “ops computer,” stores the classified data on every mission the unit has completed for the past decade. Here, commanders returning from a deployment leave their hard drives with technicians who transfer PowerPoints, after-actions reports, and photos of each operation a squadron conducted abroad. The database contains photographs of persons killed by SEAL operators during their missions and other mission documentation.

Some of those photographs, especially those taken of casualties from 2005 through 2008, show deceased enemy combatants with their skulls split open by a rifle or pistol round at the upper forehead, exposing their brain matter. The foreign fighters who suffered these V-shaped wounds were either killed in battle and later shot at close range or finished off with a security round while dying. Among members of SEAL Team 6, this practice of desecrating enemy casualties was called “canoeing.”

The canoeing photos are dramatic documentary evidence of the extreme and unnecessary violence that began to occur during multiple high-risk, exhausting, and traumatizing tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. “There is and was no military reason whatsoever to split someone’s skull open with a single round,” said a former SEAL Team 6 leader. “It’s sport.”

The former SEAL Team 6 leader said that he first noticed canoeing in 2004, and that it does occur accidentally on the battlefield, but rarely. He said canoeing became “big” in 2007. “I’d look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment,” the retired SEAL said.

When SEAL Team 6 operators were occasionally confronted about the desecration, the SEAL leader said, they’d often joke that they were just “great shots.”

The President's Own

Although canoeing as a ritualized form of enemy mutilation ceased to be a widespread practice after [Vice Adm. William McRaven, new commander of the Joint Special Operations Command]’s clamp-down on the SEALs’ atrocities, it did not entirely cease. And though the gruesome and illegal practice has never been previously reported, at least one canoeing incident is quite well known, if hidden in plain sight.

By the time Robert O’Neill entered Osama bin Laden’s bedroom in the Abbottabad compound on May 2, 2011, the al Qaeda leader was bleeding out on the floor, possibly already dead, after being shot in the chest and leg by the lead assaulter on the raid. That operator, known as Red inside the unit, is still an active-duty member of SEAL Team 6 and has never been publicly identified. O’Neill entered the room, walked over to where bin Laden lay on the floor, and shot him twice in the face. He then stood above the now indisputably dead man and canoed him, firing a round into his forehead and splitting open the top of his skull, exposing his brain. Osama bin Laden had been branded by SEAL Team 6.

O’Neill has not been shy about the fact that he canoed bin Laden. “His forehead was gruesome,” he later told Esquire magazine. “It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face.” He has even alluded to to the grisly practice on Twitter. What he has not done is name the practice or reveal that by canoeing bin Laden he had secured the ultimate war trophy, the culmination of a decade’s worth of bloody “sport” by elements of SEAL Team 6 who considered themselves craftsmen of killing.

Conspiracy theorists who have "trigger words" would certainly be offended by bin Laden's "face-split-open" pics.: tweet via Robert J. O'Neill Verified account @mchooyah, 20 October 2016

1:45 PM - 20 Oct 2016

The story of the bin Laden raid has been told and retold, but crucial details have never been made public.

FILE - In this May 5, 2011 file photo, local residents and media are seen outside the house where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Local residents say Pakistan has started to demolish the compound in the northwest city of Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden lived for years and was killed by U.S. commandos. Two residents say the government brought in three mechanized backhoes Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012, and began destroying the tall outer walls of the compound after sunset. They set up floodlights to carry out the work. (AP Photo/Aqeel Ahmed, File)

Local residents and media on May 5, 2011, outside the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan: photo by AqeelAhmed/AP via The Intercept, 10 January 2017

The Raid

On May 1, two stealth Black Hawk helicopters took off from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and headed east toward Abbottabad. The flight took 90 minutes, and as the Black Hawk Bissonnette rode in approached the compound walls, it effectively slammed on the brakes. The pilot who had warned that one of the helicopters would stall was right. Bissonnette’s helicopter crashed into bin Laden’s side yard. Bissonnette and his teammates were nearly killed, and many of the operators aboard ended up with chronic injuries.

Bissonnette and a small team of SEALs moved from the helicopter to a small building adjacent to bin Laden’s main house. After the SEALs tried blowing the building’s gated front door, someone inside fired several rounds out a window. They were the only shots not fired by the SEALs during the raid. One of Bissonnette’s teammates then put his gun through the front door, which was now slightly ajar, and shot the gunman in the head. He was Ahmed al Kuwaiti, one of bin Laden’s couriers.

Afterward, Kuwaiti’s wife confirmed that bin Laden could be found on the third floor of the main building, just as the team had been briefed. Bissonnette and his team then moved to the main house.

Once inside, the SEALs proceeded slowly and methodically. O’Neill’s teammates shot and killed Kuwaiti’s brother and his wife on the first floor. After blowing open the iron gate blocking the main stairway, the lead assaulters, among them Bissonnette and O’Neill, followed the operator known as Red up the stairs. Red encountered and shot bin Laden’s son just before the second floor landing, and the SEALs following behind him fanned out into the hallways and rooms on the second floor to search and secure the area. It was then that both Bissonnette and O’Neill hung back on the stairway. Both should have remained on the second floor. Instead, as Red began his ascent to the third floor, they followed him up, hoping to get in on the kill. O’Neill was closer to Red, one of the first five assaulters. Bissonnette was much farther back down the stairwell.

As he approached the third floor bedroom, Red saw bin Laden standing in the doorway, peering out. He was unarmed and wearing pajamas. A few of his female relatives were nearby. Red came to a stop and fired two shots with his suppressed rifle. One shot hit bin Laden in the chest and the second shot glanced off his hip or thigh as Bin Laden stumbled backward into his room and fell toward the foot of his bed.

Red watched bin Laden fall. He later told his teammates that it was possible one arm was twitching reflexively as he died, but otherwise he was effectively dead and not a threat. The distinction was crucial. As the lead assaulter, it was Red’s job to make the most important tactical judgments because he largely blocked the view of the SEALs behind him. According to several former members of SEAL Team 6, the most basic principle of assault training is “follow your shot,” meaning that an operator who has fired on a target must ensure the target no longer poses a threat. Your teammates beside and behind you will cover all the other possible angles and areas of a room as you move forward.

Red could see bin Laden bleeding out from his chest wound but he still had not entered the bedroom. Then, as two of bin Laden’s eldest daughters began to scream, Red quickly corralled them at the doorway, a move considered heroic by other SEALs on the mission. Had the daughters been wearing explosives, Red would have died while shielding his teammates from much of the blast. Instead, he held them back long enough for his teammates, including O’Neill, to enter the bedroom.

O’Neill and two or three more assaulters moved past Red into the bedroom as bin Laden lay on the ground. O’Neill then fired two rounds. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Laden’s forehead. Then O’Neill canoed bin Laden with a final shot.

Conflicting accounts have emerged about how many other SEALs fired rounds into bin Laden’s lifeless body, though one former SEAL Team 6 leader who viewed the body in Jalalabad told me the body appeared to be intact aside from the chest wound and obliterated face.

The SEALs had been specifically asked to avoid shooting bin Laden in the face. O’Neill’s decision to canoe the al Qaeda leader made him unrecognizable. A SEAL who spoke Arabic interviewed bin Laden’s wives and daughters until he was able to get two positive identifications. O’Neill later implied in the Esquire profile that he shot bin Laden because he wasn’t sure Red’s shots had hit the target. He also claimed that bin Laden had been standing when he fired and that a weapon was visible nearby. Yet immediately after the mission, O’Neill described shooting bin Laden while he was on the floor. The two weapons found on the third floor were not discovered until the rooms were searched. Neither was loaded.

O’Neill’s canoeing of bin Laden cost his teammates precious time, but his final shot to bin Laden’s head was unremarkable to them. They ransacked the compound for documents and media for intelligence, left the survivors inside, and returned to Jalalabad air base with the body.

SEAL Team 6 headquarters at Dam Neck naval annex, Virginia Beach, Va., showing the 30-foot trident sculpted from a fragment of the World Trade Center: image by Google via The Intercept, 10 January 2017

Heard about this so much recently it's going on reading list to finish asap #ExtremeOwnership #navyseals #lead #win #crushedit #readinglist: image via Daniel Sweeney @danielmmssuibne, 10 January 2017

Everything Golden / Extreme Ownership

Bloody the Hatchet

Head on a Platter

The President's Own

The Raid

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