184:, and covers his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan from about 2003 onwards. This material is reasonably interesting, though it breaks no new ground. All of the second half of the book is devoted to the Bin Laden raid, and provides a high level account of the preparations for this operation and a very detailed narrative of the actual assault. This material is well written, and provides an insight into the tactics which were used. I found the author's observation that the Bin Laden raid was an unusually easy operation for his unit to be particularly interesting - he states that it was no more complicated than the operations elite special forces teams in Afghanistan conduct every day, and the planning for the actual assault could have been completed within hours if needed: the only complicated element of the operation was that it took place deep within Pakistan.
200:). Some details of the Bin Laden raid which have previously been published, such as the use of modified "stealth" helicopters and the preparations for the operation in Colorado, are also not mentioned. While this is understandable given that the author is presumably still subject to official secrecy laws, it's disappointing. The sections of the book in which "Owen" whines about politicians' reluctance to deploy special forces units and the political response to the death of Bin Laden are tiresome, and suggest a worrying lack of political and strategic awareness among members of a unit which is meant to specialise in strategically vital tasks.
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The authors stress in the foreword that they've taken pains to prevent any classified information from being published. Unfortunately, they've also left out a lot of detail on special forces operations which has previously appeared in other public sources. For instance, the description of the tactics
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written by a leader of one of the Navy SEAL teams involved in the operation. It was written under the pseudonym "Mark Owen" in cooperation with the writer Kevin Maurer. The book attracted a lot of attention when it was released last year, and contributed to the excellent depiction of the operation in
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concerns likely resent any other considerations that curtail military utility. I don't think his opinion indicates a "worrying lack of awareness" though I can see where it detracts from reader enjoyment. On an unrelated point, anything after
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to be an interesting read, and it's likely that they'll learn something new about modern special forces operations. However, it's not really a ground-breaking book.
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views of the civilian leadership. I would posit that servicemembers who live or die on tactical and
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No Easy Day : The only first-hand account of the Navy SEAL mission that killed Osama Bin Laden
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Lawrence in Arabia : War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
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used in Iraq and
Afghanistan is greatly inferior to those published by Mark Urban in
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I can only imagine you expect these sorts of servicemembers to appreciate the
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is a first-hand account of the special forces raid that resulted in the
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Osama Bin Laden's compound in
Abbottabad two days after the raid
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provides an account of "Mark Owen's" career in the elite
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