Once again I am re-posting the work of Ann Barnhardt, word for word, her words, NOT mine, hers. This post can be found on Ann’s site: Barnhardt.biz – Commodity Brokerage.

SEALS ARE NOT FUNGIBLE, ADMIRAL JACKASS

POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT – AUGUST 31, AD 2011 8:25 PM MST

I have waited patiently all day for one of the websites owned, manned and run by . . . JOURNALISTS to pick this up, but I have yet to see a single word. When I read this late last night I was SHAKING with fury. SURELY one of the sites dedicated to JOURNALISM would be all over this come morning. Nope. Not a word. Unbelievable.

From the New York Times (aka the Litter Box Liner of Record), page A6 in the print edition:

Admiral Defends Use of Navy Seals Unit in Fatal Raid

“Since the crash, which resulted in the greatest loss of American life on a single day in the Afghan war, some analysts have questioned why an elite Navy Seals strike team was assigned as mere backup for an Army Ranger raid on an insurgent cell, and why so many Special Operations personnel were aboard a single helicopter. Admiral McRaven dismissed assertions that the most highly trained Navy and Army commando teams should be reserved solely for the most high-profile missions; he said they were regularly assigned to support commanders of units in a local area of combat if that contributed to the overall mission. “We have to be fungible as a force,” Admiral McRaven said. “And if we are not fungible as a force, then we are not of value. It is not unusual at all for SEALs or Rangers or Army Special Operations forces to be part of a quick-reaction force, as in this case.”

Did you get that? SPECOPS have to be . . . fungible. This McRaven fool is the COMMANDER of American Special Operations forces. I guess he missed the subtle meaning behind the word “SPECIAL” in “SPECIAL Forces”. Dear God.

See, this is what these slithering degenerate cowards do. They throw out a six dollar word that they know only one tenth of one percent of the people know the meaning of, everyone nods in agreement because they don’t know what the word “fungible” means, and then slick as you like just sweep the entire thing under the rug. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if McRaven himself didn’t know what the word “fungible” meant. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if McRaven thought it had to do with mushrooms.

Here is what “fungible” means.

Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution, such as crude oil, wheat, precious metals or currencies. For example, if someone lends another person a $10 bill, it does not matter if they are given back the same $10 bill or a different one, since currency is fungible.

Are you shaking with fury yet? The commander of U.S. SPECOPS wants to make the special operators he commands LESS SPECIAL. He visualizes a military in which a DEVGRU Navy SEAL could be substituted with a reserve guardsman or vice-versa – because remember, fungibility is all about MUTUAL substitution.

Really Admiral? Really? The 15 DEVGRU SEALs that were killed on that Chinook were literally some of the most valuable tactical human military assets THAT HAVE EVER EXISTED IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. These DEVGRU men aren’t just SEALs, they are the absolute elite of the elite. Most of them are in their early to mid 30s, and have YEARS of combat experience in the other SEAL Teams before being hand-picked to join DEVGRU. Let’s run it down:

SEAL training is the toughest in the world. The first step for a man who volunteers to enter SEAL training is 4-12 weeks of prep courses followed by 3 weeks of “indoctrination”. Then comes the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) course. By the end of this 25-week course the wash-out rate is over 90 percent. There have been BUD/S courses in which every man washed out. For the very, very few who make it through BUD/S, next comes the 26-week SEAL Qualification Training (SQT). Beyond that, many SEALS also go through the 26-week Special Operations Combat Medic course. After all of that, the SEALs then go through 18 MONTHS of predeployment training. It takes a minimum of 30 months to fully train a SEAL for his first deployment.

Oh, but we’re just getting started. After spending YEARS on the ground in combat, gaining priceless experience on top of their already best-in-the-world training, a very, very select few SEALs are tapped to join DEVGRU (United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group). That is why most DEVGRU guys are over 30. They are highly experienced, stand-out SEALS. How much of a complete bad@$$ do you have to be to stand out . . . in a group of SEALs?

DEVGRU is the best of the best of the best. But even DEVGRU is split into four assault squadrons: Red, Blue, Silver and Gold. The Gold Squadron is the “premier” squadron, in other words, the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. Okay, now try to get your head around how special the men are who stand out not just among other Navy SEALs, but beyond that stand out amongst DEVGRU SEALs. Gold Squadron DEVGRU SEALs make Superman feel insecure.

Guess who was on that Chinook. And entire 15-man troop from Gold Squadron DEVGRU. I kid you not. An entire troop of the most valuable human tactical and combat assets in not just the United States Military, but all militaries across all of the centuries of human civilization and warfare – packed into one National Guard transport helo in a massive, massive breach of dispersion protocol, accompanied by 10 (I think) more SEALs (further compounding the breach of dispersion protocol), the Chinook crew, and SEVEN Afghanis who stood a non-trivial risk of being spies/turncoats/suicide bombers.

Citation (This stuff isn’t hard to find, Journalists. There are even further footnotes at the bottom of the page.):

United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group

And this McRaven idiot has the unmitigated gall to come out and spew some line of crap about FUNGIBILITY? We need to treat Gold Squadron DEVGRU SEALs like interchangeable commodity units?

Again, every single human being is infinitely precious, but when we are talking about war, we have to be able to parse the difference in TACTICAL value between different skillsets among our men. This is in no way immoral. From a TACTICAL COMBAT PERSPECTIVE, the notion of applied fungibility is utter and complete lunacy. It is certifiably insane. It is mission-suicidal and borders on being treasonous. Do you hear me, McRaven? Mission-suicidal and borderline treasonous.

“I’m not sure I know how it ends,” [McRaven] said. “This may be the ‘new normal,’ in terms of this threat that we will have to live with for a long time.”

Let me tell you “how it ends”, Admiral Pantspisser. It ends in swift, total, complete and unconditional victory. Either get your head around that or resign. We The People are sick and tired of politicking, imbecilic, touchy-feely asses like you using the treasure of this nation as cannon fodder to justify your self-serving politically correct agenda and whose dead bodies you step on to clamber your way up the payscale/pension ladder. Admiral McRaven, you have proven yourself wholly unqualified for your position at best, and a disgrace to the United States Navy and a water-carrying oath-breaker at worst. Men like you make me sick, and make me weep for my country and for the men under your command, the soles of whose boots you are not fit to lick. Hope you enjoy that pension, Billy, because you had to sell out your country and your brothers to get it.