The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

by Robert O'Neill

I got into a discussion with the guy who’d end up being the point man in the assault on the third floor of the compound—of course, we didn’t know that then. We talked the way SEALs never talk: “Once we go on this mission, we aren’t going to see our kids again or kiss our wives. We’ll never eat another steak or smoke another cigar.” We were trying to get down to the truth about why we were still willing to do this when we pretty much knew we were going to die. What we came up with was that we were doing it for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school and went to work on a Tuesday morning, and then an hour later decided to jump out of a skyscraper because it was better than burning alive. A woman whose last gesture of human decency was holding down her skirt on the long way to the pavement so no one could see her underwear. That’s why we were going. She was just trying to get through a workday, live a life. She had no desire to fight and no ability to defend herself. Now we were going to fight for her. We were going to fucking kill this guy. We started getting fired up just talking about it. I don’t think any of us had even a momentary doubt. Everybody wanted to go. This was the big one. This was why we’d signed up. We figured we were all going to die eventually, so why not go out doing something noble? And who knows, maybe we’d somehow make it back.