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The running joke was that they were a drinking team with a rugby problem.
Tired of a bureaucracy that tied their hands with absurd rules of engagement and a system that, as Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling famously noted, imposed harsher punishments on privates who lost rifles than on generals who lost wars, Raife didn’t look back. He left the SEAL side of his life behind and dropped off the radar.
“Sergeant Major, have you ever heard the phrase ‘the nail that sticks up gets hammered down?’ The chain of command exists for precisely this reason.
There are so many newly arrived refugees from Muslim countries that all the European security agencies are overwhelmed chasing down jihadi elements. We think they’re hiding in plain sight.”
Little-known fact: you don’t need to be convicted of anything to be pardoned. It’s like immunity, but it’s preemptively coming from the president. All is forgiven.
Rhodesian Selous Scouts in the 1970s?”
“The Albanians became more radically Islamist during the 1990s the same way that the Irish became more radically Catholic during their conflict with the English in Northern Ireland.”
American troops had been shocked by the pedophilia that they witnessed first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. Known as bacha bazi, or “boy play,” in Pashto, this modern-day sex slavery was abhorrent to Westerners but accepted or at least tolerated by many in Central Asia and the Middle East.
luck was the residue of preparation.
Three Sips of Gin, by Tim Bax, about the Selous Scouts and pseudoterrorist operations in Rhodesia.
“There are only two plots in all literature: a person goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town.”
