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Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden blames DC 'bureaucrats' for making warfighters think twice about pulling trigger
Published November 26, 2019
Retired Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, who is credited with the killing of Usama bin Laden, said Tuesday on "Outnumbered Overtime" that the Eddie Gallagher case is a result of runaway "bureaucrats" in Washington D.C., and will make troops second guess themselves the next time they need to pull the trigger.
President Trump intervened on Gallagher's behalf after a San Diego jury sentenced him to a reduced rank and four months of confinement, which he has already served, for posing with the body of a dead ISIS fighter, which was considered the least serious of the seven charges he was facing.
The Navy then attempted to remove Gallagher's SEAL Trident pin as punishment, but the president objected and restored Gallagher's rank. When the Navy continued to pursue disciplinary action, despite Trump's objection, Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer was asked to step down by the Pentagon.
"Fire them. Good. We need this." O'Neill said. "If you want to lose a war, get lawyers, politicians, and four-star generals involved... It's all politics."
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"I'm not trying to say fire all of them," he added, but argued that soldiers in combat make split-second, life-or-death decisions and should not be worried about politicians disagreeing with their moves.
"A U.S. Marine is turning a corner in daylight in Fallujah, and he has half a second to make a life-and-death decision on who he's going to shoot, but he's wondering, 'oh am I going to go to jail if I shoot this bad guy?' That's where it gets to. And all these policies -- it's a lot of the swamp, to be honest. A lot of the bureaucrats in D.C."
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O'Neill said America's focus should be on the terrorist threat of ISIS and the activities of Al Qaeda, instead of debating the fate of Gallagher's Trident pin.
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"It's mind-boggling to me," he said. "We should be concentrating on the remainder of ISIS, what Al Qaeda's doing, what's going on in Yemen -- as opposed to all the nonsense in the swamp."
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