Navy SEAL to Obama: 'Take the handcuffs off'

Navy SEAL to Obama: 'Take the handcuffs off'

'We are there to put bullets in bad guys. We are not there to win hearts and minds'

Published: 3 hours ago

A former Navy SEAL says he is honored to have served with his elite unit but is incredibly frustrated by a military bureaucracy that ties the hands of service members, slapped him with trumped-up charges and tried to sully his reputation after leaving the U.S. Navy.

Carl Higbie is author of the brand new book, “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: A SEAL’s Story.” Higbie served two tours in Iraq in a SEAL unit. He said the second tour aggravated him and his comrades because overly cautious commanders refused to let them go on any missions.

“It was extremely frustrating,” Higbie told WND and Radio America. “We were sitting over there as a SEAL fighting force. This is what we were designed to do. We weren’t allowed to action missions.

“The reason we weren’t allowed to do anything was because the military at that time, because of Barack Obama, had become so politicized and so top-heavy in their bureaucracy, they wanted to end the war, but they didn’t want to end the war by actually fighting and winning it. They wanted to end the war simply by calling us the victors.”

Higbie said the civilian leaders and the top officers lost sight of what the military is for.

“We’re soldiers in the United States military, the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known,” he said. “We are there to put bullets in bad guys. We are not there to win hearts and minds. We are not there to rebuild schools, as we have been tasked to do recently. We are there to kill the bad guy.”

At the very end of that deployment, Higbie’s and his fellow SEALs finally got a mission: to capture the high-value target known as Al-Isawi, otherwise known as the “Butcher of Baghdad.” Al-Isawi was responsible for killing U.S. forces and hanging their corpses from a bridge in Fallujah years earlier.

Thanks to elite skill and precise intelligence, the mission went splendidly. Al-Isawi was captured alive. Higbie said one SEAL mate deserves the most credit.

“The hero of the mission is Matt McCabe. This guy tackled the butcher on target,” Higbie said. “[Al-Isawi] had a gun, so [McCabe] was within his legal authority to shoot him. But McCabe knew if he was to tackle this guy and bring him back that we’d be more likely to get good intelligence to potentially save American lives.”

But shortly after Al-Isawi was placed in custody, the nightmare for the SEALs began. The prisoner showed officers blood on his clothes, and Navy commanders decided the SEALs were to blame. They demanded to know who struck the prisoner. The entire team insisted none of them had.

“I’m 240 pounds. This guy was six feet, 130 pounds,” Higbie said. “If I had hit him, he would have known about it. And we had an oral surgeon testify to the fact that there was no abuse here; this was a self-inflicted bite wound. NCIS cleared us. Our SEAL leadership chain of command is the one that hung us out, and it was a travesty.”

How much blood were we talking about?

“Maybe a quarter of a teaspoon,” Higbie said. “Your gums bleed more when you brush your teeth.”

While defending themselves against false accusations, Higbie still wondered why anyone would really care if they had roughed up Al-Isawi.

“Who cares anyway? Even if we did abuse this guy, who cares? That’s the problem. We’re developing into such a politically correct nature that our troops are getting sacrificed at the altar of political correctness,” said Higbie, accusing bureaucrats of losing the war by being so careful as to avoid any bad press.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/05/navy-seal-to-obama-take-the-handcuffs-off/#9gIhhhLvaqSRZPHS.99

i know all too well what this guy is talking about.when i was there the rules of engagement were ridiculous. the troops might as well have had their hands tied.