Recently the guys of SEAL Team Six whacked Usama Bin Laden.

Good deal. They deserve a tip of the hat. It was a damned risky mission and it went off pretty well as far as I have heard. Of course, everyone is looking at the guys of Seal Team Six like they are heroes which of course, they are.

Still, let's take a look at the rest of the people that made this mission take place because without them the guys in outfits like our SEAL teams are pretty ineffective.

There were intelligence types, many of them that never left their offices that contributed to their success. There were sneak and peek and CIA types that managed to locate the bastard. The logisticians that figured out how to get the SEALs in and out, the guys on the flattop that gave the guys safe haven and a place to land when they got him.

In short, there was a huge support network that was involved in the mission.

Most people don't take a minute or two out to think about things like this and they ought to.

They seem to think that guys in the SEAL teams just sit around after training sessions thinking up things to do and then they go out and do them.

"Hey, I hear Bin Laden is hanging around in Pakistan. Let's go whack him."

"Nah. Let's save that one for next week after we blow the ammo dump outside of Tora Bora. It's been a couple of weeks since we've blown anything worthwhile up. I could use hearing a loud pop."

"Cool. That was I can make it to my kid's Little League playoffs."

Of course, it's not like that at all.

The SEALs, although they are the visible ones that actually get the job done really have little to say as to where they go and what they do. They are dependent on other people for that, and not just people in the Navy. Getting to Bin Laden took an awful lot of time and effort by an awful lot of non-Naval types and this should be recognized.

Back in the 60s my dad and I wangled a flight line pass to see the Blue Angels and we got to meet a couple of the crews that flew and took care of the airplanes. When my dad was introduced to one of the crew chiefs, he shook hands with him, turned and said to me, "Hotshot pilots are all over the place. This is the guy that keeps things running."

I was mortified at hearing my dad say that until the grinning pilot looked at me and said, "Listen to your dad. All I do is fly it. For every hour I spend fllying this airplane this guy spends a hundred making sure it's ready to go."

There was and still is a lot of truth to that.

While I am not selling the actual operatives short by any means,we ought to remember that for every mission the SEAL operatives go on there are countless hours of work needed to insure that everything goes well.

We owe an awful lot to people we neither see nor hear of.



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