No Easy Day

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden

by Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer

I am always intrigued by the behind the scenes books or movies about the hair raising missions of our nations Special Forces.  It makes me feel better knowing that they are on our side.  One thing that does strike me funny is how open they are now.  I ready Jesse Ventura's book I Ain't Got Time to Bleed in 2000.  He was the famous wrestler/ Governor and now off the wall conspiracy theory person.  At one time he was a Navy Seal just like the guy that wrote his book.  In his book he was clear that a Seal NEVER talks about a mission and he was mum about that whole part of his life.  Now just a dozen years later it seems the smoke has barely cleared from the Seal's rifle before he is penning his next best seller.   I'm not saying that's good or bad.  Just strange.

No Easy Day is a well written book by a guy that at the beginning says he changed the names to protect the Seals.  So I'm not sure if Mark Owen is his real name or not.  I think it is.  Owens had a heck of a career.  The book chronicles his Hell weeks working to be a seal after growing up in the colds of Alaska.  He was in on the Seal team that saved the ship Captain kidnapped by pirates (Seal snipers shot the three bad guys on the high seas).  As part of Seal Team Six he was in on many crazy missions.

I had just seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty not long before reading this book so I was very familiar with the events as Owen described them in detail.  I found it interesting and sad the way he described how the liberals were ruining their fight against the terrorists.  Treating them like US citizens.  Offering them lawyers.  An Army Ranger had to go on all missions to make sure no one's rights were violated.  If the Terrorist threw down his gun they had to arrest him and offer a lawyer only to fight them again a month later.  That part is really sad.

The book is a good one.  It gives insight to what goes on with these missions and what the build up was like in the take down of Bin Laden.