Audio: SEAL Describes Firing on Qaeda Body to See It 'Flinch'
Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed in May 2011, an investigation by Matthew Cole of The Intercept finds, and after the Qaeda leader was killed, a SEAL Team 6 member “canoed” him -- that is, fired a single bullet at close range into the forehead so the brain was exposed.
The article further reports that SEAL Team 6 operators canoed, hacked, and skinned dead or dying militants with enough frequency that several former team members compared the problem to a virus at the unit, a virus they said senior leaders would do nothing to eradicate.
Among those implicated was Britt Slabinski, a legendary member of SEAL Team 6 and a Navy Cross winner. He was barred from SEAL Team 6 after internal inquiries determined that he had ordered a beheading, The Intercept reports. In another operation, he was said to have given an illegal order to kill all males his soldiers encountered on that mission, regardless of whether they were armed.
The Intercept says it obtained audio of Slabinski from years earlier describing as “funny stuff” and therapeutic the shooting of a dead Qaeda fighter “about 20 times” to watch the body flinch.
The audio is here.
