Discussion for article #233196
I have to admit a pattern of reckless serial prevarication does appear to have emerged with this one. Those with thin shells should not sit upon high ledges. I learned that from Mother Goose.
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Preposterous stories? How so? A lot of soldiers prefer Burger King over McDonald’s.
Hopefully Mr. Williams has invested in inflated salary wisely…I suspect that it will be reduced considerably in the very near future.
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My vote goes for- he never sits in the anchor chair again.
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Oh the irony is thick here…
One alleged ex-seal says it’s “highly unlikely”…
…yet “Special Operations Command spokesman James Krohne told the Huffington Post that journalists do sometimes embed with SEAL teams”
Another hit piece on Mr. Williams by TPM. Crap journalism to defame a crap journalist. Oh the irony.
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OK, let’s get something clearly understood: THERE IS NO SEAL TEAM SIX!!!
There WAS a SEAL Team 6, but it was disestablished in 1987! The personnel and gear were transferred to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, better known as the DEVGRU.
Secondly; any helos used to transport DEVGRU operators would have come from the ARMY’S 160th Special Forces Aviation Command.
How do I know this? I was in the 160th. I’ll say no more about that.
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It depends upon whether it’s a regular SEAL Team, or the DEVGRU. Regular SEAL Teams are operationally-controlled by USNSOCOM (US Navy Special Operations Command), while DEVGRU is operationally-controlled by JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command).
JSOC has direct operation control of DEVGRU, parts of the 160th Special Forces Aviation Command, parts of USAF 24th Special Tactical Wing, parts of the 75th Infantry Regiment (RANGERS) and the 1st Special Forces Operation Detachment-Delta (a.k.a.: Delta Force).
JSOC and USNSOCOM have different rules for how and when journalists are allowed to be embedded with operations forces.
Well, then instead of speculating I’ll ask you: How likely do you think it would be that one of those guys would send Williams his knife that way? Sounded like B.S. narcissistic fantasizing to me. I just don’t think you’d give some newsie, no matter how well known, a piece of gear just because he spoke to you.
I’m sorry, but while Williams seems like a nice guy, there are simply too many stories of his that sound like total BS. I’ve yet to see anything that suggests he fabricated news stories, so that’s good. But still…someone who lies about their personal stories shouldn’t be in journalism.
And really, if the only defense of his fantasy-sounding stories is that it’s possible they’re true…that’s not good enough. It’s possible I’m the real John Rambo. It’s possible my house in Austin was infiltrated by armed gangs during Katrina and I had my life saved by a cop. It’s even possible my car got peppered with bullets coming home from work yesterday, and I was only saved by my atheist bible. But it’s doubtful anyone would defend me unless I had some sort of confirmation of these things being true.
Williams sounds like someone who likes to entertain people with a good story, but that’s not really a trait I’m looking for in a journalist if the stories aren’t true. And he’s simply got too many stories that sound fake. Not that they couldn’t be true, but sound fake enough that they need confirmation to be believed. But all the same, I really liked him on 30 Rock.
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AGREE! The opinion of an ex-SEAL with a personal agenda ax to grind. Watch for it. I think it’s clear now that BW lied about the extent of his involvement with the RPG-downed helicopter. He was, however, IN the convoy of copters on the particular equipment delivery run.
I have little doubt that he was also an embed with ST6 at some time. It’s bad enough to inflate the degree of one’s experience, but a whole order of magnitude worse (pathological) to fabricate a story of embed with America’s most famous naval special forces unit.
I hate the self-referential, infotainment posturing of all new broadcasts, local or national. I miss Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, et. al. I’m sick to death of “person of the week”, puppy rescues, flat earth/round earth false equivalencies and all the other feel good bullshit that passes for news on broadcast and cable.
I doubt Williams will return to his anchor chair. His humiliation is deep and self-inflicted. Let’s not be overly quick to pile on with every rumor that comes up.
LD
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That ex-SEAL is as full of shit as the media(another word for bullshit?) man Brian Williams. For every 2 or 3 SEALs who keeps to the code of silence there is one who could give a fuck and lies and blabs about whatever to whoever like Chris Kyle who beat up senior citizen SEAL Jesse Venture (in his mind - lost a slander lawsuit) because Jesse said SEALs deserve to die, he also shot 30+ people during Katrina in New Orleans… the list of bullshit goes on.
But yeah the “don’t look em in the eyes” sounds like someone having fun with Williams.
The SEALs to trust aren’t running to the media,writing books and and giving quotes with their names attached or claiming solo credit for team missions.
The helicopter that crashed wasn’t a Blackhawk, not that details matter Brian.
Would anyone be left at Fox News with this level of truth telling as the rule?
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A little off topic, but I worked or a very capable man in the late 80’s in a financial group he had founded.
When he learned that I had been an intel analyst in the early 60’s, he let loose with his tales of having been a CIA operative. They seemed all quite plausible as I knew a great deal of the Cold War history surrounding his tales.
I had no clear reason to doubt what he told me. There are, after all, plenty of ex-intel people running around. Like Willy Loman, the late salesman, we’re a dime a dozen.
There were two men in the group who knew “Roger” for years. They told me he had never been in the CIA, indeed, never even in uniform. He had fabricated his stories and told them so many times he evidently had come to believe them himself.
i guess we’ve so glamorized military, intel and spy heroes in books and film that the temptation to invent cloak and dagger tales is just too great. One irony is that once in such jobs, they’re mostly quite boring.
Except for his wild imagination, he was a nice guy to work for. He treated his people well and was rather generous.
None of us ever challenged his stories. We let him have his fun.
One comment here about a week ago was by a TPM reader who mentioned his dad’s tales of Vietnam. Problem is his dad never left NY state.
And so it goes.
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“I can’t even remember an embed with a SEAL unit. And especially at SEAL Team Six? Those guys don’t take journalists with them on missions.”
Funny, if I read Brian’s account, it said he flew into Baghdad with them. Not on a mission. But if Brian wants to put paid to these rumors, show the knife, show the piece of the helicopter.
At this point, it seems TPM has merely re-reported HuffPo gossip. Some SEAL’s opinion that Williams’ story about embedding with the SEALS “sounds” preposterous isn’t exactly a confirmed story. Merely piling on with some SEAL’s opinion, which has not been otherwised confirmed, hardly seems fair.
Regarding the helicopter brouhaha, from some of the reading I’ve done over the years on some of the research that has been undertaken to study human memory, my understanding is that ALL of us are prone to distorted, sometimes even false memories, and more so in times of extreme duress – even though none of us like to think we are. None of us wants to believe our memory could play such tricks on us, but the science suggests otherwise. So I’ve been willing to give Williams some benefit of the doubt. IF it is confirmed that his SEALS story is untrue, then I will have to revise my opinion.
This seems to be a question of “embedding” or “sharing a transport flight.” He might have shared a transport flight. That’s not embedding. The quote from the former Seal clearly refutes “embedding” and going on missions. However, Williams quote from the article does mention “…or who they were after,” which makes it seem like they would tell him who they were after?
You know a public figure is in trouble when the negative articles go from actual evidence of misdeeds to “someone says they don’t believe them, just cuz.”
Yes, that one sentence take all credibility away from this article.
Just because Williams told a few BS stories, does not mean everything he ever said is a lie. I see no credible info in this story, just tabloid nonsense.
What crap journalism… so an ex-seal is effectively saying “I think” without any linkage to the actual Seal team 6 and the article title comes out as if this is a fact?!
What next… interviewing kids on a playground and having a title of “Bobby says Brian Williams is a liar pants on fire!” ??
Either have some hard facts or shut the fuck up with the fake inflammatory article titles.
It seems as though the more you peel the onion, the worse it gets. If it had only been that one fabrication, maybe Williams could have survived, but now no way!