Craig Whitlock, a journalist focusing on defense and the military, informs us today that in a judicial proceeding that's looking into some funny stuff surrounding the acquisition of certain military equipment, nobody is allowed to refer to "Navy SEALS" even though it's pretty clear the equipment was requisitioned by those very same sailors with the aquatic-mammal aliases.
It seems pretty silly. First, of course, to try to muzzle references to things we want to "protect" can often work out to just attract attention instead. Ergo, the Whitlock article.
Second, I doubt the secrecy has anything to do with real defense secrets or things that need to be kept from "the enemy." Unless the enemy is the public. There's a good chance in this case, that such is the case. The Navy has always been the most publicity-hungry of our armed services. (Well, unless you count the Marines, a branch of the Navy, where the joke always was that a Marine squad has eleven men, versus the Army's ten. Why? The eleventh is the photographer.)
Anyway: Back to the Navy. That's why the SEALS have become such a big deal despite their supposed existence under deep cover, and it's why there hardly ever seems to be a television season without at least one Navy-based show. The SEALS don't mind a bit of good publicity (leaving aside details of tactics and capabilities), but would prefer that "nary a man [would] say a word agin 'em."
But of course the American public is the enemy. Our government makes that quite clear in the way it uses the Patriot Act to spy on us,
Posted by: PiedType | October 25, 2014 at 03:46 PM