local community hears from decorated navy seal rob o'neill
janel shoun-smith |
local community hears from decorated navy seal rob o’neill
to see the entire conversation with rob o’neill click here.
rob o’neill, one of the most highly-decorated combat veterans of our time and a former navy seal who says he is the man who shot osama bin laden, regaled an audience full of community members and military veterans with tales from the front lines of combat in the middle east over the past two decades at the latest now that you ask… forum on april 23.
as a member of the prestigious navy seals, o’neill was a member of seal team six, the counter-terrorism unit which was sent in to abbottabad, pakistan, on may 2, 2011, to attack the compound where osama bin laden was located. he has been deployed more than a dozen times and held combat leadership roles in more than 400 combat missions in four different theaters of war.
he was also involved in several missions that have made their way to the hollywood screen, including the extraction of marcus luttrell, whose story was told in “lone survivor;” the rescue of captain richard phillips, who was taken hostage by somali pirates, the subject of the film “captain phillips;” and the shooting of osama bin laden, the mastermind behind the sept. 11 attacks on the world trade center, portrayed in “zero dark thirty.”
o’neill came to campus to sit down with tom ingram, a longtime political operative and host of the now that you ask… conversation series held each semester by lipscomb’s nelson and sue andrews institute for civic leadership.
o’neill related his personal account of shooting osama bin laden* as well as stories about the famously brutal eight-month underwater demolition seal training, near misses in the field and the emotional stress on his family.
the navy seal from butte. mont., said he originally wanted to be a marine, but got talked into the navy by the recruiter because the marine recruiter was out. he ended up on so many famous missions by luck, he said, “we happened to be in the right rotation at the right time.”
in abbottabad, o’neill was toward the back of the team at first as they entered the home. “the whole time i didn’t do anything. i just watched really cool guys do really cool stuff,” he said.
“but as we went upstairs, i found myself getting closer to the front, because the other guys were doing other things, and when we got upstairs, (bin laden) was closer to me than you are right now,” o’neill said, motioning to the few feet separating himself and host ingram.
“how do you keep your cool in such intense situations?” ingram asked
“we accepted death. that was a one-way mission. we weren’t coming back,” o’neill said.
“how do you accept that? the reality of a one-way mission?” ingram asked.
“because we’re doing this for the single mom who went to work on tuesday and an hour later decided to jump to her death because it was better than burning alive (in the world trade center). we thought of her. she’s worth it,” o’neill said.
within seconds of the attack on the world trade center on sept. 11, 2001, his military comrades in the navy were speculating that osama bin laden was behind the attacks, he said.
o’neill, whose account of the shooting has not been accepted by other navy seals, said he decided to go public with his story “to help the families of lost loved ones.” last year, he donated a t-shirt to the 9/11 memorial museum and after a private tour, he came upon a group of families of 9/11 victims.
“i started to talk about (the abbottabad mission), and to see their reaction to it, to see their emotion, i said to myself, ‘okay i’ll just tell the whole story,’” he said.
a friend of his from fox news was there filming his donation, so they decided later to make a documentary about o’neill’s account.
by working with the families of victims of 9/11, he learned that “to have a real face and a real name, that said ‘i was there, this happened and we did it for you,’” helped bring peace and comfort to victims’ families, he said. one woman told him, “‘your team didn’t close a chapter, you closed a whole book, and i am not afraid anymore.’”
o’neill, who has now left the military, said he hears support from some of his fellow navy seals, from others he hears disagreement, but he has never had second thoughts about going public. “it’s worth it to help families,” he said.
* o’neill’s account of the shooting has not been confirmed or denied by american military authorities.