Captain, Family Laud Military 'Heroes'

Capt. Richard Phillips credits Navy

(NEWSER) - Capt. Richard Phillips thought he'd never escape the Somali pirates holding him hostage, MSNBC reports. “I didn't think I'd ever get out of that boat," Phillips tells Matt Lauer in a Today Show interview airing Tuesday. He had resigned himself for the worst. “It was just settling everything, getting ready to die," he says. "You know, saying my last thoughts: Andrea, the kids." More»

(NEWSER) - Navy Seals opened fire on three Somali pirates today when a naval commander made a split-second decision that Capt. Richard Phillips' life was in imminent danger, the New York Times reports. Authorized by President Obama to use force, snipers shot two pirates who had stuck their heads out of the lifeboat's rear hatch, and killed a third through a window in the bow. The destroyer Bainbridge was towing the lifeboat when snipers opened fire. More»

But golfer's agent rejects Hank Haney's claim

(NEWSER) - Tiger Woods considered quitting golf at the height of his career to become a Navy SEAL, according to ex-coach Hank Haney. "I thought, 'Wow, here is Tiger Woods, greatest athlete on the planet, maybe the greatest athlete ever, right in the middle of his prime, basically ready to leave it all behind for a military life,'" Haney writes in his tell-all book about their time together, The Big Miss, reports CBS . More»

White House must stop revealing mission details: Leif Babin

(NEWSER) - President Obama has trotted out the story of how Navy SEALs took down Osama bin Laden quite a few times, and now his administration is doing the same thing with the story of the SEALs rescuing hostages from Somali pirates. It's a disturbing exploitation of the elite unit done for "political gain," writes former Navy SEAL officer Leif Babin in the Wall Street Journal , and it endangers the lives of the special operations forces and their contacts in other countries. More»

Small, special ops teams preferred to large forces

(NEWSER) - Now that a Navy SEAL Team 6 has rescued two hostages being held by Somali pirates and killed Osama bin Laden , you can expect more of these special forces teams in the future, reports the Washington Post . Instead of large-scale military deployments, the Obama administration's preference is now for narrow, tactical uses of force, quick and targeted. More»