SEAL TEAM 6 lost its freaking mind!

via FoxTrot Alpha.

According to two senior SEAL Team 6 sources, however, the leadership dynamic in Blue Squadron was a failure. By 2007, the command’s leadership was aware that some Blue Squadron operators were using specialized knives to conduct “skinnings.” Using the excuse of collecting DNA, which required a small piece of skin containing hair follicles, operators were taking large strips of skin from dead enemy fighters. The two leading officers at the command, Moore and Szymanski, were informed that small groups in each of the three squadrons were mutilating and desecrating combatants in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, “Devil’s Guard,” published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. The book purported to be a true account of an S.S. officer who with dozens of other soldiers escaped Germany after World War II, joined the French Foreign Legion, and spent years in Vietnam brutalizing the insurgency. The novel, which glorifies Nazi military practices, describes counterinsurgency tactics such as mass slaughter and desecration and other forms of wanton violence as a means of waging psychological warfare against the “savage” Vietnamese.
“These fucking morons read the book ‘The Devil’s Guard’ and believed it,” said one of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders who investigated Slabinski and Blue Squadron. “It’s a work of fiction billed as the Bible, as the truth. In reality, it’s bullshit. But we all see what we want to see.” Slabinski and the Blue Squadron SEALs deployed to Afghanistan were “frustrated, and that book gave them the answers they wanted to see: Terrorize the Taliban and they’d surrender. The truth is that such stuff only galvanizes the enemy.”

Wow.

What is it with SEALs?  I think the first warning signs happened under the leadership of McRaven.  The guy was the "Bull Frog" of the group and pumped up the junior guys in ways that seemed mind boggling.  It didn't help that the administration turned him into a rock star and the rest of the SEALs took his lead and started writing tell all books....but that's neither here nor there.

This is...stunning.  

One other thing. I bet body parts if a Marine or even one of the SEALs brothers in SOCOM an Army Ranger had done this stuff (let's not even mention MARSOC...they got pissed on by SOCOM itself for far less) then we'd be hearing about command firings AND people going to the brig.

For SOCOM and especially SEAL fanboys its gonna be a difficult read (maybe not...the enemy has done far worse and put it on YouTube...but we're suppose to be better than those bastards right?) but read it you should (here).