"60 Minutes" Obama Interview on Sunday

I hope Patch readers heard 60 Minutes on Sunday night as President Barack Obama was interviewed at length about Osama bin Laden, and Andy Rooney did a great one minute spot that almost fit my service in WWII.

During early reporting on the bin Laden raid, it was mentioned that he was finally buried in the Arabian Sea. This indicated that the raid might have come from there also.

This troubled me when I looked at my globe, and it seemed that would have been over 500 miles to make the raid, probably over three hours each way. Logistically that would not work.

I recently lured one of my relatives to be a member of O'Brien Post 177 in Eureka.  He is a skilled airman, a grad of the Air Academy, and more recently was sent to Afghanistan to serve with a joint service group at an air base there. We agreed to keep in contact so I could be aware of our actions there to the extent that he could communicate.

He could not comment except to the extent that the Seals had trained in Afghanistan for the raid.

Later I learned on CNN that the time table for the raid called for about 60 minutes to get there, 40 minutes to do the job, then it happened that when the helicopter was blown up, it took about 5 minutes for the authorities to determine that it was not a local aircraft, plus about 20 minutes to respond in the middle of the night. By that time, the raiders were well on their way back to their base, which more or less fit the timetable I had established based on my training in the Marine Combat Intelligence School, 66 years ago.

So that is where I agreed with Andy Rooney last night, who said he complained when he was drafted out of college, but he learned more in his four years in service than he would have learned in school.

In my case, the Mizzou ROTC course I took did prepare me for the Marine Corps, helping me guide my service there, where they recognized my potential and finally put me to work in FMF-Pac:  Fleet Marine Force-Pacific Headquarters, becoming probably one of the highest ranking PFCs in the Corps in terms of access to those who were heading up the war in the Pacific.