Live data from Hacker News

Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

nytimes.com

221–230 of 278 posts

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#221
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the cited sources come from the U.S. military, government, or intelligence community. These institutions have a long record of politically expedient deception - from WMD in Iraq, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to the bombing of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza - so their claims should not be taken at face value. The Letters from Abbottabad also fall into this category. Their timing and content are unusually convenient f…

When French marsouins killed Droukel, one of the first thing they did was take a picture, then sent it to their friends in the navy, operational security be damned (and from what I've heard, that triggered a lot of jokes). The french troops there were more or less aware of the kill way before it was confirmed, which took days. It might be because Seals are tighter at opsec than Marsouins for sure, and that the Cia wa…

Yeah, agreed that on the balance of probabilities, it happened more or less as described. But I also think the strongest evidence for that is that Trump didn't use any discrepancy to attack the prior Obama administration in his first term.

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialist missions normally have custom RoE not always mirroring those in conventional theatre, but nevertheless appropriate for the mission specifics.

Yes, but this it's clearly forbidden to make civilians object of attack, and it doesn't matter whether you risk discovery or whatever. Surely the RoE should be at least as restrictive as IHL. I think it might be legal to hide the body, but if you do so you must do something to ensure that it can be recovered, either informing the enemy afterwards or some other measure to that effect.

Does a civilian become a combatant or pose a threat if they could derail, though awareness of your presence, your mission to prevent NK making civilians the object of attack on massive scale with nuclear weapons?

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#223

What evidence exists that the supposed mission occurred?

> The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law. > The White House declined to comment. > This…

Your post seems to have some parts out-of-order or missing perhaps?

But, in summary, we should take the New York Times' word for it?

Bwahahahahaaaah!

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialist missions normally have custom RoE not always mirroring those in conventional theatre, but nevertheless appropriate for the mission specifics.

I don't think it's so much about the Rules of Engagement but more about "Don't indiscriminately murder people"

Indiscriminate would be nuclear weapons on cities. This mission’s ultimate goal was to prevent NK doing that.

If you could stop NK doing that, would you pull the trigger? Would you make a targeted kill of a person who compromised that mission by discovering it?

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could they have panicked? Surely this would've been a scenario that would've been planned for. I assume they would've trained for the crazy situation of encountering North Koreans in North Korea.

What do you think the plan was for "the North Korean military has already found us and is trying to capture or kill us?"

Retreat? This isn't a war, you can't just drop into another country and start killing people. At no point was it morally or legally justified to have engaged in combat in this situation. At the very least they need to verify it was a military target, and even then it's not justified.

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. This does seem like an operation gone wrong, and I certanly condemn the killing of innocent civilians, but it's shocking how quick HN commenters are to throw America under the bus based on reporting from a leak. There's so much information about this operation that we simply don't have, including the risk/benefit analysis, the other operations that were successes that we don't know about, etc. I'm not saying Amer…

Threads like this -make me- more anti-American. "I certainly condemn the killing of innocent civilians". No you don't. That's BS you're telling yourself so you can feel unconflicted about what should be a simple moral calculus. I am not sure what certifies your moral; God or logic or whatever that tells you that how you live your life is justified. I do know that I have morals, though. "Don't murder people" is pretty…

So if you kill someone in self defense you simply don’t have any morals? What these agents did was obviously wrong, but how does it help to simplify morality like that?

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#227

Anyone willing to speculate what the target and electronic device could’ve been?

The story doesn't really make sense as written. At least it's hard to imagine something remote enough to be accessed undetected from shore and be important enough to be worth tapping. Then somehow you get the data back out without being detected?

Feels like the mission happened with a different goal and this is the cover story.

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#228
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US navy literally wrote the book, and gave it to Luttrell. This has recently come to light. Now if that’s not propaganda then I don’t know what is.

Luttrell didn't have anything to do with it. The writer is a British fiction writer. He did a one hour interview with Lutrell, that's the entire involvement Luttrell had with it.

That sucks if true, although I don't expect everyone military special forcers operator to also be a great author on top of their other amazing skills, I expect it to be somewhat ghost written, but one hour? Perhaps the ghostwriter used other interviews and had access to other reports?

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the plan was for "the North Korean military has already found us and is trying to capture or kill us?"

Retreat? This isn't a war, you can't just drop into another country and start killing people. At no point was it morally or legally justified to have engaged in combat in this situation. At the very least they need to verify it was a military target, and even then it's not justified.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that. But any plan they had clearly did disagree. Context, please.

Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission

#230
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN.

As an American, he's exactly right and it's not flamebait at all. Hell he's probably American too.
Post reply on HN