Hooah… Oorah… Hooyah… Few sounds grate on the ears of the non-initiated more than the service battle cry. If you have ever been around U.S. Army personnel for an extended period of time, for example, then you have surely heard “hooah” (rhymes with Tua, as in the NFL quarterback) flung about ad nauseam to indicate […]
About Frumentarius
‘First Casualty:’ A Gripping account of the CIA in Afghanistan after 9/11
Special OpsIn the spring of 2002, roughly eight months after the 9/11 attacks, I had returned from a deployment with SEAL Team 8, and had just recently become a plank owner of the newly-formed SEAL Team 10. I was working in the operations shop at the Team, as was common for a junior SEAL officer who […]
Sex, apes, and sci-fi: A review of ‘Theory of Bastards’
LifestylePublished in 2018, and winner of the 2019 Phillip K. Dick Award for Best Science Fiction, “Theory of Bastards” by Canadian-born author Audrey Schulman is really best described not as science fiction — lots of the science in it is real, after all — but rather, as apocalyptic and/or dystopian fiction. However, even those latter […]
How to improve your pull ups like a Navy SEAL
CareerIf you are looking to join the military, or are a current service member thinking of attempting a transition to a special operations unit, then you probably need to improve your pull ups. Hell, if you’re just trying to find a way to stay in shape and build some upper body strength, they won’t hurt […]
The 2 Navy SEALs who climbed (but didn’t summit) Mount Everest
Special OpsAs reported in The Virginian-Pilot this past June, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (SEAL) Scott Moore and his daughter, Sarah, plan to summit North America’s highest peak, Denali, this year to raise money for SEALKIDS, Inc. The nonprofit aims to help Naval Special Warfare members’ children overcome academic challenges through tutoring, testing, and therapy. Moore, […]
20 years later: The post-9/11 generation and where we go from here
FeaturedMy kids were all born between three and seven years after September 11th, 2001. They never knew the world before 9/11: that blissful, post-Cold War era when American global dominance was unrivaled, and when we suffered from now-quaint-seeming anxiety over how to act in a unipolar world where seemingly nothing could challenge our hegemony. Regional […]
How a single frat-house tourniquet helped the Soviets kill American spies
FeaturedA bizarrely ironic tale came to light recently in the wake of the publication of an opinion piece written by Doctors Frank K. Butler and John B. Holcomb in the Wall Street Journal on December 20th, 2020. The original opinion piece by Butler and Holcomb (full disclosure: Butler is the father of this author) makes […]
The Panjshir Railroad: A covert action blueprint to continue evacuations from Afghanistan
FeaturedIf there is one thing that the Central Intelligence Agency does very well, it is insinuate itself into pre-established local resistance networks within foreign countries that share at least some strategic or tactical interest with the United States. Having done so, they can then act in concert with those networks to advance shared interests, whatever […]
Former SEAL and CIA officer on what comes next for US, post-Afghanistan
Military AffairsAs I write this, the United States has just hours before completing its total withdrawal — per its self-imposed August 31 deadline — of all remaining troops from the still-named (for now) Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul, Afghanistan, thus ending the 20-year Afghan War. So what comes next? That is the question everyone […]
RIP Charlie Watts: The 5 best uses of The Rolling Stones’ music in TV and movies
LifestyleThe music-loving world was sad to see the passing of 80-year-old Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts on August 24, 2021, which happened to coincide with the release just days before of a new “Ted Lasso” Apple+ television episode that centered around a Stones’ song from 1967. The band’s music has been used in countless TV […]
