"Lone Survivor" (2007) by SEAL Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson was a #1 national best seller. It's billed as "an eyewitness account of operation redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team #10. I was mesmerized by the incredible punishment the SEAL candidates go through in training but I was also dismayed by the true account of the mission. When you get right down to it "Operation Redwing" was a failure of intelligence, strategy and most of all, leadership. At one point in the narration Luttrell comments on how strange it is for Navy SEALS to be deployed on a mission about 10,000 feet in an arid moonscape in Afghanistan. Indeed. Luttrell and his fellow SEALs were on a recon mission to track a gang of enemy insurgents when they became disorientated in the sparse terrain and surrounded by the gang they were tracking. Bad news. Every SEAL was killed except Luttrell. To make matters worse the hastily formed SEAL rescue mission landed in front of an RPG and was wiped out. Luttrell was ultimately taken in by friendly Afghans and rescued by a Army Rangers.
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