The Navy SEALS once again showed the world why they are the best of the best.
Ann Scott Tyson of The Washington Post tells us why:
Before a highly trained team of Navy SEAL snipers opens fire on multiple targets, one of their team members takes a deep breath and begins a countdown.
"There is a countdown, a tempo. It gets everyone on the same sheet, and they release their shot at the same time," said Scott Tyler, who led a SEAL sniper cell in Iraq and now works as a contractor protecting ships from piracy.
"You don't want to drop one guy and have two others with weapons who can start shooting, especially when there is a hostage involved," Tyler said.
In this way, with deadly accuracy, three SEAL snipers fired their rifles in synchrony on Sunday, instantly killing the three pirates who held a ship's captain, American Richard Phillips, at gunpoint, according to military officials and experts familiar with SEAL sniper operations.
The snipers' pinpoint accuracy -- firing from one moving ship onto the bobbing lifeboat after a split-second decision -- was perhaps the main factor in the keeping Phillips, 53, alive, giving President Obama a successful resolution to one of his first international crises.
"It's extremely difficult" to execute such a mission, said one 23-year member of the Navy SEALs who was a sniper and a sniper instructor.
This was the Obama administration first real test in dealing with an international incident. Everyone involved from the president down to the three men who pulled the trigger did an excellent job.
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