SEAL Team Six attrition
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SEAL Team Six attrition is John Kiriakou's response to a recurring claim that the Navy SEALs involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden subsequently died in helicopter crashes and other accidents.

Not unusual

Kiriakou's first point is a base rate. Deaths of this kind are actually not uncommon, he says, because being a Navy SEAL is one of the most dangerous professions in the world.

Not the same men

His second point is that the claim misidentifies who died. The men in question were not specifically the SEALs directly involved in the bin Laden takedown, but SEALs from their broader unit, a population he estimates at a hundred, a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and fifty men. For a high number of them to be killed, whether in accidents or in combat, is very sadly common.

Asked to confirm the distinction, Kiriakou did so without qualification: it is not the same men.

The scale of the unit

His third point corrects a misconception he attributes to films. When people talk about SEAL Team Six, or see it depicted on screen, they imagine a dozen or a dozen and a half men making up the whole unit. In fact, Kiriakou says, several hundred men make up SEAL Team Six, and it is from among those several hundred that the individuals killed in accidents or combat are drawn.

The reasoning is characteristic of his approach to claims about the raid, which he treats as explicable by ordinary institutional facts rather than by concealment; see also bin Laden health rumors and false flags are too hard.

See also

- Osama bin Laden
- Bin Laden health rumors
- False Flags Are Too Hard
