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5b247f5
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Where does a man go when there are no more corners to turn, when he's running out of hope, out of luck, out of time?
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Doug Stanton |
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They'd been afloat now without food, water, shelter, or sleep for over forty hours. Of the 1,196 crew13 members who'd set sail from Guam three days earlier, probably no more than 600 were still alive. In the previous twenty-four hours alone, at least 200 had likely slipped beneath the waves or been victims of shark attack. Since the sinking, each boy had been floating through the hours asking himself the same hard question: Will I live, or ..
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Doug Stanton |
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McCoy, drained and hollow-eyed, couldn't take his eyes off the life vest belonging to the boy who'd slipped away from the group during the night. The empty vest spooked McCoy. All its straps were still tightly tied-it looked like some trick that Houdini might've played. Then McCoy peered into the water and got another shock: the boy was floating below him, spread-eagled, about fifteen feet below the surface. He lay motionless until a curren..
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Doug Stanton |
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63a6b46
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The sharks had, in fact, remained a constant presence throughout the men's ordeal, even during the daylight hours. Not long after [navy pilot] Gwinn showed up, a massive shark attack--involving an estimated thirty fish--had, in about fifteen minutes, taken some sixty boys perched on a floater net.
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Doug Stanton |
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This was Special Forces' rule number one: let men experience failure so they never fail again. And by failing, they will learn how to be successful soldiers.
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Doug Stanton |
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For the survivors, the disaster of the Indy is their My Lai massacre or Watergate, a touchstone moment of historic disappointment: the navy put them in harm's way, hundreds of men died violently, and then the government refused to acknowledge its culpability. What's amazing, however, is that these men, unlike contemporary generations who've been disappointed by bad government, are not bitter. Somehow, a majority brushed aside their feelings..
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Doug Stanton |
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Later, Dean would see Atta's fighters show up carrying AK-47s, and there with them would be their sons, carrying spare magazines. Behind the sons walked even younger sons, carrying nothing. Dean understood that in this kind of fighting, the sons who carried nothing would pick up either a gun or a magazine if the fathers or brothers were killed. The look on the faces of the kids seemed to indicate to Dean that they expected to die.
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Doug Stanton |
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Together, they wanted to return the Middle East to the fourteenth century, into a golden age ruled by Islamic law.
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Doug Stanton |
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ffccd26
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the sun set . . . with guillotine-like speed this close to the equator.
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Doug Stanton |
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On November 5, to kick off the final, coordinated assault on Baluch, Stu Mansfield, positioned with Atta at the warlord's mountaintop compound, ordered the drop of a bomb called a BLU-82, which Mansfield called "the Motherfucker of All Bombs." A few minutes after dawn, barreling toward earth was the largest non-nuclear explosive device in the United States' arsenal."
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Doug Stanton |
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18a7140
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Accurate data on shark attacks on World War II servicemen may never be known since medical records did not note them. In fact, the navy was sufficiently concerned about loss of morale that it discouraged public mention of the menace.
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Doug Stanton |
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5ba0084
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Before their hurried flight from the city two weeks earlier, the Taliban had left the weapons and smeared feces on the walls and windows. Every photograph, every painting, every rosebush had been torn up, smashed, stomped, ruined. Nothing beautiful had been left behind.
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Doug Stanton |
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5b87b71
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Ali was horrified and enraged when in March of 2001 the Taliban dynamited the stone Buddhas that had stood watch over the town for centuries. What man had the right to write the future by blowing up the past?)
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Doug Stanton |
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e98f217
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Other objects found in shark stomachs include a suit of armor, a barrel of nails, a roll of tar paper, coal, raincoats, shoes, plastic bags, goats, sheep, lizards, snakes, chicken, reindeer, and monkeys.
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Doug Stanton |
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bf67e90
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On a training mission, he'd watched as Nightstalker pilots cut their own landing zone using the rotors of the helicopter as giant hedge clippers. They'd been landing in a pine forest and he marveled as the helo dropped into the hole of its own making--pine
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Doug Stanton |
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8875a9d
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Looking over to his left, he watches a rocket-propelled grenade race in and blow up one of the M-60 machine-gun positions. Just then he also sees a lone, tall figure, an American, charge the position, fire, and retake the gun. Even in the dark, amid the explosions, he can recognize the silhouette of the gunner as Michael Bradshaw. Stan is filled with joy that Bradshaw has rushed to the position to counter the enemy's attack; his decision to..
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Doug Stanton |