Navy SEALs Punished for 'Medal of Honor' Breach

Navy SEALs Punished for 'Medal of Honor' Breach
Nov 09, 2012
Associated Press
by ROBERT BURNS

WASHINGTON - Seven members of the secretive Navy SEAL Team 6, including one involved in the mission to get Osama bin Laden, have been punished for disclosing classified information, senior Navy officials said Thursday.

Four other SEALs are under investigation for similar alleged violations, one official said.

The SEALs are alleged to have divulged classified information to the maker of a video game called "Medal of Honor: Warfighter."

Each of the seven received a punitive letter of reprimand and a partial forfeiture of pay for two months. Those actions generally hinder a military member's career.

The deputy commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Adm. Garry Bonelli, issued a statement acknowledging that nonjudicial punishments had been handed out for misconduct, but he did not offer any details.

"We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do as sailors in the United States Navy," Bonelli said. He alluded to the importance of honoring nondisclosure agreements that SEALs sign.
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‘Sick’ By ‘Call of Duty 3′ Commercials?

It looks like John Nolte is upset over a lot more than a series of Tweets from Luke Russert. Right here I need to mention that while I do know who Luke Russert is, I gave up watching cable news a long time ago. Occasionally I watch CNN and check their site along with the other "news" stations but if you read this blog often, it's pretty obvious I have little use for them. The reason is none of them are really paying much attention to the troops or our veterans yet their stories make the news in their hometown newspapers and TV stations news coverage every single day of the year. I guess they don't deserve the same kind of attention as political candidates or celebrities in the minds of producers, but it has been that way for a long time. The beginning of war is worth covering but they end up moving on soon afterwards. They want the two hour Hollywood ending to war, as gory and glorified as it can be. It would be their greatest joy if they could direct the ending of wars making sure they got there to capture it all on film and telling the generals to wait until they got set up. What happens to them is ignored unless something catastrophic happens and many of them die in the same event. What happens to them when they come home is also ignored unless one of them commits some type of crime. This all leaves the general public with the impression that what they see on the news is all there is.

MSNBC’s Luke Russert Is Made ‘Sick’ By ‘Call of Duty 3′ Commercials: ‘Doesn’t Reflect Costs of War’
by John Nolte
This is a good time to bring up something that’s been bothering me for a couple of years now. As someone who has made his way in the world all on my own and without the help of rich parents or family connections, do I resent the fact that Tim Russert’s son Luke has been shot by the cannon of nepotism into a job men twice his age and with ten times his experience only dream of?
Actually, no.
This is how the world works. Relationships matter and that’s life. I do, however, resent the fact that he’s not up to the job and that every time he’s on MSNBC talking about his Congressional beat I get “Bugsy Malone” flashbacks.
And just to keep the movie metaphors flowing, there’s also that whole “Vertigo” vibe, where Luke is Kim Novak and MSNBC is the sad and twisted Jimmy Stewart trying to creepily recreate someone they lost by dressing some wannabe up to look just like them. Whatever’s going on between MSNBC and Luke Russert. it’s not healthy.
And what better proof of that than this series of sanctimonious tweets from Russert where he laments how “sick” a video game commercial makes him feel because it doesn’t “reflect the costs of war”:

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Anyway back to this piece that really got my attention this morning. I have no clue who John Nolte is. Frankly, after reading this, I don't want to know who he is. "Call of Duty" commercials make me sick too just as when this video game first came out. It bothers me because so many people in this country can spend hour after hour playing this game of war but can't seem to spend a couple of minutes paying attention to the real ones going on. They can score points by killing people and then replay to have them alive again, but that isn't real life. They don't know how many real servicemen and women have died or lost limbs anymore than they know about how many committed suicide when they got back home and couldn't stop replaying the real life action in their minds.

The other thing is that the men and women serving in real combat are the same age as most of the people playing these war video games. Most go into the military right out of high school. This is why I am sick of the games played and the commercials for them. John Nolte seems more troubled by the fact that Luke Russert has his job and just used this to attack him instead of the problem stations like MSNBC really have. The fact that they just don't care enough about what is really going on in real life for the men and women serving this country today or the veterans who served it yesterday. I resent the fact that people will take the opportunity to use the military when they want to make a point that has nothing to do with them.

The Battle Over the Battle of Fallujah

Mr. Tamte, who are you fooling? $20 million was not about honoring them but about making money. Excuse me but if you wanted to honor them and make people understand what it was like, then you'd be closer to it doing it the way Ken Burns does it, not by turning it into a video game. I have no doubt you care about them but it seems you spent a lot of time and money for your own sake and not their's or the family members of the fallen. What do you think $20 million could have done for any of the organizations trying to care for them because they didn't play a game, they lived thru it? What do you think that kind of money could have done for the families of the fallen or for the wounded? I'm sure you and your employees could have found a lot better way of honoring them than to do this.

The Battle Over the Battle of Fallujah
A videogame so real it hurts.

By Dan Ephron NEWSWEEK
Published Jun 6, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jun 15, 2009


Peter Tamte was months away from completing his dream project—turning the largest urban battle of the Iraq War into a videogame—when it all seemed to fall apart. The 75 employees of one of his companies, Atomic Games, had worked on the endeavor for nearly four years. They'd toiled to make Six Days in Fallujah as realistic as possible, weaving in real war footage and interviews with Marines who had fought there. But now relatives of dead Marines were angry, and the game's distributor and partial underwriter had pulled out of Tamte's project. On May 26, he got on the phone to Tracy Miller, whose son was killed by a sniper in Fallujah, and tried to win her over by arguing that the game honors the Marines. Miller listened politely, but remained skeptical. "By making it something people play for fun, they are trivializing the battle," she told NEWSWEEK.

Tamte is not above triviality. A second company he runs, Destineer, makes games with titles like Indy 500 and Fantasy Aquarium. But the 41-year-old executive says he's now attempting something more serious: a documentary-style reconstruction that will be so true to the original battle, gamers will almost feel what it was like to fight in Fallujah in November 2004. At his studio in Raleigh, N.C., Tamte has been helped by dozens of Fallujah vets who have advised him on the smallest details, from the look of the town to the operation of the weapons. And he's staked the fate of his company on the success of the $20 million project. "If for some reason it doesn't work, we'll have to think about making some very significant changes to the studio," he says.
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/200861?GT1=43002

Konami Corp pulls Fallujah video game!

Score one for respect! War is not a game and turning Fallujah into one is the biggest insult to the service of the troops and lives lost.

Company pulls plug on 'Fallujah' war video game
By BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer


The publisher behind a video game based on one of the Iraq war's fiercest battles has pulled the plug on the title, called "Six Days in Fallujah."

A spokeswoman for Japanese game company Konami Corp. confirmed Tuesday the company is no longer publishing the game, which was set to go on sale early next year.

The game, which was still in development, sought to re-create the November 2004 Fallujah battle from the perspective of a U.S. Marine fighting against insurgents. Fallujah had been an insurgent holdout until U.S. forces stormed it in one of the war's most intense ground battles.

"Six Days" was developed by another company, Atomic Games, with input from more than three dozen Marines. Before deciding not to publish the game, Konami had advertised it as a realistic shooting game "unlike any other," combining "authentic weaponry, missions and combat set against the gripping story of the U.S. Marines on the ground."

But the game was criticized by some veterans, victims' families and others who called it inappropriate.
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http://www.kansascity.com/811/story/1167553.html