Andy McNab News

The Sun
By Simon Hughes, Virginia Wheeler, Dan Sales and Neil Millard
Published: 03 May 2011

Obama ‘watched him die’

The world’s most evil man was consigned to the dustbin of history yesterday – shot in the head, tied up in a weighted bag and dropped in the ocean.
Osama Bin Laden finally paid the price for atrocities such as 9/11 when he was found by US Special Forces at his luxury lair in Pakistan.

He was killed as he cowered behind his wife – and President Barack Obama watched live via cameras worn by the troops. The 54-year-old warlord was buried in the north Arabian sea, his terror reign over at last.

President Obama’s eyes were glued to a screen showing the dramatic moments leading to the death of Bin Laden.

Go here to read the full article in The Sun

Textbook op by naval elite

By Andy McNab
Ex SAS soldier

“As a military operation, the Navy Seals’ swoop was fantastic – textbook stuff.

It’s not surprising for a group made up of America’s military elite.

They undergo some of the toughest training in the world and have played an important role in the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and also in Vietnam.

Clearly there has been a slow covert operation to make sure the information they were acting on was 100 per cent accurate.

In a situation like this intelligence is the biggest weapon of all. They probably used satellites and local informants to confirm Bin Laden was hiding out in the Abbottabad compound.”

Share/Bookmark

From Duncan Larcombe, Defence Editor, in Sangin
Published: 21 Sep 2010

The Sun stood shoulder to shoulder with our brave boys yesterday – as they finally said goodbye to the Valley of Death.
We were the last newspaper remaining as heroic commandos handed control of once lawless Sangin to the Americans.

In four bloody years wresting the powderkeg town and its district from the grip of the Taliban, more Brit troops have given their lives there than on any other front line in Afghanistan.

As our weary soldiers yesterday left with their heads held high they remembered the 105 comrades killed battling to put an end to the terrorists’ reign of fear and anarchy.

For some, there was frustration at a “job unfinished” – because of the failure to crush EVERY last insurgent bent on making life hell for the district’s long-suffering inhabitants.

Go here to read the full article in The Sun

MyView
By ANDY MCNAB

I AM fed up with armchair generals who say the handover of Sangin to US Forces is a British retreat.

That is 100 per cent crap. We have moved out because at long last the 20,000 US ‘boots on the ground’ finally arrived.

This is a tactical decision. The Brits’ job in Helmand is still to take on the Taliban and protect locals.

Now they can be more evenly deployed. What the Brits achieved in Sangin is stunning. We held ten square miles of dusty ground vital to the Taliban.

Sangin is near the poppy fields and heroin trade routes. Profits made in UK and US cities fund the Taliban. Holding that ground came at a massive cost. Troops have died, but not in vain. Handing Sangin to the Americans is not betraying our dead. They stopped the Taliban bringing in more weapons. They helped save the lives of their mates.

There is no greater sacrifice.

Share/Bookmark

“The Troubles have not returned, they just never went away”

Dissident republicans in Northern Ireland have stepped up a campaign of violence in the past week with four attempted bombings.
The attacks come more than a year after the murders of two soldiers at Massereene Barracks in Antrim and the killing of a cop in Lurgan.

Sun Security expert Andy McNab, who served in Ulster with the SAS during the Troubles, looks at why the fragile peace has been shattered.
 

By ANDY McNAB
Published: 11 August 2010

“No one should be surprised that a few extremists are trying to reignite a war in Northern Ireland. Whenever any conflict goes out of the public consciousness everyone thinks it is finished – but it never is.

In Ulster, warfare has been going on for hundreds of years and I can’t see it ever ending. Five-year-old kids in the street can quote you the dates of historic battles and why they were important. The demise of the Provisional IRA was largely due to the success of the SAS – “The Regiment” – in killing their active service units in the mid-1980s and early Nineties. But the guys who survived still believe passionately in a united Ireland.

They think the British are occupying Ulster and look upon the leading republicans such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who are now in government, as traitors. As far as the dissidents are concerned, they sold out.”

Gripped
 
“Now there is a new generation being brought up with this ideology and the belligerence is stronger than it has been for decades. You only have to see the graffiti in Derry to know what is bubbling beneath the surface. The young yobs are being financed and they have access to sophisticated bomb-makers. There is poverty, unemployment and a lack of education, which feeds their anger.

The terrorists have always been a minority because the vast majority of the people just want to go to work and get their kids to school. But it is a dangerous minority. They have always been there and there has been trouble in Northern Ireland every 25 years or so for centuries. If this latest upsurge in violence is to be stopped from escalating like the Troubles of 1969 onwards did, then the problem has to be gripped now.

The Army cannot do it. It is reckoned that 25 per cent of all security services activity is still in Northern Ireland, and Special Forces have sent a recce group back in.
Some believe one of the reasons why the dissidents are stepping up their attacks is to try to get Army patrols back on the streets. They would love to point to “an army of occupation” to justify their cause. But it would be counter-productive for security forces to get heavy.

It is down to the community not to let it escalate. They have experienced peace now for the first time in two or three generations. If they want to keep it, they need to get a grip on the dissidents in their midst.”

Source: The Sun

Share/Bookmark

A great article – with more news about Andy McNab’s upcoming projects!

Lunch with the FT: Andy McNab
By Max Hastings
Published: June 5 2010

A defence journalist who knows McNab has said, “With Andy, everything is business.” He hustles relentlessly, and has become an eager entrepreneur. As well as owning stakes in a security company and a recruitment company (of which he is a director), he is now backing a business called Ghost Speaker, which encrypts digital content for mobile phones and electronic readers. How did that one happen? “A night out with a friend who said, ‘It’s the way ahead.’” The friend was almost certainly right. “We’re just doing a deal with Currys and Dixons.”

But McNab never forgets his core product: “The most important thing is the writing – that’s what makes everything else happen.” He works six hours a day dictating his books, and is thrilled that he has been asked to direct a film of one of them, Boy Soldier.

“Success gives you opportunities, choice. How else could I have been asked to do a film? I told them, ‘I know nothing about directing.’ They said, ‘Don’t worry – you’ll have a really good cameraman.’”

For the full interview go here

Share/Bookmark

Andy was a guest at Simon Marlows show at BFBS Radio yesterday. They talk about War Torn amongst other things (and you’ll hear very good news about War Torn at the end of the interview!). To listen to the interview you go here, search for ‘Simon Marlow’, Wednesday Part 3 and – if you like – forward to 20.40 min.

Also Andy McNab’s ‘Kinetic’ - an episode on BBC’s Afternoon Reading about ‘Anger’ – can be listened to again here.

Thanx to Ali who sent us the links

Share/Bookmark

Ah sigh, thought we were done with politics, but politics is not done with us it seems. Today the Daily Mail digs up stuff from 2005 to make their point against labour:

“SAS defied MoD to rescue two of its men held hostage in Iraq as top commanders ‘prepared to quit’ over ban on mission”:
The SAS launched a daring mission to rescue two of its own men held hostage in Iraq against the orders of the Ministry of Defence, the Daily Mail can reveal. The elite unit was pushed to the brink of mutiny after it was banned from saving the SAS soldiers captured by militants because to do so would embarrass the Government. The astonishing edict drove SAS officers close to mass resignation, according to a hardhitting report by the Tory MP Adam Holloway, a former Guards officer.

Details of the incident in 2005 expose the shameful way the Armed Forces have become politicised under Labour – with political spin put before soldiers’ lives.

And here comes the good part:

Mr Holloway’s explosive account is supported by General Sir Mike Jackson, who was head of the Army at the time but only learned of the scandal later. General Jackson last night made clear his disgust at the way soldiers were asked to sacrifice their men for political reasons, shattering the sacred military covenant that no man is left behind on the battlefield. He told the Mail: ‘The story as you relate it chimes with my memory of the events. It was not only a brave but a very necessary operation to release those two captured soldiers. The British Army looks after its own. Underline that three times.’

Read the full article in the Daily Mail here

Three years prior to these events, in 2002,  members of Bravo Two Zero stated in a BBC Panorama documentary:

SAS patrol ‘left to die’

Eight SAS soldiers in the Gulf War were abandoned by their commanders after their mission went wrong, a BBC investigation suggests.
Requests for rescue made by the Bravo Two Zero patrol – operating behind enemy lines, with patrol leader Andy McNab - were ignored until it was too late, the BBC Panorama programme says.

Three of the patrol were killed, four were captured and tortured and one escaped during the ill-fated mission to destroy Iraqi Scud missiles in 1991.
The official inquiry into what went wrong has always maintained that no comprehensible messages for help were ever received.

But Panorama has seen an SAS log recording calls for assistance from the patrol, which it says shows emergency requests were received, ignored and covered up.

You can read the full transcript of the Panorama documentary here

THE SECRET SAS LOG ENTRIES

THURSDAY 24TH JANUARY 1991: B Sqn Northern MSR gp reported that they had been compromised and requested exfil asp. Exfil did not take place as it was unclear whether they had had a contact or if it was a chance compromise.

FRIDAY 25TH: B20 made TACBE contact again, it was reasonable to assume that…they were moving South. A CH 47 crew were on standby for B20 and as from now >there will be 1 crew on permanent standby.

SATURDAY 26TH: Poss further communication from B20 using TACBE to a passing F15, this contact came from a location on the main E&E route. Op mounted tonight to pull them out. (CH 47 returned to Al Jouf without completing the mission due to bad weather.)

So..if the Daily Mail can dig up old cows.. so can we

Share/Bookmark