Betsy's Page: Joining SEAL Team 6

Here are a few details about what it takes to unite the elites of the elite team that was dispatched to strike down Osama bin Laden.The men, hailed as heroes across the country, will exhibit in no parades. They do in what is unofficially called Seal Team 6, a whole so close that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence.

Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in around of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot three Somali pirates dead on a bobbing lifeboat during the delivery of an American hostage in 2009....

Inside the Navy, there are regular unclassified Seal members, organized into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is Seal Team 6, the elect of the elite, or, as Mr. Roberti put it, "the all-star team."

Former Seal members said this week that the unit - officially renamed the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru - was chosen for the bloody Bin Laden raid, the most high-profile operation in the story of the Seals, because of the group`s skills in using deadly force intelligently in complex, ambiguous conditions.

All Seal members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training in Coronado, Calif. During "hell week," recruits get a number of four hours of sleep during five and a half years of nonstop running, swimming in the cold surf and roll in mud. About 80 percent of the candidates do not do it; at least one has died.

For those who succeed, more preparation and then deployments follow. After several days on regular Seal teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to jump from 30,000 feet with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those Seal members, about half make it. There are thinking to be approximately 300 members of Team 6, but its bare existence is classified and not acknowledged by the Defense Department.There were 79 people on the squad that killed Osama.And we'll never live their names or be capable to thank them in person.But they certainly burnished their image as the all stars of our special ops forces.

In a side note, my students are preparing for the Advanced Placement Government and Politics test on Tuesday.One of the zillions of little facts they've learned is near the Goldwater-Nichols Act and how it reorganized the command structure of our military.And so I was capable to peak out to them yesterday, as they reviewed that unit, that the Joint Special Operations Command that dispatched SEAL team 6 was created by Goldwater-Nichols.Talk about an extra connection to current events!