Nothing More Than Jumbled Pictures

Upon initially reading  Nicholas Schmidle’s article titled “Getting Bin Laden,” I was entranced with this dramatic telling of the night that Osama Bin Laden. It was almost too much to mentally take in. There was absolutely nothing left for the reader to question because everything was told with such detail. However, then it came in to question how could this “freelance writer” know all of those minute details? Especially after reading Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” and watching the film “Restrepo” I have no faith in Schmidle’s article. While watching the movie, it almost gave me an idea of what war was like. If I were in the position of any of those men, I probably would not have remembered anything. They were getting shot at from all different angles, in the middle of the night, and from an unknown enemy. It would be impossible to remember details, like what was in your pocket, if you were constantly worrying about being shot at, being killed, or losing one of your friends. In addition, throughout “How to Tell a True War Story” Tim O’Brien is constantly expressing how war is nothing more than jumbled pictures, that’s it’s hard to remember what really happened versus what you think happened, and that when telling a war story there are often many made up events. Even if Schmidle had actually talked to the SEALS who killed Osama Bin Laden, he still would have gotten a mixed up crazy story. The fact that he received second and third hand information on top of that concept just makes his story all the more unbelievable.