Friday, August 24, 2012

A guy who helped kill Osama bin Laden also helped design 'Medal of Honor: Warfighter'

He's dead, Jim.
Sometimes, art really does imitate life. Hero Complex reports something that sounds like an improbable movie plot:

The Tier One U.S. Navy soldier who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year and identified by name Thursday by Fox News is a consultant for an upcoming game published by Electronic Arts titled “Medal of Honor: Warfighter,” according to a person close to the matter. The person declined to be identified because of a confidentiality agreement.

The soldier is Matt Bissonnette, who retired last summer from the Navy. The 36-year-old Alaska resident has written a book on the May 2, 2011 raid, "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden," under the name Mark Owen.

Fox News also reports that Bissonnette may be in trouble because the book was not cleared by the Pentagon. Then there's the question of whether Bissonnette has made himself a target by writing the book. Col. Tim Nye, a Special Operations Command spokesman,told Fox that said the author "put himself in danger."

Still others in the media have criticized Fox News for publicly revealing Bissonnette as Owen. Summing up the argument is The New York Daily News:
Some have criticized Fox for releasing the author’s name, speculating that if a left-leaning news source had done so, it would have been accused of a lack of patriotism. Others conceded that it was only a matter of time before the author’s real name came to light.
But the fact remains, according to a press release from the publisher, the Penguin Group, "Owen (Bissonnette) was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist leader's hideout and was present at his death."
 
Added Hero Complex: 
Besides writing “No Easy Day,” Bissonnette did what many retired military personnel do — founded a consulting firm. His firm, Silent R, has been working with the Los Angeles developers of “Warfighter,” a shooting game that takes place in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The development team, headed by Greg Goodrich, placed a premium on authenticity. As a result, the team consulted with several special forces soldiers to make sure the settings, weapons and other aspects of the fighting within the game was realistic. One of those consultants was Bissonnette.

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