Randy Griggs

USAF (Ret). 1A2X9. Sleep is overrated and naps are underrated. Don't confuse my willingness to discuss conspiracy theories with my willingness to believe them

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@nikitabier You need to start with Gov Gavin Newsom.

[Gene Simmons @genesimmons]

In honor of my mother, Flora Klein, who at 14 years of age was in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, I will be at the White House July 4th honoring our veterans from WW II July 4th. Alongside me, will be 10 surviving WW II veterans. God bless our veterans.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@JamesHu27192912 In Butler GA, there's a Napa Autoparts with an incredible gun store in the back.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@RepCuellar Pay a living wage and you won't have to hire illegals.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@Ami_Marisol @infantrydort @SeanParnellASW Good For You.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@lsferguson @SenateGOP Rhetorical?

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@nicksortor Leave them up there

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@Tim_Denning Be Jonny Kim!

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@GigglingGanon How is 10 years and three months not early release on a 12 year sentence?

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Saying we don’t have to worry because socialism isn’t communism yet is like saying you don’t have to worry because the match hasn’t reached the gasoline yet.

Waiting until a problem has reached its final form before taking it seriously is a poor survival strategy.

[Joe Matchette @JoeMatchette]

@rgoodlaw Please compare this to the "Obama Purge". ....we'll wait...

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@Suzanna390 @SimmonsBart @Pontology_ I think that's his point. They demand we accept their way of life, but refuse to assimilate into American culture.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

21 years ago today, on June 28, 2005, four Navy SEALs were inserted under cover of darkness into the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, a place so high and so cold the clouds drift below your feet. Their mission was to find a Taliban commander hiding in the village of Sawtalo Sar. Their names were Michael Murphy, Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson, and Marcus Luttrell.

By morning, fate walked right up the mountain to meet them. A goat herder and a boy wandered straight into their hidden position. The team had a choice no man should ever have to make: kill unarmed civilians, or let them go and risk everything. They let them go. Within an hour, the mountain came alive with rifle fire.

What happened next is almost too brutal to put into words. Dozens of fighters swarmed the high ground above them. The four men fought their way down a near vertical slope, throwing themselves off ledges and cliffs to escape the fire, breaking bones, tearing flesh, leaving blood on the rocks, and still turning to shoot. One by one they were hit. Still they fought. They would not stop. They would not surrender.

Their radios could not reach the base down in the valley. They were screaming for help into dead air. And so Lieutenant Michael Murphy did something that should never be forgotten. He stood up. He walked out of the rocks and into open ground, into the full teeth of the enemy, with bullets cracking past him on every side, just to get a clear signal. He was shot in the back while making that call. He dropped the radio, picked it back up, finished the call, and said thank you. Then he kept fighting until he could fight no more. That single act of courage is the only reason the world ever learned their names.

Help came screaming up the valley. An MH-47 Chinook, call sign Red Wings 11, packed with eight more SEALs and eight Army Night Stalkers of the legendary 160th SOAR, refused to wait for gunship cover. Their brothers were dying and they would not sit still for it. As the bird flared over the ridge, a single rocket propelled grenade flew through the open rear ramp. The explosion tore the aircraft apart in the sky. All sixteen men aboard were killed the instant it hit the mountain.

Three on the ground. Sixteen in the air. Nineteen American sons gone in a single afternoon. It remains the worst loss of life in Naval Special Warfare history since World War II.

Michael Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson received the Navy Cross. Marcus Luttrell, blown off a cliff and shredded by shrapnel, was the only one to come home. He survived because a Pashtun villager named Mohammad Gulab found him broken in a ravine and, under an ancient code of honor older than the country these men died for, stood between him and the Taliban and refused to give him up.

Twenty one years later, do not let these be just names on a screen. They had mothers. They had wives. They had children who grew up with a flag folded into a triangle instead of a father. They chose each other over their own lives on a mountain most people will never even hear of.

So today, say their names out loud. All nineteen of them 🇺🇸

In remembrance:
Lt. Michael P. Murphy
Gunner's Mate 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz
Sonar Technician 2nd Class Matthew G. Axelson
Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen
Senior Chief Daniel R. Healy
Petty Officer 2nd Class James E. Suh
Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric S. Patton
Chief Petty Officer Jacques J. Fontan
Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffery A. Lucas
Petty Officer 2nd Class Shane E. Patton
Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey S. Taylor
Maj. Stephen C. Reich
Chief Warrant Officer Corey J. Goodnature
Chief Warrant Officer Chris J. Scherkenbach
Master Sgt. James W. Ponder III
Sgt. 1st Class Marcus V. Muralles
Sgt. 1st Class Michael L. Russell
Staff Sgt. Shamus O. Goare
Sgt. Kip A. Jacoby

Operation Red Wings. June 28, 2005. Never forgotten.

[Special Ops Magazine @specialopsmag]

On this day, June 28, 2005, Lt. Cdr. Erik Kristensen, the SEAL officer who led the rescue force into the Hindu Kush, was killed during Operation Red Wings.

When Lt. Michael Murphy’s call for help came down, Kristensen was the ground commander of the quick reaction force, and he did not have to be on that helicopter. As a senior officer in SEAL Team 10, he sat above the platoons that ran most of the direct action, and his own mother was told he likely wouldn’t be aboard.

But these were his men in trouble, men he had trained, and so he went, leading from the front. He boarded Turbine 33 with 7 other SEALs and 8 Night Stalkers from the 160th, and an RPG brought the Chinook down before they could reach the team. All 16 aboard were killed.

Kristensen’s road to that mountain was a long one. Born into a Navy family, son of a future rear admiral, he was a Naval Academy graduate who majored in English, taught the subject back at Annapolis, and was attending St. John’s College before he walked away from the classroom to chase a harder calling.

He reported to BUD/S at 27, one of the oldest men in his class, and earned his Trident. Friends remembered a brilliant, funny, slightly absent minded man who once showed up to a dance class in flip flops, an officer who led with wit instead of weight. He was set to study in Paris on a scholarship after the deployment, thinking already about a life beyond the Teams.

He never got the chance. In the wreckage of Turbine 33, recovery troops found a dog tag stamped not with a name but with the Warrior Ethos, ending in the line "I will never leave a fallen comrade."

Erik Kristensen and the men he led embodied exactly that. He is buried in the Naval Academy Cemetery, and his example is still taught to the midshipmen who walk the grounds he once did.

Not forgotten 🔱

[Jonathan Turley @Real_Turley]

Thune is again using pro-forma sessions to make pretend the Senate is still in session, to block Trumps recess appts

Join me in calling on Trump to use the power vested in him, under (Art- II- Sec,3) to call the Senate back into session... until they Pass the Save America Act

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@mkhammer It means she can speak Kamala.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@The_FJC As did Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@lawler4ny Lots of Haitians in your district are there, Mikey boy?

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@ZubyMusic Learn to enjoy youth soccer.

[Randy Griggs @RandyGriggs13]

@Notwokenow Rhetorical?