No Easy Day by Mark Owen, 2012,
Excerpt
“For God and country, I pass Geronimo,” Jay said. “Geronimo
E.K.I.A”
VP Joe Biden, Sep 2012
“Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!”
Osama Bin Laden: Why Geronimo?
03 May 2011
The code name for the operation to capture Osama Bin Laden
was Geronimo. Why was it named after one of the best-known Native Americans?
The fact that Bin Laden had been killed by US Special Forces was reported to
President Barack Obama on Sunday with the words "Geronimo EKIA" -
Enemy Killed In Action. But US officials have not commented on why the name
Geronimo was chosen - and may never do so. Bin Laden was referred to by one as
a "21st-Century Geronimo, trying to elude the US military somewhere in a
dry mountain range that could easily pass for the American West".
Geronimo gained early notoriety for his fearless raids
against Mexican soldiers. Mexican troops had killed members of his family after
storming his village, and his revenge was to kill as many of them as possible.
By 1872, US government officials were keenly aware of Geronimo's fighting
exploits when they corralled him and hundreds of his fellow Chiricahua Apache
people onto an Arizona Territory reservation. Military officials soon branded
Geronimo a renegade. Geronimo and his followers embarrassed military officers
by eluding them time and again, at one point with as many as 5,000 US soldiers
on their heels.
The tradition of shouting "Geronimo" while bailing
out of a plane can be traced to Fort Benning in the state of Georgia. According
to reports, in 1940 soldiers from the parachute division were preparing to test
a daring new maneuver, in which men jumped from the plane in rapid succession.
The motivational yell was adopted by other servicemen and quickly became
standard practice for US army paratroopers - and the favored cry for little
boys performing a daring leap. The nickname Geronimo has also adopted by the
1st Battalion (Airborne), 509th Infantry Regiment, which has been operational
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US tries to stop Geronimo lawsuit
21 Jun 2009
US officials have moved to block a legal bid by descendants
of Apache leader Geronimo to have his remains reburied. Geronimo's relatives
say some body parts were stolen almost 100 years ago by members of a society
linked to Yale University to keep in their clubhouse. The society, known as
Skull and Bones, is alleged to have stolen some of Geronimo's remains from a
burial plot in Oklahoma in 1918. The relatives want to rebury the warrior, who
died in 1909, near his birthplace in New Mexico. But the justice department has
asked a federal judge to dismiss their lawsuit.
Geronimo’s Heirs Sue Secret Yale
Society Over His Skull
19 Feb 2009
Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Okla., in
1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull and Bones holds that
Prescott S. Bush — father of President George Bush and grandfather of President
George W. Bush — broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I
and made off with the skull, two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of
which were put on display at the group’s clubhouse in New Haven, known as the
Tomb.
The story gained some validity in 2005, when a historian discovered
a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another saying the
skull had been taken from a grave at Fort Sill along with several pieces of
tack for a horse. Ramsey Clark, a former United States attorney general who is
representing Geronimo’s family, acknowledged he had no hard proof that the
story was true. Yet he said he hoped the court would clear up the matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment