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Obama to award Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL

Edited by Jim Kouri 0 Comment , ,

Following his visit to a Maryland mosque, for which he received widespread criticism, President Barack Hussein Obama is going to award the highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, to a member of the iconic Navy SEALs.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Edward Byers will receive the award in a Feb. 29, 2016, ceremony, White House officials announced.

The medal is being bestowed on Byers for his battlefield gallantry in December 2012 while serving as part of a SEAL team that rescued an American civilian from his captors in Afghanistan.

The 37-year-old special ops expert is the 11th living American warrior to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan.

Navy SEALs are just one part of our military that have earned the designation of "special forces."
Navy SEALs are just one part of our military that have earned the designation of “special forces.”

Byers was born in Toledo, Ohio, and he graduated from Otesgo High School in Tontogany, Ohio, in June 1997. He is a nationally licensed paramedic and he’s expected to graduate from Norwich University with a bachelor’s degree in strategic studies and defense analysis later this year. 

Byers joined the Navy in September 1998, attending boot camp and Hospital Corpsman School at Great Lakes, Illinois. He served at Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and then with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

In 2002, he attended the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course, graduating from Class 242, and completed the Special Operations Combat Medic Course in 2003.

Byers has been assigned to various East Coast SEAL teams, and he completed eight overseas deployments with seven combat tours.

The Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest military decoration. It has been bestowed on 3,488 men and one woman (a Civil War surgeon) since President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law on Dec. 21, 1861. It is reserved for those who are distinguished “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.”

Navy SEAL Team Six operators rescued Dilip Joseph from his Taliban captors in Afghanistan shortly after midnight on Dec. 9, 2012.

Edited by Jim Kouri

Jim Kouri, CPP, is founder and CEO of Kouri Associates, a homeland security, public safety and political consulting firm. He's formerly Fifth Vice-President, now a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, a columnist, and a contributor to the nationally syndicated talk-radio program, the Chuck Wilder Show.. He's former chief of police at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at St. Peter's University and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.

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