Before Benghazi, There Was Extortion 17

Karen and Billy Vaughn are the parents of a fallen Navy Seal, Aaron Carson Vaughn. I met with the Vaughns when I spoke to a sold-out Tea Party event in Fort Lauderdale in June. The Vaughns are extraordinary heroes. Their courage to speak about Obama’s crippling rules of engagement is to be applauded.

The Vaughns have exposed the delusional U.S. military “rules of engagement” policy that led to the takedown of a Chinook helicopter, Extortion 17, by the Taliban. All 38 people on board the Chinook — 15 SEAL Team Six members (including Aaron Vaughn) and seven Afghan National Army commandos — were killed. The attack on Extortion 17 came just three months after the Osama bin Laden kill, and both Obama and Biden had identified the team that took OBL out. Retribution was inevitable.

The Vaughns were also one of the families that released the video that revealed the incredible fact that military brass invited a Muslim cleric to their children’s funeral in 2011 — an imam who “damned to hell” our fallen soldiers, in line with Islamic doctrine for infidels. Video here.

Now Billy Vaughn and U.S. Army Major General (ret.) Paul Vallely have teamed up to write a shocking new book: Betrayed: Exposing the High Cost of the War on Terror (coming in August from Hugo House Publishers). It tells the story of how on August 6, 2011, Taliban jihadists ambushed Extortion 17 as it was transporting American forces to an area where Army Rangers were engaged in a firefight.

Betrayed is an accurate account of events, but it is not some dry recounting from a military operation logbook; instead, it’s as engrossing as any novel. The first part centers on Billy Vaughn as he tries to find out — against immense obstacles — what really caused the tragic death of his son. Obama’s bureaucrats put up heavy resistance, but Billy Vaughn was determined. Then in the second part of the book, Major General Vallely analyzes the mission of Extortion 17, using his decades of military experience to point out the many errors and mistakes of this mission — all due to Obama’s impossible Rules of Engagement for American troops in Afghanistan.