[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 58 (Tuesday, May 3, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S2601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       COMMENDING THE NAVY SEALS

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I want to start off today--I did not plan 
on saying this; I am here to talk about small businesses and how to 
incentivize job creation and job preservation--but before I do that, I 
want to take a moment of personal privilege to talk about the Navy 
SEALs.
  I am a retired Navy captain. I spent about 23 years of my life as a 
naval flight officer. Before that, I was a midshipman, a Navy ROTC 
midshipman out of Ohio State. We would do our summer tours as 
midshipmen being trained to be junior naval officers. One of our tours 
was down at Little Creek, where we learned a little bit about storming 
the beaches of Virginia and we learned how to become marines, or 
pretended we were. We also, later on, I guess as a lieutenant JG at 
Coronado, before we went over to Southeast Asia, had a chance to see--
in both places, both the Little Creek Naval Station and over at the 
Coronado, North Island Naval Station--the Navy SEALs train. I remember 
talking with some of my compadres who were going through training with 
us, saying: We would not want to mess with those guys--and for good 
reason.
  They have made us proud. They have taken on an incredibly difficult 
task and I think handled themselves splendidly, and I want to start off 
today saying how proud we are of them.

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