Sorry for the tortured title, but. . .
According to the always-interesting (but never substantiated) White House Insider, Barry-Oh and Valerie Jarrett hemmed, hawed and dithered over assaulting or bombing Bin Ladens compound, and it was finally Leon Panetta, with the support of Hillary, Gates and Petraeus, who ordered the attack.
This may be true. Or not.
ReplyDeleteFWIW I'm increasingly thinking that Pakistan didn't give up Bin Laden - we sussed out on our own where he was, and went in and took him. The accounts of the intelligence op seem plausible to me.
The level of Pakistani involvement in hiding him is TBD. Wonder what's on those hard drives...
It makes me nauseous to read the Valerie Jarrett has a hand in making such historic decisions.
ReplyDeleteValerie Jarrett?
Jaysus, Mary and Joseph...
I honestly don't think that Obama is capable of making a decision. He dithers and hem-haws as he tries to fit square problems into round holes. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Panetta, Clinton, Gates, and Petreous took the reins on this one.
ReplyDeleteFlorrie, Jarrett doesn't inspire much confidence, does she? Egads.
Regardless of the fact I think Obama is a Manchurian Candidate, he gets credit for the operation to take out OBL. You can do that when you're President.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt he dithered, and little doubt in my mind he left the final decision to others ... thus ensuring he'd have some one to lay blame on if necessary. The bumbling handling of mission information post facto is astounding. You can almost hear the "uh, oh, umhm, ah," etc. etc. That happens when one hasn't a clue.
He did the same with "Obama Care" which if correctly attributed would be "Pelosi Care." He "dithered" on that, too, until Pelosi went to the White House and put Obama, Emanuel, and Stupak over the couch so to speak.
He is the consummate practitioner of the "hand off." He takes as little direct responsibility as possible but embraces all credit. He's enamored of the pronoun "I" in speech making, yet individually, he couldn't lead a one car funeral procession ... as exemplified by his failure to put his own budget through Congress when he had a bullet proof majority in both houses for 11 months. He then blames the Republicans for bad faith vis a vis Ryan's budget resolution.
Now the "Realpolitik" of dealing with Pakistanis is this: once in a while you just have to bed down with mother f**kers. No doubt they knew OBL's where-abouts, and IMO, the very BEST part of all this is the clear message the SEAL Team mission sent: We don't give a shit about your sovereignty, Paki-bitch, if you get in OUR way. Pay better attention next time.
Hooah.
I agree with you both, lady red and Aridog. I think you're both spot on, esp. about our "relationship" with Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteThe JEM can only make a decision with the latest poll information and help from Mr. Teleprompter.
ReplyDeleteYes, I give him props for giving the order, he gets the credit for killing bin Laden. OTOH, shame on him for not releasing the pictures, he doesn't understand the dynamic in the Muslim world one iota. "We dont need to spike the football"???
Screw that. We need to spike it and do extensive end-zone celebration.
And it's making me sick seeing him campaign at Ground Zero. Thank gawd GWB graciously declined to join him there.
Oh, I must be a racist.
Sorry to say I haven't been following the conversations here all that well. Hey- someone has to pay for all of the entitlements we're spreading around.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow- as usual, I can't argue with anything Ari posted (because when I do I make sure blogger eats the post right away) or anyone else for that matter.
Ari- you mentioned the bungling of the intel. All along I've been thinking that- if I were calling the shots- I'd want to keep it pretty quite as to what exactly we found. Why let the enemy know that you have intel on them? Really, is there an upshot to saying "we've got us some hard drives!"? Besides scoring political points?
Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance that some terrorist will rethink going forward with some particular attack, but I think the more likely outcome is that they'll be more careful, and even change their tactics- thus making some hard-earned intel completely obsolete.
I caught a bit of Hannity today- he wastalking with Ollie North, who brought it one step further and stated that we (the White House) really should not have said anything at all about the raid and killing OBL. I think it's a valid point. If the Pakis didn't know OBL was there, then they wouldn't miss him. If they did know he was there and made a fuss about us coming in to get him... they'd have a bit of explaining to do, wouldn't they?
"Yes, I give him props for giving the order, he gets the credit for killing bin Laden. OTOH, shame on him for not releasing the pictures, he doesn't understand the dynamic in the Muslim world one iota. "We dont need to spike the football"???
ReplyDeleteScrew that. We need to spike it and do extensive end-zone celebration."
"We don't need to spike the football" has to be one of the most assinine things he's said- lately. There's no prize for good sportsmanship in war, is there?. I'm pretty sure there aren't a bunch of foreign leaders out there saying "See how good the Americans are. See that. They deserve a gold star, and maybe even a trip to the ice cream shop, after they pull their troops out, for being such good sports."
So yes, florrie, an extensive end-zone celebration is in order. Followed by us holding the ball over our head, while thumbing our nose and saying "and you ain't getting the ball back!"
That's a perspective I haven't yet seen, Alphie. Kill him and be done with it, don't say a damn word about it. Makes perfect sense when I think about it. Most especially when considering the absolute disaster that has been the Whitehouse handling of the matter.
ReplyDeleteI caught a bit of Hannity today- he wastalking with Ollie North, who brought it one step further and stated that we (the White House) really should not have said anything at all about the raid and killing OBL. I think it's a valid point. If the Pakis didn't know OBL was there, then they wouldn't miss him. If they did know he was there and made a fuss about us coming in to get him... they'd have a bit of explaining to do, wouldn't they?
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting, Alphie, I hadn't heard it either. I think that might have been a very good tactic but there would be hell to pay politically once the news eventually came out. Or would there?
I am *trying* not to be so negative about Obama but it really bothered me that he went to Ground Zero and met with selected families. What was the criteria for that, I wonder? I just heard that he asked Bill Clinton to join him after GWB turned his down and he declined as well.
Shouldn't that have told him something? Even if I disagree with just about all his policies, I still want him to appear presidential...with some "gravitas" that seemed to be so important in 2000 and 2004. I truly want to be respectful but he seems so arrogant and dishonest that I just cringe when I see/hear him speak.
I'm really fearful for our country's future.
Alphie / Luther ....
ReplyDeleteActually I wasn't talking about the bungling of intelligence info, per se, given they got him, it must have been pretty good. I do suspect Bam Bam dithered while he calculated his political points and the odds there of ... etc. What I am talking about is how the White House lost control of the information stream even before the Jug Eared Messiah made is hour + late little speech.
They've not managed to keep any of the information straight and consistent since then either. I'm not concerned whether a death photo of OBL is released either. Maybe that's because I've seen similar dead people and don't care much about it anymore (IOW I believe the SEAL Team 6 reports such as they are ... he be dead) ... all I can say authoritatively is that they begin to stink pretty bad after a couple or three hours ... so why not just dump his arse in the ocean, eh?
"True justice" might have been propping his cadaver up in a pine coffin and sending it on tour around the USA similar to how dead desperadoes were exhibited in the old west on main street. Now THAT would be f**king "spiking the football!" =))
BTW ... however interesting this story might be, the basic formula for the mission isn't terribly "new." Military special operations teams, sometimes coordinated with para-military local national factions, have been doing similar things, on one scale or another, for at least 50+ years. Most of the detail on very early actions have NOT been widely disseminated even today ... and what has been gleaned, and reported about hysterically, and "politicked" with consummate whining, is usually well over 50% wrong by error or omission.
Shit got done, things taken care of, and almost no one in the know ever said diddley squat. No one in the general public, including me, really had any real "need to know" gory details. They still don't.
Ari, and florrie, as you may know :) I feel the same way about the JEM. Cute, that acronym, by the way.
ReplyDeleteTo my thinking the President, by giving that speech, turned Osama even more so into a martyr who will be celebrated in the Mid-East for years to come. I also believe he diminished the office by making the announcement himself. Again, he elevated Osama's importance by that action. The entire after action response has been so thoughtless, irresponsible and out of control it astounds me that anyone in this administration still has a job. But, we can't fire the President, nor his minions, not for another 18 months anyway.
Ari, I know I haven't said anything you haven't said already but it just chaps my ass that so many still see Obama as any sort of leader, reference your one car funeral precession. I so agree. And, to reiterate Alphie's point above I can't believe we, (the administration) gave up so many details of how this was all done. Do we now think anyone over there will ever again have a 'trusted' courier. Plain stupid in my opinion. And for what, a short lived bump in the polls. Idiot's, the lot of them.
What is JEM?
ReplyDeleteI stole it from Aridog, jug-eared Messiah.
ReplyDelete:-)
Thanks florrie!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/obama-0161copy.jpg?t=1304727531"
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/obama-cartoon-1.jpg"
ReplyDelete#16 Aridog - great post!!
ReplyDelete:-)
Damn florrie, too bad he deleted it!
ReplyDelete