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#1341303 - 04/27/12 11:39 AM
Typical Obama....CYA
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Chicago Jesus
Senior Member
Registered: 01/16/12
Posts: 6623
Loc: Obama's moral compass
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What 'Gutsy Call'?: CIA Memo Reveals Admiral Controlled bin Laden Mission
by Ben Shapiro 21 hours ago 532 post a comment
Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. Here’s the text, which summarized the situation:
Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.
The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am.
This, of course, was the famed “gutsy call.” Here’s what Tom Hanks narrated in Obama’s campaign film, “The Road We’ve Traveled”:
HANKS: Intelligence reports locating Osama Bin Laden were promising, but inconclusive, and there was internal debate as to what the President should do.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: We sat down in the Situation Room, the entire national security apparatus was in that room, and the President turns to every principal in the room, every secretary, “What do you recommend I do?” And they say, “Well, forty-nine percent chance he’s there, fifty-one … it’s a close call, Mr. President.” As he walked out the room, it dawned on me, he’s all alone. This is his decision. If he was wrong, his Presidency was done. Over.
Only the memo doesn’t show a gutsy call. It doesn’t show a president willing to take the blame for a mission gone wrong. It shows a CYA maneuver by the White House.
The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.
The memo is crystal clear on that point. It says that the decision has been made based solely on the “risk profile presented to the President.” If any other risks – no matter how minute – arose, they were “to be brought back to the President for his consideration.” This is ludicrous. It is wiggle room. It was Obama’s way of carving out space for himself in case the mission went bad. If it did, he’d say that there were additional risks of which he hadn’t been informed; he’d been kept in the dark by his military leaders.
Finally, the memo is unclear on just what the mission is. Was it to capture Bin Laden or to kill him? The White House itself was unable to decide what the mission was in the hours after the Bin Laden kill, and actually switched its language. The memo shows why: McRaven was instructed to “get” Bin Laden, whatever that meant.
President Obama made the right call to give the green light to the mission. But he did it in a way that he could shift the blame if things went wrong. Typical Obama. And typical of him to claim full credit for it, when he didn’t do anything but give a vague nod, while putting his top military officials at risk of taking the hit in case of a bad turn.
_________________________
“Satan trembles when he sees a sinner on their knees.”
Remember.... Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
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#1341333 - 04/27/12 03:27 PM
Re: Typical Obama....CYA
[Re: Josephus]
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VM Smith
Diamond Member
Registered: 11/28/05
Posts: 34617
Loc: Reality
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The Shrub would have sucked it up if he screwed up! Still waiting for the Shrub to "suck it up" about his Iraq call.
Shrub's not as unusual I'd like to think he is. He's a typical successful politician. You have to be a sociopath to want that much power and control, and to seek it that hard.
He's a great people person, and is good at making most people to like him. Enough to vote him in, anyway. He knows what buttons to push, and since he knows how easily people can be manipulated, he doesn't have much respect for them.
Being neither too bright, nor too principled, he thought it would be a good idea, and an effective strategy, to further invade the Mid East, and he thought it was morally principled and ethical thing to do.
Being nonchalant, inside and out, which is one of the reasons people find him to be relaxing and pleasant to be around, he thought it would be a cakewalk.
Being arrogant, he wouldn't, couldn't, heed any advice not to enter upon the Crusade, and he was too proud to admit, even to himself, the degree to which he'd stepped into it.
I think he honestly thinks that he did the smart, right and necessary thing. He thinks that it was a tough situation, that it was unavoidable, that he handled it well, that no one could have done it better, and few as well, and that he has absolutely nothing of importance to apologize for.
I think he chose follow the same stupid imperialistic, aggressively acquisitive, destructive, counterproductive, and what will end up being literally ruinously expensive, I think, policy followed at least since 1898, when it waxed virulently, and which continues and increases under Obomber. they are entertaining, but sociopathic, thugs.
And he has some maddening combination of not knowing, and not caring, what he did to us who are the country, while he led the nation.
He's a great politician. I still wouldn't mind having a beer with him; I'll bet he's funny as hell. But I'd never turn my back on him, or Obomber; they are entertaining, but sociopathic, thugs, and fit for nothing, so well as politics.
_________________________
It's never too late to be who you might have been.
George Elliot
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#1341457 - 04/28/12 02:43 PM
Re: Typical Obama....CYA
[Re: Josephus]
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VM Smith
Diamond Member
Registered: 11/28/05
Posts: 34617
Loc: Reality
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But they were not the one that made the decision as to whether or not the mission was a go.
Correct. You and I might consider Osama a worthless, murderous thug, but we don't gather a posse, mount a military expedition, and go into a sovereign country and murder him, extrajudicially, and in the process, conveniently silence a probably damaging witness to our own behavior.
We might want to, but if we do, then we are subject to law, which government so often operates outside of.
He could have been nabbed at many times in the prior 10 years, and Taliban offered to turn him over from the beginning, if proof, or even something that could properly be considered good evidence, were offered of his guilt in the WTC crime. But that would have restricted government's options, and it always wants all options, legal or not.
_________________________
It's never too late to be who you might have been.
George Elliot
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