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Obama 'cancelled missions to kill bin Laden three times after getting cold feet'

PJABBER

PJABBER

Diamond Member
I have previously mentioned that, for all intents and purposes, leadership of the nation has shifted to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It is they who propose new ideas, programs and practical approaches to address the country's problems and the directions to take to re-energize the economy. Obama and his campaign have been notably absent, resorting to character attack and innuendo rather than substantive policy debate.

While the nation considers the Romney/Ryan proposals, the Obama campaign is starting off their own campaign cycle with attacks against veterans groups such as OPSEC which call for an end to the leaking of national secrets to American enemies and a proper crediting for the good efforts of the military and intelligence communities.

To his credit as the Commander In Chief, Obama has continued to wage war in Afghanistan, keeps Guantanamo open and almost nightly picks who will be subject to a drone strike.

In lieu of a forthright look at the economy, the Administration's massive spending and the massive ensuant debt, Obama and his campaign do want us to remember his role in the killing of Usama bin Laden. And they want to spin the events that led to that sanctioned death so as to give him maximum credit. They call his decision "gutsy" and "courageous" and they want you to as well.

Investigative journalist and author Rich Miniter has just published a tell all book that delves into the evaluations and the decision making that were made prior to the strike on Usama's compound in Pakistan.

Heavily vetted, the information reveals the roles played by Obama's confidant Valerie Jarrett and his former rival and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It also shows the indecisiveness and the political calculations that guided the President to delaying multiple times a strike order against UBL.

Some advance information from the book has been released months ago, but the complete volume is now out and available for review.

The first such review comes from The Daily Mail of London...

EXCLUSIVE: Obama 'cancelled missions to kill bin Laden THREE TIMES after getting cold feet - until Hillary Clinton stepped in', claims explosive new book

The Daily Mail (UK)

By TOBY HARNDEN

10:02 EST, 20 August 2012 | update: 01:31 EST, 21 August 2012

Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him

Barack Obama cancelled three operations to kill Osama bin Laden before finally going ahead with the mission at the insistence of Hillary Clinton, according to a new book.

The explosive allegation is contained in an expose by journalist Rich Miniter, who argues that the White House’s carefully-crafted narrative of Obama as a decisive leader who dispatched the al-Qaeda leader despite the doubts of advisers is a myth.

Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him will be published on Tuesday. Excerpts have been viewed by Mail Online.

Miniter, a former ‘Wall Street Journal’, ‘Washington Times’ and ‘Sunday Times’ of London journalist, cites an unnamed source within Joint Special Operations Command as revealing that three ‘kill’ missions were cancelled by Obama in January, February and March 2011.

Bin Laden was eventually killed by US Navy SEALs inside his compound in Abbotobad, Pakistan in May 2011.

The killing of bin Laden is at the centre of Obama’s re-election campaign and is likely to be highlighted yet again by his aides on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks next month. Obama has already come under fire from former SEALs for trumpeting his role in the raid.

Until now, no one has claimed that he was reluctant even to launch it.

Miniter portrays Clinton as the main force behind killing bin Laden and contends that the prevaricating Obama has been in thrall to a number of dominant women – Clinton, top adviser Valerie Jarrett and his wife Michelle.

It was Jarrett, a long-time Chicago ally, he reports, who urged Obama to cancel the first three operations to kill bin Laden.

Miniter writes that Clinton’s alliances with Leon Panetta, then CIA director and now Pentagon chief, and David Petraeus, then head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and now at the helm at the CIA, were critical in bringing bin Laden to justice.

At the start of his presidency, Miniter writes, Obama was ‘studiously undecided’ about whether to kill the mastermind of 9/11.

‘He refused to weigh in or commit himself on even small matters related to a possible strike on bin Laden.’

He continues: ‘Obama was often disengaged as the bin Laden operation took shape; he left critical decisions to the then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, then-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

‘Obama feared taking responsibility for a risky raid that might go tragically wrong.’

Initially, Miniter writes, Obama deferred to Jarrett over whether to go after bin Laden.

‘Jarrett opposed the idea. She worried about a backlash against the president if the operation failed, or even if it succeeded. Clinton privately fumed about Jarrett’s relentless presence and her injection of political considerations at every turn.

‘Throughout 2009 Obama demanded more and more certainty about U.S. intelligence concerning bin Laden. Jarrett repeatedly reminded Obama and other executive-branch officials that the president had campaigned on the “intelligence failures” of the Bush years.

‘There was no need, she said, to hand our political rivals a set of intelligence failures of our own.

‘As CIA covert teams successfully parried concerns about intelligence by extraordinary efforts that proved bin Laden was indeed in the Abottobad compound, a new set of delaying tactics emerged, embedded in the debate over what should actually be done.’

Despite their rivalry during the battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Clinton had gradually won over Obama and established her influence during weekly meetings in the Oval Office.

‘Clinton used her weekly meeting to begin lobbying for a decisive blow against bin Laden.

‘She knew her husband had paid a political price for failing to stop bin Laden before the September 11 attacks. She knew Obama’s presidency could be mortally wounded if he had bin Laden in his gun sights and didn’t fire.’

Eventually, Miniter writes, Obama was convinced that bin Laden should be pursued but still had reservations about pulling the metaphorical trigger.

‘He knew Clinton was right. So he agreed to keep making minor decisions, but remained uneasy about the big one at the end—deciding to kill bin Laden, and to risk losing American and Pakistani lives in the process.’

Even the day before bin Laden’s demise, Miniter writes, Obama was seized by a ‘fourth moment of indecision’.

The White House later said that poor weather conditions prompted this final delay but Miniter writes that he obtained the US Air Force Combat Meteorological Centre’s weather report for that day and established that it showed ‘ideal conditions’ for the SEAL raid.
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an unnamed source
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don't you need 2 before you publish anything? isn't that what's taught in journalism school? it must be, because journalists certainly don't seem to learn anything else.
 
Miniter, a former ‘Wall Street Journal’, ‘Washington Times’ and ‘Sunday Times’ of London journalist, cites an unnamed source within Joint Special Operations Command as revealing that three ‘kill’ missions were cancelled by Obama in January, February and March 2011.

good enough for the partisan right.
 
unokitty said:
Hesitation is what enabled Bin Laden to escape from Bill Clinton three years prior to 9/11.

Obama doesn't give a $hit about the lives of the people in the military.

And he didn't okay the raid until Hillary made him.
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Not allowing a Delta Force plan was what allowed Bin Laden to escape form Tora Bora.



http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-4494937.html

Fury told 60 Minutes his orders were to kill bin Laden and leave the body with the Afghans.

"Right here you're looking at basically the battlefield from the last location that we had a firm on Osama bin Laden's location," Fury explains to Pelley, looking at a ridgeline with an elevation of about 14,000 feet.

Asked how tough it would be to attack such a position on a scale of one to ten, Fury tells Pelley, "In my experience it's a ten."

Delta developed an audacious plan to come at bin Laden from the one direction he would never expect.

"We want to come in on the back door," Fury explains. "The original plan that we sent up through our higher headquarters, Delta Force wants to come in over the mountain with oxygen, coming from the Pakistan side, over the mountains and come in and get a drop on bin Laden from behind."

But they didn't take that route, because Fury says they didn't get approval from a higher level. "Whether that was Central Command all the way up to the president of the United States, I'm not sure," he says.

The next option that Delta wanted to employ was to drop hundreds of landmines in the mountain passes that led to Pakistan, which was bin Laden's escape route.

"First guy blows his leg off, everybody else stops. That allows aircraft overhead to find them. They see all these heat sources out there. Okay, there a big large group of Al Qaeda moving south. They can engage that," Fury explains.

But they didn't do that either, because Fury says that plan was also disapproved. He says he has "no idea" why.

"How often does Delta come up with a tactical plan that's disapproved by higher headquarters?" Pelley asks.

"In my experience, in my five years at Delta, never before," Fury says.
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video on the story here.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5153449n

I guess going by your standard "Bush didn't give a shit about American lives" either.
 
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It does not matter if he tried to blame a failure on someone else - he would still have suffered from the failure, and powerfully so.
 
Word is that this is the same source Harry Reid talked to that have the Left so up in arms about Romney's tax returns. Which means since it's identical conditions, we can trust it like they trust 'Ol Harry. 😀
 
chucky2 said:
Word is that this is the same source Harry Reid talked to that have the Left so up in arms about Romney's tax returns. Which means since it's identical conditions, we can trust it like they trust 'Ol Harry. 😀
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Sounds about as trustworthy. But I think we can all admit it's an almost certainty that Harry Reid made his claim for political purposes and I think it's an almost certainty that silly shit like this is being said for explicitly political purposes with no evidence.
 
So.....there's no difference. I didn't see The Left slamming Harry, so I'm not sure why they'd have a problem with this either. What's good for the goose.........right?
 
BTW, this is an example of what an awful publication the Daily Fail is:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...ell-50-survives-widow-maker-heart-attack.html

The comedian, 50, urged her female fans to seek medical help if they suffer symptoms of cardiac arrest, after she risked her life by ignoring her illness for a day.
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Apparently their writers and editors are too ignorant to know the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest. The only symptom of cardiac arrest is death!
 
chucky2 said:
So.....there's no difference. I didn't see The Left slamming Harry, so I'm not sure why they'd have a problem with this either. What's good for the goose.........right?
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Most of us just ignored him. There is a genuine question about Romney's taxes, but no one actually believes he paid NO taxes. And because of things like Swiss bank accounts that received amnesty in 2009, possible voter fraud when he voted for Scott Brown while not being a resident, questions about when he actually left Bain, potential IRA fraud, there are things in Romney's tax returns that are an almost guaranteed harmful thing to him and at least some potential criminal. And if there's not, then Romney could release his tax returns and make Harry Reid look like a gigantic fool when he's already not too popular. Hell Romney could potentially end Harry Reid's political career, why wouldn't he unless the repercussions of releasing the tax returns were worse than the rewards? You can't tell me the tax returns thing is anywhere near on the level of the birther bullshit?

It doesn't help that Romney throughout his political career has insisted that others release their tax returns yet now refuses to do so himself.
 
thraashman said:
Most of us just ignored him. There is a genuine question about Romney's taxes, but no one actually believes he paid NO taxes. And because of things like Swiss bank accounts that received amnesty in 2009, possible voter fraud when he voted for Scott Brown while not being a resident, questions about when he actually left Bain, potential IRA fraud, there are things in Romney's tax returns that are an almost guaranteed harmful thing to him and at least some potential criminal. And if there's not, then Romney could release his tax returns and make Harry Reid look like a gigantic fool when he's already not too popular. Hell Romney could potentially end Harry Reid's political career, why wouldn't he unless the repercussions of releasing the tax returns were worse than the rewards? You can't tell me the tax returns thing is anywhere near on the level of the birther bullshit?

It doesn't help that Romney throughout his political career has insisted that others release their tax returns yet now refuses to do so himself.
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I don't know, seems a lot of media attention and Dem stir up over Harry's remarks. Weird that they didn't denounce Harry for his 'source', isn't it?

As for Romney and his taxes, since he made the claim of others, he should do it himself. Had he not said anything in the past, he shouldn't have to. I could care less what's on the tax return, I already assume people are getting as much back from the Gov (or paying as little if they've gone that route) as legally possible. Which is what anyone rationally can expect was done for Romney.

I just find the reaction to this amusing, since it's the same thing Reid did, yet, different reaction. Shouldn't the reaction be the same?
 
LOL, I've heard the opposite.

Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Tom dialon, etc opposed the Bin Laden raid

The president then turned to Mr. Biden. “He said, ‘Joe, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘... Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there.’ ”
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The only two people who wanted to make the raid were the head of the CIA and Obama.

The political fall-out of such a raid would have been catastrophic. Some say it was the failure of the Iran hostage situation that cost Carter the presidency, and the whole Bay of Pigs fiasco was a big weight around JFK for years. Heck, Obama did everything right and certain people (PJABBER) still try to label it as a failure! Imagine how horrible it would have been if the raid had gone wrong?

Yet Obama still made the call to go after Bin Laden, knowing a mistake could cost him the election.
 
So now caution is considered by war hawks as a weakness and derided as "cold feet"?

Would cancelling one mission have been ok? If so, is two bad, or is it three? Is it always three or are there times when three isn't bad? I suppose a surgeon who doesn't go hacking up one's belly at the first sign of abdominal pain also suffers from indecision and cold feet.

Obama doesn't give a $hit about the lives of the people in the military.
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Who fvcking does? Not most politicians.
 
lol the desperation of the right this election is nothing short of awesome, look at them flail away at the Monster that is a Dem getting a national defense priority taken care of.

You guys should stick to getting highly partisan Lutrell types to help with swiftboating, at least that pile of steaming shit doesn't involve giving your nemesis Hillary any credit.

Isn't it great that the pubs are politicizing and cheapening the killing of Osama? Just like with 9/11. No position is too low if there is a chance a Dem might be calling the shots!
 
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