SEALs call out Obama for trying to politicize their killing of Bin Laden

As it turns out, it's not so clear that any President would have given the order.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

...

“The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

...

“The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest levels,” said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.

“There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them,” he said.

...

“The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. “We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot,” he said.


The rest of the article talks about the (reasons why the raid was cancelled. Seems these decisions might be more complex than some people want to believe.

 

So your comparison basically amounts to a "meeting" compared to many months of surveillance??

Nobody is suggesting the president should react to the whims of a fortune teller. He knew months and didn't react. He did the right thing. I don't criticize him for not acting sooner.

Its not like he was dropping the SEALs from a C130 w/out having substantial intel on the situation.

 

The "many months of surveillance" still didn't lead them to be sure that OBL was there. And Rumsfeld didn't cancel the 2005 mission because of uncertainty that al-Zawahri wasn't there. The relative levels of certainty was irrelevant to the decision making and thus that quite clearly wasn't the point of the comparison at all.

The comparison is that the Bush Admin - and McCain in the campaign - made a priority of maintaining the relationship with Pakistan over taking actions in the short-term best interests of the US (taking out high-level terrorists). Obama has clearly taken a different approach, being more willing to risk the relationship with Pakistan - both in this raid and through a number of other strikes in their territory without their permission. Which approach is correct can be debated - but the idea that every President would make the same decision is silly.

 

Very fitting approach for a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Really?? :grin:

 

Damn you beat me while I was looking to find a picture of Nancy actually sitting with her astrologer.

 

Spiking the ball is Obama's phrase.

 

Out of everything that has been laid out, the only thing you have to come back with is that Obama used that term. Noice.

 

This is a lie. TEXXX FAIL.

 

"everything" = "the economy," which Teh Once is constantly insisting he inherited.

 

basso is, historically, utterly incapable of providing rational arguments to back up his position. That's because he doesn't arrive at his positions by rationality. He arrives at them by believing what he's told to believe by the propaganda wing of his party.

 

This is awesome.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HM2FD4Jd1nw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

What does this even mean? And what does it have to do with President Obama taking a more aggressive approach towards getting bin Laden and his gang, leading to finally bumping off the b*stard? Can you at least attempt to be coherent here, please?

 

Thank you in advance for taking time to read the context of the comment.

 

I never realized that Pakistani sovereignty was such a high priority for the anti-obama brigade. Who knew?

He called a successful play. Let the man spike the ball.

 

It's an interesting article and I actually don't fault the previous Admin with not going through with that mission. Things weren't great with Pakistan in 2005 but they weren't as bad as now. In 2005 it wasn't quite as clear that Pakistan was as untrustworthy of an ally as we know now. Also in 2005 with things going bad in Iraq I can see why Rumsfeld wanted to be cautious about launching another very risky operation into Pakistan.

None of that though takes away from the current Admin.'s accomplishment in getting OBL. If anything it adds to it.

 

You should take that up with the Nobel committee.

 

So your belief is that, because he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he should not have aggressively pursued OBL or in some way changed his strategy? In other words, you think the Nobel committee should dictate US foreign policy. Fascinating.

 

He earned the Nobel prize by replacing Bush. (possibly a good call?)

But he basically started rattling the war chains in his acceptance speech...so we shouldn't be too surprised he isn't a total pacifist. And again....it's an odd criticism from anyone who may have accepted the Cheney reign of the previous yrs.