Even as the White House (and so the news media) continues to revise the story of the bin Laden raid — opening up the way for any number of conspiracy theories, many born of the situation room photo showing a sulking Barack Obama hunkered away from the action, a spectator still in his golf clothes and a hastily applied windbreaker — there is pushback coming from the military community, including this bit from Navy SEAL Froggy at Blackfive, who is distressed by new reports that the mission hinged on a “Kill Only” directive:
[…] between NSC staffers, the WH Press Secretary, Homeland Security, CIA and a multitude of “Senior Administration Officials” on background, the story has morphed into various versions of events. While the political side of me sees this correctly as another manifestation of the incompetence of this Administration, this vacillation is causing real harm to the significance of our victory here and to the reputation of the SEAL Teams. Let me assure you right now that there is no such thing as a “Kill only “ mission. If that SEAL operator came through the door to find UBL with his hands up, compliant, and unarmed (including no evidence of a suicide vest) he would have taken a muzzle strike to the face, but not any rounds. He would have swallowed some teeth, been flex cuffed, and dragged roughly out to a marshalling area and then onto the helo. To start out with the story that UBL had used his wife as a shield while shooting at the assaulters and to devolve that into to a woman was wounded and UBL was unarmed and shot in the face is quite a large spectrum of “truth”. Add to that the false notion of the “Kill only” mission, and now you have the entire SEAL community being thrown under the bus as wonton killers of women and unarmed civilians.
Are Navy SEALs eager to kill terrorists and UBL most of all? Hells Yeah! But we would not be tasked with a mission profile that excludes the capture of the single greatest intelligence bonanza in the history of the conflict. Certainly we will exploit the intel collected on the target and soon, but if you simply want to kill somebody no matter what you do not send Navy SEALs across a sovereign border to do it. That is what Hellfire missilesand JDAMs are designed to do.
This is also curious from the standpoint of Islamic sensitivity, which is clearly foremost in the mind of this White House. Only Obama could go out of his way to emphasize the respect for the Islamic burial process only to tee up perfectly the conditions under which conspiracy theories are born. The primitive peoples of the middle eastare perhaps the most gullible ethnic group on the planet. When I was in Iraq, there was a widely held belief thatVBIEDs were manufactured on our US military base inRamadi, and that the guys with beards (like me) were actually Israeli agents driving in HMMVs with the Star of David on the door. I shit you not. The point is that coming out with a well laid out media plan that is executed from the Pentagon by experts is critical if your goal is to provide a clear and undivided narrative of the event. Of course, this White House has never been very good at sharing credit and it is that infantile demand for attention that is causing this victory to become muddled in conflicting accounts and naked political point scoring.
Frankly, I am content to watch Obama shoot himself in the foot while still having presided over a tremendous effort by our intelligence community and the SEAL Teams, but I’ll be damned if he is going to be allowed to implicate my brothers out of his own incompetence or political expediency. More importantly, the killing of UBL is undoubtedly a very significant event in the War on Terror and the momentum that we have gained should not be lost by grandstanding, partisan jackassery, and rank incompetence. Get your shit together Mr. President!
Indeed. The conflicting accounts, coupled with the bizarre burial ritual aboard a Navy vessel, just doesn’t jibe. We’re to believe that orders were given to shoot an unarmed man and all who surrounded him; but having done so, we were careful to treat his dead body with care and respect?
Something doesn’t add up here. And one potential explanation may lie with who actually did the killing. As I noted in an email to Froggy last evening, the sub rosa buzz is that UBL may have been shot by one of his own security forces in order that he not be taken alive. This has long been a rumor that surrounded bin Laden — that his personal security force had this directive — and it would account for his being shot to death while (supposedly) unarmed.
Personally, as far as I’m concerned, it matters not: mission accomplished, and ding dong the bitch is dead, etc. But this WH, by rushing to take control of the narrative and spin it for optimal partisan political effect, has bungled it badly, and so squandered any “victory” Obama may have gotten from it.
Meanwhile, no one seems to be able to tell the story of what actually happened — at least, not in a way that seems at all plausible, given all we know about Obama and his work ethic, and all we’re learning from the mangling of the particulars of the tale by those supposedly involved in the most intimate of mission details.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Suicide
Brutality! Illegal Arrest!
I am soo embarrassed right now, our president is such a farking idiot. Get your shit together is right :(
no one seems to be able to tell the story of what actually happened
That’s because the people who know aren’t talking.
Why not autopsy? I am curious to know who actually shot OBL.
I suspected that the fatuous “kill mission” appellation was bogus from the beginning. That, and the “evolving” story bother me as well; especially in light of the video recording systems that each team-member wears.
You would think that they would have reviewed the tapes, and “got their stories straight” before trotting out to the media and addressing the American people. Sadly, there was an underlying political calculus to exploit this for all the mileage it’s worth…
In my humble opinion, the designation “kill mission” is a bone tossed out to the left; so that even in their momentary, stilted, embrace of the military and this mission, they can still reserve some condescending disdain for them in the fashionable salons of the upper west side. Conveniently, this will also allow them the added flexibility of tossing this term around later as they see fit, content in the knowledge that they can always point to this episode and the O!ministration’s “admission” itself as proof that such “Assassination Squad!11!1!” missions are SOP.
In regards to the obsession with focusing on the “dignified treatment and burial”, it was plainly neither, at least by Islamic standards; which I personally have no problem with. Indeed, I hope every sailor on that carrier pee’d into the ocean prior to sending ObL’s body to Davey Jones locker. But I see it as a paean to the transnationalist multi-culti fetishists, so they can feel good about their government “respecting ObL’s traditions”.
Of course, those who believe Obama to be an apostate muslim will see other motivations for this as well.
But Froggy is correct in saying that this seems to be set up to facilitate the apotheosis of ObL in the cospiracy disposed minds of the average Habib on the Arab street.
Speaking of spin….
From Ernst’s link:
The negative interpretation of this, of course, is that the President wasn’t running the meeting, but both of us found this impossible to believe. The positive interpretation is that the President is so confident in his power that he is comfortable even in a corner. This speaks well of him, to my mind; a president who kills America’s enemies without swagger is better than a swaggerer who doesn’t kill America’s enemies.
Ba haa haaa haaa …
Oh. those folks crack me.
No one puts
babyObama in a corner!Ba haa haa …
what an asshole.
Of course, stupid Bush dig there. Bush didn’t kill America’s enemies? Willful ignorance.
It’s as if the man can do no wrong, Ernst.
Or, as the clever wag who compiles Ace‘s headline sidebar put it, “We want to hurt people, not feelings”
Confidence in the corner? Hahaha. The look on his face says he shart himself and those bozos at that link really can’t spin the expression on his face or the body language. A confident Zero in the corner would be leaned back, relaxed and alert. He would not look like a rabbit in someone’s sights.
h/t Rush
Obsequious and oleaginous with a hint of “don’t believe your lying eyes!” desperation about it, Carin.
Y’know, if you buy into all the sociopath/malignant narcissist pop psychoanalysis, he could be trying to strike a pose of concerned attention and the best he can manage is a constipated strain.
In case anyone wants a large version of the situation room photo, here.
The man’s been schooled in body language and projection – why do you think he was always bounding onto stage at his campaign stops if not to show the ‘difference’ between his age and McCain’s He’s a Go-Getter, Rah-rah (forget for a moment the insensitivity that bespoke re wounded vets) – but no amount of schooling is going to kick in when your nads are in your throat.
I saw several channels (even the local station!) news reports earlier this morning discussing the “iconic” image, the great “concern” of Hillary and the “steely eyed resolve” of Obama.
Made me chuckle.
The steely eyed resolve is a journolist meme. Started with Fineman and that crew. If that photo is the best representation of ‘steely eyed’ they don’t remember those photos of Obama giving anyone the finger. THAT was steely eyed resolve. Plus some more less flattering emotions. I’d love to see the ‘outtakes’ before they got this pic.
[…] Make sure you read the BlackFive piece in it’s entirety, as it has bearing on Dan’s earlier post about the “evolving” narrative of the SEAL team’s raid this past Sunday. Our pal Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom also has an excellent post regarding the “Tale of two spins”. […]
Hard to understand why they release photos like this. Is there someone in the White House communications office with a really good sense of humor?
I’ve been astonished that President Obama shamelessly takes both sides of every issue, but taking both sides of this? The killing of bin Laden? That is really impressive. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done.
In the world of national security and foreign policy, weakness is, as we know, provocation. It seems like the only thing that is protecting us these days, in terms of policy, is that the President is so completely batshit crazy unpredictable that nobody knows what he might do.
No, Carin, that photo just shows how RAAAAAAACIST!!1!!111!1!!1!!!1 America still is – even in Presidential meetings, da black man still got to sit in da corner!