(I published this originally on July 15, 2015. In light of the 5 year “anniversary” of killing Bin Laden I decided to bump this up. There is a lot of misinformation being resurrected today. A pliant press prefers propaganda to actual investigative journalism. However, I have changed the title.)
Self-delusion is a dangerous, lethal malady when it comes to matters of war and national security. That’s why I think we need to brutally honest with ourselves about the truth of finding and killing Bin Laden. The American people and the World have been sold a myth. Most appear happy to embrace and celebrate the lie.
There is one truth–Usama bin Laden is dead and was killed by US Navy SEALs. Rob O’Neil, one of the SEALs, probably got off the first shots. But bin Laden’s body subsequently was riddled with bullets from other SEALs who were part of the assault. The mangled body of bin Laden is the basic reason that photos of the aftermath will remain hidden from the public. The visual evidence is too difficult to explain away.
Legendary investigative reporter, Sy Hersh, has come in for a lot of heat for daring to challenge the myth pushed by Obama, Hollywood and a legion of pretend journalists (he now has a book out, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden). He had four key points:
1) We learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts thanks to a Pakistani intelligence officer who walked into the US Embassy in Pakistan and ratted out bin Laden for money. A lot of money, in fact. This destroyed the meme that torture/waterboarding and drone technology had led us to the terrorist lair.
2) bin Laden was a prisoner of the Pakistanis. He did not have freedom of movement nor freedom of unfettered communications with the outside world. He was under house arrest and being kept off of the terrorist battlefield. In addition, bin Laden was gravely ill with kidney disease.
3) We eventually tipped our hand to senior Pakistani Generals and they became tacit collaborators in the U.S. plan to kill bin Laden. The CIA prepped a cover story that bin Laden was killed in the no-man’s land between Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to give the Pakistanis plausible deniability. That ruse went up in smoke when the White House made the snap decision to take credit for the strike and credit US Special Ops forces with the strike inside Pakistan.
4) The shredded body of bin Laden was taken back to Pakistan but never sent to a US aircraft carrier for burial at sea.
His article generated significant pushback. A fairly typical response to a Sy Hersh article that exposes lies and myths. He faced similar pushback back in the 1970s when he reported that the CIA was engaged in domestic spying and in 2004 when he exposed the abuses at Abu Ghraib. In taking on the heroic myth surrounding the killing of bin Laden, Sy is once again challenging conventional wisdom and the political establishment. A careful examination of the actual facts of the raid on bin Laden shows that the “success” had more to do with luck and the help of the Pakistanis than it did with the intrepid skill of our Special Ops forces and the courage of Barack Obama. Basically, if our Special Ops guys can’t kill a 60 year old invalid while the Pakistani military turns off power grids and withdraws security forces and ensures that there are no security guards in place at the compound, then we need to get our taxpayer dollars back.
So, building on a previous piece, let me walk you systematically through the official myth and then, using two eyewitness accounts from SEALs who were part of the assault team, show you the holes in the official story. The “official” supposed first hand account of the demise of Bin Laden came courtesy of the New Yorker and Nicholas Schmidle. Schmidle’s dad was a connected Navy officer and got his son access to senior Administration officials who happily spoon fed him the “official” version.
Then we have the eyewitness accounts from two members who were part of the SEAL assault force that night–Matt Bissonette and Rob O’Neil. These guys were on the same raid but they tell different stories. Some of the discrepancies can be attributed to “fog of war.” But not all. Matt Bissonette and Rob O’Neil each claim to have shot Bin Laden. I will let you see the details of the separate accounts and let you draw your own conclusions.
Here is a great graphic detailing some of the myths surrounding the hit on bin Laden’s “lair.”
Some of the big lies?
“Four U.S. military helicopters swoop in over Abottabad.”
“Bin Laden’s guards open fire on the helicopters.”
“Bin Laden is firing an AK-47 from his bedroom window.”
Great story for a Hollywood blockbuster. But total, made-up bullshit.
INSERTION
The 23 SEALs and the translator and dog arrived on scene in two specially modified Black Hawk helicopters. As they flew into the immediate area of the bin Laden compound, the electrical power to the bin Laden compound and surrounding homes was cut. Who did this? The CIA or Pakistan or both? I know that the myth makers in Hollywood have persuaded most folks in the world that the CIA can do anything, especially this. But the truth is a bit more mundane–the Paks turned out the lights.
The lights in the city of Abottabad were on according to Rob O’Neil (this is from the transcript of, “The Man Who Killed Usama bin Laden, part 2 Fox News Network, November 12, 2014 Wednesday, NEWS; Domestic, 6804 words, Peter Doocy”). Schmidle’s New Yorker account said nothing about lights:
Two minutes out, the doors open, and it’s not a training site in the mountains in the United States. And it’s not a desert. It’s lights. It’s a city. One minute out, and I remember thinking, Man, this is some serious Navy SEAL stuff we’re about to do. So we’re in the second helicopter, and the plan was the first helicopter was going to go in front.
But the bin Laden household was in the dark. Matt Bissonette wrote in No Easy Day:
“It was pitch-black and none of the lights in the surrounding houses were on. It seemed like the whole block was without power. Rolling blackouts in the area were common.”
The assault force consisted of two Black Hawks and two follow on Chinooks (most likely the MH-47G). Each Black Hawk can carry 12 SEALS plus crew. A Chinook can carry as many as 55 SEALS plus crew. After reading the Schmidle, Bissonette and O’Neil accounts, the plan was pretty straightforward:
Two Black Hawks would hit the bin Laden compound and two Chinooks would wait off-site to respond if needed.
Helo 1 (Chalk One per Bissonette and Dash 1 per O’Neil) would insert its 12 sailors via fast rope to the ground.
Helo 2 (aka Chalk Two aka Dash 2) would deliver its SEALs to the roof of the bin Laden “home” via fast rope.
The two Chinooks stayed away from the site. One Chinook carried a Quick Reaction Force of SEALS who could be called on to aid their buddies if things went wrong, such as the arrival of armed, hostile forces on scene. The other Chinook was available to carry out the SEALs if one of the helos went down. This proved, by the end of the operation, to be a sound contingency plan.
Schmidle, Bissonette and O’Neil all agree that the first Black Hawk failed in its original mission and crashed into the “animal pen” in the west side of the compound:
The Nick Schmidle official version reported:
The pilot scrapped the plan to fast-rope and focused on getting the aircraft down. He aimed for an animal pen in the western section of the compound. The SEALs on board braced themselves as the tail rotor swung around, scraping the security wall. The pilot jammed the nose forward to drive it into the dirt and prevent his aircraft from rolling onto its side. Cows, chickens, and rabbits scurried. With the Black Hawk pitched at a forty-five-degree angle astride the wall, the crew sent a distress call to the idling Chinooks. . . .
After a few minutes, the twelve SEALs inside helo one recovered their bearings and calmly relayed on the radio that they were proceeding with the raid. They had conducted so many operations over the past nine years that few things caught them off guard.
Bissonette, who was on the crashing chopper, wrote in No Easy Day (pp 278-279):
“Seconds before impact, I felt the nose dip. I held my breath and waited for impact. The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug “into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn’t even feel the impact.
The blades didn’t snap off. Instead, the rotors blasted the muddy courtyard, blowing dust and debris and creating a maelstrom around us.
I exhaled and blinked the dust out of my eyes. Squinting against the assault of rocks and dust, I realized we were still about six feet above the ground at a steep angle.”
Rob O’Neil wrote and said little about the crash of the first chopper. With the benefit of hindsight he offered up analysis but, that night, he was not aware the first chopper had crashed until much later. He told Fox’s Peter Doocy:
O’NEILL: The pilot saved everyone’s lives. He pinned it. He slid the tail down the fence and put the nose in the dirt, saved everyone’s lives.
So we land, we let the snipers out, and then we pick up and we go right back down to the ground. That wasn’t part of the plan. We weren’t talking to our pilot, but based on his actions, he was telling us, You’re getting out here. We didn’t know the helicopter crashed, the other one, but he did. He saw it crash, and he just thought, just being the genius that he is, They couldn’t hover, I might not be able to hover, get out. We’re go-ing to start the war from right here.
O’Neil’s account alludes to the original plan that his chopper would insert SEALs on the roof of bin Laden’s “home” and fight their way down. That plan was now kaput and O’Neil and his sea mates were now outside the wall of the compound.
BREACHING THE COMPOUND
Schmidle crafts an action sequence for the SEALS as they begin storming the bin Laden compound:
Minutes after hitting the ground, Mark and the other team members began streaming out the side doors of helo one. Mud sucked at their boots as they ran alongside a ten-foot-high wall that enclosed the animal pen. A three-man demolition unit hustled ahead to the pen’s closed metal gate, reached into bags containing explosives, and placed C-4 charges on the hinges. After a loud bang, the door fell open. The nine other SEALs rushed forward, ending up in an alleylike driveway with their backs to the house’s main entrance. They moved down the alley, silenced rifles pressed against their shoulders. Mark hung toward the rear as he established radio communications with the other team. At the end of the driveway, the Americans blew through yet another locked gate and stepped into a courtyard facing the guesthouse, where Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s courier, lived with his wife and four children.
This graphic helps you understand the lay of the land, specifically the location of the “alley”:
Bissonette’s account, which traces his steps from the crashed chopper to the alley way and ultimately the guest house, differs slightly:
“Putting my head down, I raced toward the wreck. As I got close, I tried to hug the wall as I ran underneath the tail boom. Hot exhaust blew down from the engines as I passed. It was like walking inside a hair-dryer for a few seconds.
Coming out on the other side, I could see Charlie prepping a charge on the locked iron gate. All around him were guys with their weapons trained out, pulling security.
I moved toward a prayer room near the gate to make sure it was clear.
“When I got back outside, Charlie was checking his back blast to make sure no one could get hit by shrapnel from the breaching charge. I saw the quick flash as Charlie hit the detonator and smoothly rolled back out of the way like he had done thousands of times.”
“The explosion sent a shock wave that blew a hole in the gate. Charlie was the first through, kicking and pulling the scorched metal wider so we could fit. Guys quickly started to pile through and peel off toward their planned objectives. ”
O’Neil, who is outside the compound, offers this account of his group’s insertion (with color commentary from Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down):
BOWDEN: So the guys outside the compound had to blow open a gate in order to enter the compound. Those who were the chopper that had crash landed inside the compound just began moving toward the tar-gets that they had planned to hit.
O’NEILL: There’s a door in a corner of the wall. We went up to that. One of the breachers (ph) put a big bomb on it, blasted it, and it opened sort of like a tin can, and there’s a brick wall behind it. The breacher said, Failed breach. This is bad. And I remember thinking, No, this is good. That’s a fake door. Someone im-portant is in this house.
Now, we still didn’t know that the helicopter had crashed, so we announced because we think they’re flying around, Hey, we’re going to blast the main carport, letting them know because they’re going to be fast roping in, we don’t want to blow something up when the helicopter’s hovering.
But then we hear over the radio, We’ll just open it for you. And we’re, like, you know, What’s that mean? And the door opens and a thumb comes out. The thumb’s up. And we’re, like, OK, the door just opened. Our guys are obviously in there.
The unstated, but obvious point from these three accounts is that the clock is ticking and time is passing. This is where we get true insight about the physical condition of bin Laden. If bin Laden were still a functioning terrorist chieftain he would have had a 24 hour security detail. Not only would the perimeter outside the walls have been secured, the choke-points aka gates/doors as well would have armed personnel. This is not rocket science. This is security 101.
None of this was present that night. The SEALS faced no real opposition. No one was shooting at them from the perimeter, from the roof or from any of the buildings.
But that’s not the fable that Schmidle weaved and sold to a gullible, trusting public:
When the smaller unit rounded the corner to face the doors of the guesthouse, they spotted Kuwaiti running inside to warn his wife and children. The Americans’ night-vision goggles cast the scene in pixellated shades of emerald green. Kuwaiti, wearing a white shalwar kameez, had grabbed a weapon and was coming back outside when the SEALs opened fire and killed him. . . .
One SEAL unit had no sooner trod on the paved patio at the house’s front entrance when Abrar—a stocky, mustachioed man in a cream-colored shalwar kameez—appeared with an AK-47. He was shot in the chest and killed, as was his wife, Bushra, who was standing, unarmed, beside him.
Matt Bissonette offers a different account. Kuwaiti, rather than running inside to grab and gun and come back outside to engage the SEALS, is trapped in the guest house:
“Taking a knee to the right of the door, I peeled the backing off the adhesive strip on the breaching charge and set it across the mangled knob and lock. ”
“Someone inside had an assault rifle. Aiming chest high, he fired a blind barrage. He was a caged animal. There was nowhere he could go and he knew we were coming.”
“I was about to attach the detonator to the charge when we heard someone throwing the latch to the lock.”
“As the door continued to open, I saw that the bundle was a baby. Al-Kuwaiti’s wife, Mariam, came out with the child pressed against her chest. Behind her, three more kids shuffled out of the house.”
“He is dead,” Mariam said to Will in Arabic. “You shot him. He is dead. You killed him.”
Similarly, Rob O’Neil reports hearing gunshots, but most appear to be from SEAL weapons:
While we were in the carport, I heard gunfire from two different places nearby. In one flurry, a SEAL shot Abrar al-Kuwaiti, the brother of bin Laden’s courier, and his wife, Bushra. One of our guys involved told me, “Jesus, these women are jumping in front of these guys. They’re trying to martyr themselves. Another sign that this is a serious place. Even if bin Laden isn’t here, someone important is.”
We crossed to the south side of the main building. There the Shooter ran into another team member, who told him, “Hey, man, I just shot a woman.” He was worried. I told him not to be. “We should be thinking about the mission, not about going to jail.”
I doubt the lack of opposition on entering the Bin Laden compound was a surprise to the SEALS. They arrived on target hoping that was the case. Buttressed by prior overhead imagery and surveillance from fixed wing platforms (e.g., drones) created a pretty clear picture that the residence was neither fortified nor heavily manned. This observation was confirmed by CIA personnel and assets lodged in a nearby safe house.
AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS
Let’s start with Schmidle’s account:
On the top stair, the lead SEAL swivelled right; with his night-vision goggles, he discerned that a tall, rangy man with a fist-length beard was peeking out from behind a bedroom door, ten feet away. The first SEAL pushed it open. Two of bin Laden’s wives had placed themselves in front of him. Amal al-Fatah, bin Laden’s fifth wife, was screaming in Arabic. She motioned as if she were going to charge; the SEAL lowered his sights and shot her once, in the calf. Fearing that one or both women were wearing suicide jackets, he stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug, and drove them aside.
Got it? Two SEALs. One pushes a door open and finds two of Bin Laden’s wives standing in front of the bearded wonder. The youngest of the Bin Laden wives, Amal, is somewhere in the room and she gets shot in the calf. The lead SEAL steps forward, wraps the other two women in a bear hug and “drove them aside.”
Okay, what does Navy SEAL Matt Bissonette say happened (This is taken from No Easy Day)?
“Instead, we waited at the threshold and peered inside. We could see two women standing over a man lying at the foot of a bed. Both women were dressed in long gowns and their hair was a tangled mess like they had been sleeping. The women were hysterically crying and wailing in Arabic. The younger one looked up and saw us at the door. She yelled out in Arabic and rushed the point man. ”“We were less than five feet apart. Swinging his gun to the side, the point man grabbed both women and drove them toward the corner of the room. ”
According to Bissonette, Bin Laden is already on the floor. It is not clear if he had a gunshot wound from the shots fired as Bissonette and the other SEALs climbed the stairs. Bassinet only has two women, not the three in Schmidle’s account. And none of the SEALs shot a Bin Laden wife in the calf.
What about Rob O’Neil? He insists he’s the only one that knows (even though some of his SEAL buddies claim he is lying). O’Neil provided Esquire’s Phil Bronstein this account:
The two of us went up. On the third floor, he tackled the two women in the hallway right outside the first door on the right, moving them past it just enough. He thought he was going to absorb the blast of suicide vests; he was going to kill himself so I could get the shot. It was the most heroic thing I’ve ever seen. I rolled past him into the room, just inside the doorway. . . .the Shooter was the “number two” behind the raid’s point man going up the stairs to bin Laden’s third-floor residence, and that he is the one who rolled through the bedroom door solo and confronted the surprisingly tall terrorist pushing his youngest wife, Amal, in front of him through the pitch-black room. The Shooter had to raise his gun higher than he expected.
Confused? O’Neil places the two women in the hallway outside of the bedroom. The Point Man tackles the two women and O’Neil goes into the bedroom, where he sees Bin Laden holding his youngest wife, Amal, in front of him.
THE SHOOTING
So, who shot Bin Laden? Schmidle does not provide a name:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me.
The first round, a 5.56-mm. bullet, struck bin Laden in the chest. As he fell backward, the SEAL fired a second round into his head, just above his left eye. On his radio, he reported, “For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.” After a pause, he added, “Geronimo E.K.I.A.”—“enemy killed in action.”
Pay close attention. One bullet to the chest and one to the head above the left eye.
Bissonette’s account is quite different:
“With the women out of the way, I entered the room with a third SEAL. We saw the man lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants, and a tan tunic. The point man’s shots had entered the right side of his head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.”
Right side of the face, not the left, and then pumped full of lead. Bassinet essentially concedes that he didn’t make the first shots. That came from the “point” man.
Enter Rob O’Neil, who tells a different tale. As soon as the lead SEAL tackles two women in the hallway at the entrance to the bedroom, O’Neil rolls in:
In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath. . . .Everybody wanted him dead, but nobody wanted to say, Hey, you’re going to kill this guy. It was just sort of understood that’s what we wanted to do.
His forehead was gruesome. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face. The American public doesn’t want to know what that looks like.
Three shots. All in the forehead. He does not specify right or left.
Yet, even Phil Bronstein, the fellow who chronicles O’Neil’s account, concedes early in the Esquire article that other SEALs also pumped some lead into Bin Laden:
Not in dispute is the fact that others have claimed that they shot bin Laden when he was already dead, and a number of team members apparently did just that.
Try an experiment. Let’s call it the, “What Would Bin Laden Do aka WWBLD,” experiment. Sit in your bedroom in the dark. Put on the movie Zero Dark Thirty in an adjoining room and turn up the sound. Start when the helicopters land. Get a timer. The noise portrayed in the movie only begins to hit the decibels that were punctuating the darkness that fateful night. Bin Laden may have had an advance stage of kidney disease, but he was not deaf.
Here’s the interesting tidbit, which is reported by Bissonette and alluded to by O’Neil–the assault on Bin Laden had been underway for at least 15 minutes before the SEALs made their way to the top of the Bin Laden jailhouse/bedrrom. The house was completely dark because the electrical power had been cut off. Bin Laden apparently did not have a flashlight or other emergency light source at hand. Otherwise, with 15 minutes to spare while all of the shooting and explosions were going off below, he could have done something other than cower behind a wife. And O’Neil insists that there was a fully functional AK-47 in his reach.
WWBLD? What would you do if a group breaks into your house in the middle of the night? You hear shooting and explosions. Nothing? Would you sit in the dark mute and inert? Would youdo nothing for 15 minutes? Or would you grab a gun and chamber a round? Would you barricade yourself in the toilet?
Bin Laden did not move from his bedroom. He stayed in bed, apparently till the last minute. He did not grab a weapon. He did not try to strap on a suicide belt. He did not toss hand grenades. He did not try to rally fighters to come to his aid. He did not call out for help. He was unarmed when the O’Neil, Bissonette and others showed up with loaded guns. Why?
This is one more piece of evidence that Sy Hersh has the story right. Bin Laden, despicable fanatic and who deserved to die, also was a sick, infirm man. It would be one thing if the SEALs had fast roped on to the roof of the Bin Laden prison and blew into his room within 30 seconds of hitting the roof. Under that scenario Bin Laden probably would have been so sleepy and disoriented that a confused response would be quite natural. But, per both Bissonette and O’Neil, the assault went on several minutes before the SEALs reached their target. At least fifteen minutes (and maybe longer). That lapse gives any healthy man or woman ample time to react.
The best Bin Laden could muster was to grab the shoulders of his youngest wife (according to O’Neil). U.S. authorities were quick to seize on this as evidence that Bin Laden was a coward because he used a woman as a shield. Maybe. But given the passage of time since the SEAL chopper hit the deck, this sounds more like a sick man hanging onto someone for stability as he struggled to get to his feet. Perhaps he was staggering to get to the toilet.
Let’s face some hard truths. Bin Laden may not even had the strength to get out of bed. We were shooting an unarmed, sick man; albeit a malevolent asshole. This truth is not the kind of story that makes for a dandy Hollywood film. We needed a bad guy going out in a futile blaze of glory. But that did not happen.
AND THE BODY?
Bin Laden, in the body bag, resembled chopped meat more than a terrorist leader. He was hit by at least 19 bullets. All probably 5.56 and 9 mm rounds. And that is assuming that the only shooters were O’Neil (three shots) and Bissonette and his partner (each had ammo clips with at least 15 rounds in each). Phil Bronstein, in his profile of the then anonymous O’Neil, intimated that more SEALS came to the top floor and took a shot or two at the body.
No doubt. Parts of Bin Laden were mush. Did the SEALS toss any parts out of the chopper? I had heard that story early on but that may have been hyperbole. The gruesome condition of Bin Laden is the number one reason that the photos are not likely to see the light of day. The body was handed over to the CIA when the SEALS arrived back in Jalalabad. The CIA had the body and the responsibility for its disposal. Not the military.
SO WHAT?
The killing bin Laden saga is not a stand-alone story. The decision of the Obama White House to hit the public airwaves that Sunday night had a dual purpose–first, to burnish Obama’s creds as a Commander-in-Chief eager to kick terrorist ass and second, provide a justification for water boarding and other abuses done in the name of fighting terrorism.
We are fortunate that the SEALS on that assault team that night were not killed or severely wounded. They had some critical assistance from Pakistani Generals who turned off radar, air defense systems and who ensured that no armed security forces where in place around or inside the bin Laden compound. Their assault was a near fiasco. Giving a potential foe 15 minutes to ramp up a defense is not a recommended course of action. Failing to insert assault teams in the manner planned is nothing to be proud of.
I am more troubled by what they did to bin Laden. I love kicking the ass of a bully. But if the bully is now in a wheel chair and can barely stand, I can not take much pride physically destroying an invalid. Did the SEALS dishonor themselves by shooting an unarmed bin Laden multiple times? Short answer–yes. I understand why they did it. Just because it feels good does not make it right.
What is the ultimate take away? Killing bin Laden did not weaken nor destroy the radical Sunnis keen on recreating the Caliphate. That’s where our focus should be in taking the fight to terrorists. Will our actions help us discredit the leaders of ISIS and deflate the confidence of their adherents? Those should be the questions guiding future actions.
UPDATE–I want to ensure I am not misinterpreted on this key point–the SEALS conducted themselves bravely that night. Hoping that you will not be facing a security force is not the same as knowing. They did not know fully what they were up against and had to assume the worst.
While I am doing arm-chair quarterbacking, I now understand why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates advocated bombing the compound. Putting these SEALS in this kind of risk was foolish and unnecessary. The SEALS, along with their other Special Ops brethren, are probably overly enthusiastic about putting their lives on the line for a higher purpose. It is the responsibility of wise leaders to protect them from themselves.
Barack Obama is not a wise leader. He used the SEALS and this mission for craven political purposes. As a result, he damaged both relations with Pakistan and the so-called war on terror.
Matt Bissonette and Rob O’Neil should have kept their mouths shut. Their views should only have been presented over beers with trusted colleagues. But I do not fully blame them. Their leadership, both political and military, led the Chatty Cathy way by talking to Hollywood and giving the New Yorker the “official” version of the mission. Sailors, soldiers and marines reflect leadership. The leadership in Washington these days is pathetic.
DOUBLE UPDATE–Much is being made of President “Cool” going to the Correspondent’s dinner five years ago while “the operation to kill bin Laden was underway.” That meme is total bullshit. Typical of this spin is this snippet from a New Yorker piece:
Not only, as we did not know then, was President Obama in the midst of the operation that would lead shortly to Osama bin Laden’s killing; it was also the night when, despite that preoccupation, the President took apart Donald Trump, plastic piece by orange part, and then refused to put him back together again.
Barack Obama was doing his comedy routine around 10:30 pm aka 2230 hours Eastern Daylight Time. You know what time it was in Abbottabad, Pakistan? 7:30 AM aka 0730 hours. In other words, broad daylight. Bin Laden was shot at 1am Pakistan time. That is 4pm aka 1600 hours EDT. Bin Laden was long dead before Obama showed up at the Correspondent’s shindig. There was absolutely no compelling reason to tell the world about the covert op that night other than lay the foundation for Obama’s re-election campaign.
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