SEALs speak out on anniversary
Daniel and Old Trooper sent us a link to the UK’s Daily Mail who bothered to take a chance to interview SEALs about how they felt that there was a big celebration going on today about the killing of bin Laden a year ago;
Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.
‘I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice – it was a broader team effort.’
Mr Zinke, who is now a Republican state senator in Montana, added that MR Obama was exploiting bin Laden’s death for his re-election bid. ‘The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition. It was predictable.’
Mitt Romney said yesterday that “even Jimmy Carter” would have made the same decision. In fact Jimmy Carter did make a “gutsy call” and sent in the Desert One Raid to Tehran. It failed and he paid the price at the polls a few months later.
I did an interview with Human Events yesterday on the same subject which hasn’t been published yet, but I made the point that we don’t normally celebrate the anniversaries of deaths of our enemies. When have we ever celebrated the anniversary of Hitler’s death on April 30, 1945? No one has ever suggested we celebrate Saddam Hussein’s death (December 30, 2006) and he was an enemy a lot longer than bin Laden was our enemy. But the difference, I suppose, is that Hussein was captured and killed during the Bush Administration.
From the Daily Mail’s link;
A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.
‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’
Yeah, but when it’s the only successful thing he’s done in office, what do you really expect him to do. Run on his long list of failures? I just think it’s disingenuous of Obama to stand on the shoulders of the same troops who his Defense Department is currently screwing on healthcare.
Yeah, f*ck you very much.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues
If Obama claiming some measure of credit wasn’t enough, the ISI is doing likewise.
http://tolonews.com/en/world/6039-pakistan-spy-agency-claims-credit-for-tracking-down-osama-bin-laden-
This whole thing is becoming enough to gag a maggot.
You said it in the last paragraph, he’s got nothing else.
The idiots pulling the strings seem to have forgotten that whoever is in the WH gets the credit for many things over which he really has little or no control when things go well and that he gets the blame when those same things go badly. It’s not something you need to claim either way.
You’d think someone up there would have the political saavy to know that.
Where is insipid? I know he has to get a break from his job at the bus station bathroom sometime soon…
I can see it now…”MY PRESIDENT GOT HIM IN ONLY TWO YEARS!!!!”
If he had balked, Hillery would have had a news conference about his ineptness the next day. He had no choice.
Well not every presedent would have done the same. I believe Clinton passed on the opportunity, and more than once?
Per Richard Miniter, Clinton passed on either taking custody or taking out bin Laden at least 3 times. And maybe more.
Hondo – I haven’t read Miniter’s book, aside from some excerpts, does he talk about what I believe was Sudan’s stipulation that Saudi Arabia would be both the destination and trial venue….and/or that SA refused?
CI: as I recall, no – the offer was to arrest bin Laden essentially unconditionally in exchange for normalizing relations. However, it’s been quite a while since I read the book. My memory could well be inaccurate.
If Miniter is correct, the Clinton administration missed numerous (I count 5 or 6) chances to either incarcerate or take out bin Laden due to either timidity or incompetence. And Miniter appears to have done his homework, and to have secured a substantial amount of what appears to be credible documentary evidence (in the form of copies of passports and other documents) from the government of Sudan to back up his claims.
I don’t know if all that Miniter claims is correct. But if even 20% of it is, then we missed at least one chance to eliminate bin Laden as a threat during the Clinton administration – and maybe more.
It is not unexpected that the subject of Bin Laden’s execution would come up on this anniversary. The “Greatest Generation” could never forget two dates…Pearl Harbor Day and VE/VJ days. This generation will always remember 9/11 and the day we finally got Bin Laden. It is unfortunate for Romney and a “lucky break” for Obama…that’s life.
I have to give our President credit for what he did…and it was a risky decision. Had it ended like the failed Iranian Hostage mission, it would have been a “death knell” for Obama’s presidency. Like him or hate him, at least give him credit where credit is due.
Harry Truman knew NOTHING of the Manhattan Project which actually began in 1939 and was in full swing during World War II, until he became President after the death of FDR on April 12, 1945. Yet when he made the DECISION to put the results of that project in operation four months later, he became “the man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II.” I doubt that Paul Tibbets, or any of the other of the myriad of civilians who worked on the project or the many military personnel involved would every take that away from him. He said “the Buck stops here”…meaning ultimately responsibility for both failures and success are at the top of the “food chain,” This is a basic principle of the military structure, and to take anything away from the President who ordered the action that killed Bin Laden, is purely political.
Doug:
“…and to take anything away from the President who ordered the action that killed Bin Laden, is purely political.”
As some of the SEALs and others have iterated there is some evidence available that he didn’t actually order the action. One question is why did he show up late in golf shoes? Was he informed after the operation had begun? Besides, him tooting his own horn is not only purely political, but dishonorable too.
That little POS cant even order his own food w/o someone telling him to. There is no doubt in my mind that he showed up just for the photo op. Some idiot just forget to tell him that his golf shoes were still on.
@12 – How could he not have given the order? He was presented with the risk profile and courses of action. The latitude to shift or abort would have necessarily been entirely in ADM McRaven’s court once the OP was initiated.
I think using the event as political fodder by the Obama campaign is a bad call, but unsurprising. I would have been more impressed with the opposition had they renewed the effort on the economic front rather than respond to it.
you know that if anything had went wrong on the mission, Barry would’ve tossed the SEALs under the bus and blamed Bush
Doug Sterner:
I have no problem with the POTUS taking reasonable credit for getting bin Laden. As you’ve observed, he was the one in charge at the time. With being in charges comes both blame and benefit.
However, I do think holding this up as some kind of “heroic and extremely difficult decision” that shows great leadership is absolute bull. For any POTUS, this decision should have been the proverbial no-brainer. “Is bin Laden there? Good. Nail him.” Implying otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme. Romney is right here – even an abysmal failure as POTUS such as Jimmy the Clueless could have made that decision.
CI and Hondo,
I feel much like both of you until I apply the test I always apply before judging someone else…the “What would I do if I were in that position” test.
1) Had I been in the WH a year ago with responsibility to make the call to essentialy INVADE Paki, on the 50/50% chance of getting Bin Laden, I’m not sure what I’d have done. Always in the back of my mind would be the memory of the failed Iran Hostage raid, and the damage it did to the credibility of that President. I would agree that JC was basically inempt and unprepared to make those decisions, and his failures were many and varied, but it was that one single mission that doomed his presidency more tha any other.
2) Initially upon seeing the new DNC commercial, I felt like CI that it was ill-conceived. But when I ask myself if I had been the one to give the order that resulted in getting OBL, would I have used it as part of my political resume to get re-elected? My answer to that is “Hell Yes!”
So I can’t find fault with him on either point. There’s plenty of legitimate issues to attack BHA on, and I’m sure they will arise in the coming electoral process. But I’m pleased and proud of what he did in the position he was in a year ago, and I’ll be non-partisan enough to give credit where credit is due.
Well no s**t, there he is, in good old Afghanistan, taking it to yet another level:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/bin-laden-raid-anniversary-obama-makes-surprise-visit-190839124.html
Doug, I still think Obama running a campaign ad, that he got Bin Laden is hypocrisy. He thought that “It’s ironic that she(Hillary) would borrow the President’s tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points”. But, that was then, this is now, so it’s OK? http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/flashback-obama-campaign-accused-clinton-of-using-bin-laden-to-score-political-points-in-2008/
T-Man, it’s just a coincidence that he landed there today. Nothing more.
Oh, and here’s the real pic of the situation room one year ago today. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/picture-of-the-day-superheroes-the-ultimate-situation-room-meme/238689/
And fuck YOU very very much too! What an amazing amount of outright lies. What outrages you isn’t that President Obama hasn’t gotten anything done, what outrages you is that he’s gotten so much done and the Repuke’s weren’t able to stop him. Right now, because Barack Obama is President there are people, like myself, who are able to get insurance despite having pre-existing conditions because of the high risk pool. Right now there are millions of people poised to get money BACK from the insurance companies because of the 80% loss ratio. Right now there are men and women proudly serving in the military not concerned about being kicked out for who they are. Right now people no longer have to worry about unfair overdraft fees, unfair raising of credit card fees, Seniors are enjoying the benefits of a closing donut hole, students are going to school across the country with expanded pell grants, tax credits for continuing education, and a more efficient student loan plan. Now you might argue all those things are bad, that seniors SHOULD pay more for drugs, that banks SHOULD be able to charge you 100 dollars because you swiped your card on the wrong day, that gays should stay in the closet. That the unemployed should not be given the oportunity to go back and retrain. Fine. But you can’t say he didn’t get anything done. Likewise what is driving you crazy about this ad is not that he’s “spiking the football” or unfairly claiming credit. What drives you crazy about the ad is that it’s entirely true, factual and fair. Some other person on another thread said that this advertisement was analogous to the ones that Hillary Clinton ran that Barack Obama objected to. Wrong. That ad stated that Obama would not be able to handle or prevent an attack similar to 911 because of Barack’s inexperience. In this ad Barack Obama is claiming that Osama Bin Laden would still be alive today if Romney were in charge because of priorities Romney HIMSELF set forth. This ad is not talking about Romney’s… Read more »
@#20. Guess what, no one of any importance gives a fuck what you say or think, much less the shit you link to.
Go back to work, the grease trap on the fryer needs cleaning.
Gee, i can practically hear the tantrummy pout from here, upnorth. Did I hurt your widdle feelings?
insipid:
tl/dr.
You may go now. Oh, and you’re right–Obama HAS done a lot. He’s fucked up a lot. I’d give the guy a little credit if he had spent less than the equivalent of 3 MONTHS on the golf course, or spent the last 4 years trying to fix blame instead of fixing problems.
Oh, reason why we celebrate Osama Bin Laden’s death and not Saddam Hussein’s death are two-fold 1. Hussein didn’t kill 3000 Americans, Osama Bin Laden did. 2. Killing Osama Bin Laden was a crowning achievement of the war on terror (we still honor D-Day and VE day), killing Sadam Hussein was George Bush’s way of resolving his daddy issues. So no, it has nothing to do with George Bush being put upon, it’s because the two men and the two events are very different. Though you seem to continue to pretend that the two are the same.
So if Obama’s all about the victory lap, how come he wasn’t spiking the football when the anniversary of the “Obamacare” bill came up last week?
Actually, he was? You want me to link to the ads and to his statement about the bill standing?
I guess he just doesn’t have the quiet dignity of GWB if he had “class” he’d land on an aircraft carriuer in a costume and a cod-piece with a huge “mission accomplished” banner. Of course, unlike GWB, Barack Obama actually accomplished the mission. In fact, he accomplished both missions: he killed Sadam Hussein AND he ended the Iraq war.
Insipid, if there were anything to your rant worth dissecting, I would, but the fact is your meme, and the sources you list, have all been debunked already ad nauseum, no one here wants to waste time on you anymore.
Anyone have any salt we can pour on the slug?
You’ve never refuted any of those links, Jacobite. With the exception of the Youtube clip of W. saying he doesn’t give a shit about finding Osama all of that stuff is new.
insipid,
Obama’s successes came from, basically, not screwing with what the Bush administration had put into place.
If Obama and his supporters weren’t pushing the idea that HE got bin Laden, he’d probably be getting a lot more credit. Obama didn’t start the machine that identified the target; Obama didn’t plan the operation; Obama wasn’t one of the SEALS that went in.
Obama may have given the go-ahead, which was necessary for the operation to take place, but that’s it. If he and his surrogates gave credit to the people who actually did the work, he’d probably be getting a lot less pushback on this.
If you really wanted to “pour salt” on me you would say things like: “You’re wrong insipid, Romney DID have a policy in place to hunt out and get Osama Bin Laden!” and then you’d post a link to Romney’s plan to get him. Unfortunately all we have is Romney saying it’s not worth spending a lot or doing a lot to get him. So somehow you’re arguing that the best way of finding soeone is by not looking for him i guess. How’d that work for GWB?
Or you’d give me examples of Mitt showing great political courage. But you and I both know that Mitt all Mitt has said about finding Osama is that it’s not worth a lot to do so and that the man has NEVER had an ounce of political courage.
But basically you’re mad that Obama is not following YOUR rules. You want only that a Democrat should pay a political penalty if a military even goes wrong, but that he should never be able to claim political gains if it goes wrong.
Or are you denying that you’d happily end his presidency if eccentric McCrazy Pakistani were living there and not Osama Bin Laden? I know you’d do it because you did it to Carter and tried to do it to Clinton. You KNOW you’d make him pay the political price for failure, so you have no business complaining about him getting a political gain from success. Sorry he ruined your playbook, karma is a bitch.
Malclave, your post definately wins the award for the single unintentionally hysterical post i’ve read in ages. You really did have me cracking up. I’m wiping tears away right now.
Gwb deserves no Credit for anything other than being the biggest fuck-up ever to be in the oval office. His torture policy, if anything, extended the time it took to find Bin Laden because it generated false leads. But nice try.
By the way, you’re hearing what you WANT to hear Malclave. I defy you to find one speech where he mentions the death of Osama where he DOESN’T give credit to others. Republican standby- making shit up.
Thank you for proving finally that stupidity qualifies as a pre-existing condition, insipid.
Carry on.
Thank you for proving that you’ve got nothing Ros.
The stupidity is the fact that John had an article praising the Swift boaters. So apparently it’s ok to lie about Democrats records in order to paint Democrats as potentially being weak on security but it’s abhorant to tell the truth about Republicans in order to paint them as weak on security.
Carry on.
Notice that the more insipid talks, the less he has to say.
Insipid is just plain wrong, shame he’s too ignorant to see it. The man occupying the oval office can do no wrong in his eyes, that’s why I refuse to read anything he posts past the first few lines. All of it reeks of stupidity.
Ugh I don’t know where to begin above, some good comments, some utterly stupid ones. From above “Yeah, but when it’s the only successful thing he’s done in office, what do you really expect him to do. Run on his long list of failures?” I agree Jonn I’ll get back to that. Frankly Obama’s supposition, that Romney would not have made such a “gutsy” call is weak. There is no evidence to strongly suggest that. The speech he gave in 07′, that the left has been trying to use against him was part of a larger context about fighting terrorist entities. That we didn’t husband our resources to hunt one guy but rolled up his network, that would lead us back to him. That’s eventually what happened and yes there is an Iraq war(can’t find name at moment) connection in one of our sources interrogated there, led us back indirectly to another in Pakistan. Back to Jonn’s last point above, what the Seals think is irrelevant and only topped by the almost pleading from Romney’s campaign not to sully the memory of the Raid. It really is a pretty pathetic response to an unprovable and frankly petty charge swung by the President’s people who are reaching for any victory to justify a second term. 1)He failed to secure an extension of our presence in Iraq, to allow more time for governance there to gestate. 2)Libya is an ungoverened mess, that we tipped over. Why again? You could say much the same of Egypt. 3)Iran is closer to aquiring a nuclear deterrent, god help us if we ever then have to confront them then, the President still has no plan or agenda. 4)Afghanistan where we had a minisurge that has mostly succeeded in the place where it was implemented but will not be enacted anywhere else. Which begs the question, what was the point then? 5) The horn of Africa, Somalia and Yemen has it’s own Jihadist problems on top of Piracy. Somehow the Seals and Drones will exclusively deal with this. How has that gone? 6)The economy and unemployment are… Read more »
insipid: Saddam Hussein was captured on 13 December 2003 and died on 30 December 2006. Last time I checked, that’s roughly 4 and 2 years, respectively, before Bush left office. I didn’t realize that the current Occupant, 1600 Penn Ave, had mastered time travel and was actually the one responsible for Hussein’s capture and death. He really must be one helluva clandestine operator! Thanks for enlightening us on that point in comment #27 above. Sheesh. Are you really either so deluded that you can’t comprehend reality? Or are you too stupid to use a calendar? And while I will give the current POTUS credit for decision to go after bin Laden once he was located (a decision Clinton didn’t have the balls to make on multiple occasions), that literally was a no-brainer decision. Any POTUS should have made that decision under those circumstances, and as Romney pointed out even Jimmy the Clueless would have done so. So Obama bragging about giving that order is merely blatantly transparent (and rather classless) self-promotion for merely doing what he was expected to do. Further: you obviously have no clue of how long it takes to develop good intelligence against an OPSEC-aware foreign enemy. Reality is that it takes a while, and many years isn’t particularly uncommon. And the accuracy isn’t always there – which is why it sometimes takes a while. Just look at how long we tried to develop accurate projections of Soviet economic and military capabilities during the Cold War (literally decades) – and how accurate those projections turned out to be in the end. So yeah: the Bush administration does deserve some of the credit for getting bin Laden. They set up the mechanisms and organizations involved and began the decade-long process of finding the bastard. That process eventually yielded the intel that allowed US Special Operations forces to nail bin Laden. Had the Bush administration continued the failed “treat terrorism like street crime” policies they inherited from Clinton, we’d likely still be looking for bin Laden a decade from now. Hope you enjoy your future career as a McDonald’s… Read more »
Seems to me that insipid is more preoccupied with GWB’s junk than the actual merits of this conversation. Good luck trying to talk any sense into him Hondo; thus far everyone here has failed.
I made a mistake at #27 Hondo. I meant to type that PBO killed Osama Bin Laden and he ended the Iraq war. You’re right that Bush gets credit for the death of Sadam. Sorry to give you carpal T.
Well, that’s a first. At least you had the guts to admit you goofed, insipid. I’ll give you that much.
Doug Sterner:
Carter wasn’t doomed by the Eagle Claw/Desert One fiasco, nor was it the single biggest reason he wasn’t reelected. Carter was kicked to the curb by the electorate for the same reason that Bush (41) was kicked to the curb. In both cases, “It’s the economy, stupid” was in effect. Both Carter and Bush (41) had significant foreign successes as well (Arab-Israeli Peace and Gulf War I, respectively). If either had had even a mediocre economy vice one tanking horribly, both would have been reelected easily.
And from what I’ve seen, the assessment of the raid’s chances of success was 80% – not 50%. Eagle Claw was a hugely more complex, longer-reach operation with many more moving parts. I’d be surprised if its realistic chances of success were ever more than 25 or 30 percent, and I’d personally put them around 15%.
IMO, Jimmy the Clueless rolled the dice and gave the OK for Eagle Claw – for which I’ll give him credit – largely because the Iranian hostage crisis and the economy were kicking his ass and he knew he was toast in the upcoming election. He badly needed a “home run” to change the electoral game and saw Eagle Claw as his best chance for that home run. Politically, it was zero risk for him – because he felt he was likely going to lose anyway if he did nothing.
Clarification: the raid referenced in the 1st sentence of the 2nd para of comment 43 is the bin Laden raid, not Eagle Claw. Should have phrased that as the “bin Laden raid” or the “Abbotabad raid”.
Master Chief Babbles the Obvious: Lets be clear. The official DoD name of the op was: OPERATION NEPTUNE SPEAR (no accident there). Neptune’s spear is the TRIDENT. The TRIDENT is the symbol of the US Navy SEALs. The US Navy SEALs don’t go on operations where there is a 50/50 chance. Failure is not an option. I might suggest that there was a very high degree of certainty (perhap total certainty) that OBL was there. SOCOM does not send Tier I assets on iffy missions. The decision to go was the President’s and he should be repsected for the order. However, the design and execution of the op lies with the intel and special ops community and/or all others who were in direct support. They searched, found him and killed him. End of story.
@ insipid
The meaning of insipid is: dull, because lacking in character and lively qualities. Other words associated with the meaning insipid: bland; wishy-washy; characterless; colorless; trite; tame; unexciting; uninteresting; boring; bland; tasteless; unappetizing; and flavorless.
I guess we covered that.
BTW insipid, what are MIL CREDS?
MCPO NYC USN (Ret.): You’re correct about the formal designation of the bin Laden raid. However, I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly widely known – much as it’s not terribly well known that EAGLE CLAW was the formal designation of the 1980 Iranian operation that included the Desert 1 debacle. (Hell, I had to look up the names of both operations myself to verify – and I follow things military fairly closely.) In contrast, most folks know what “Desert 1” and “the bin Laden raid” mean. So I chose to use more common terms above in conjunction with both operations for ease of understanding.
I do wonder how the proposed name “Operation Neptune Spear” managed to get by OPSEC review, though. You don’t want an operation’s code name to give anything away, and that one definitely seems to tip our hand a bit – at least regarding the “who”.
@Hondo – It is odd how some operational names are the de facto label for the event, while others are barely known outside of the community. Gothic Serpent is another that comes to mind akin to Neptune Spear.
CI: Yep. Even large and historically prominent operations are a crapshoot when it comes to whether the formal name or codename is well-known. Everyone seems to know Overlord (D-Day) and Torch (North Africa). Fewer recognize Husky (Sicily), Avalanche (Salerno) and Shingle (Anzio). And most won’t know what the hell Dragoon (S. France), Baytown (Cambria region of south Italy, preceding Salerno) or Slapstick (Taranto) refer to.
My concern with the “Neptune Spear” name is not that it’s not particularly well known, but that it rather tipped who was executing. IMO that’s not a real good practice.