Obama's Osama bin Laden lie: The political fallout
A bombshell story out of London overnight that destroys much of the Obama White House's preferred and politically-motivated narrative on the Osama bin Laden assassination four years ago last week. Let's see if the mainstream media can ignore it.
The story by Seymour Hersh debunks the notion that it was the administration's admirably dogged pursuit of the terrorist villain that found him in a fortified house in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. That version fit Obama's evolving 2012 election campaign narrative that al Qaeda was on the run and Osama bin Laden was dead, thanks, you know, to the incumbent president.
In Hersh's account, bin Laden's location was handed to the CIA by an ex-Pakistani intel officer seeking the $25 million reward, who now works for the intelligence agency in Washington. When he passed a polygraph test, the agency began monitoring the housing compound via satellite and local agents. You can read Hersh's full account here.
Another key detail from the new story is that a handful of top Pakistani intelligence officials eventually knew of the CIA tracking and the impending raid but played dumb for their own domestic well-being and, who knows, perhaps some money exchanged hands.
This helps explain the raid's uncontested access into and out of Pakistani territory, a local "power failure" coinciding with the raid and the strange lack of response from a nearby major military post to noisy helicopters, gunshots and explosions during the midnight raid.
What you'll likely hear first today is attempted debunking and questioning of the Hersh account from some D.C. media and, later, the White House. They will question especially the credibility of Hersh.
Getting scooped on likely the biggest story of the Obama presidency raises the hackles of any journalist. Worse, it's by someone from outside the capital's media pack, a rogue who's exposing everyone else's laziness.
Hersh is indeed a controversial and personally abrasive fellow. He's accustomed to attacks on his reports and credibility. He's also accustomed to being proven right more often than not over time, as he was with his reports on the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Abu Gharib prisoner abuses in Iraq.
The White House, of course, will play on media skepticism, desperately attempting to defuse a story that strikes at the heart of whatever residue of credibility remains after six-plus years of scandals, broken promises and misleading narratives. Can you say anti-Muslim video, decimated al Qaeda, Yemen success story, JV ISIS? And remember Obama originally dismissed Edward Snowden as a mere hacker.
This photo was altered by the White House to obscure Hillary Clinton's documents.
What will be interesting to track is how long wannabe president Hillary Clinton can stonewall this latest explosion, more unsavory baggage for her.
She was, after all, secretary of State and chief architect of Obama's entire first-term foreign policy, including the ill-conceived Libyan war, Benghazi, Obama's fake red line promise in Syria, the failed Russian reset and the over-hasty withdrawal from Iraq.
She has a load of her own deceits, ethical dilemmas and unfulfilled obligations to explain. And while she's successfully dodged media questions for her first campaign month, later in May Clinton is scheduled to appear before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Hopefully, she'll develop no sudden illness.
Hersh's latest carefully-documented account takes nothing away from the analysts who confirmed the terrorist chieftain's likely presence nor the skills and bravery of the SEALs executing the raid and bin Laden.
They had no idea what awaited them in Abbottabad, a trap, ambush, a booby-trapped house. And, frankly, few Americans will care whether bin Laden was physically capable of fighting back or an invalid unable to reach for an AK-47 when he got popped. Reaching for a gun was the White House tale.
OBL was going to end up very dead that night, as had so many defenseless 9/11 victims. A refreshing delivery of actual justice with prejudice for the U.S. national psyche, given all the empty White House promises of faint red lines and swift retribution after Benghazi and other subsequent terrorist incidents.
Bin Laden's demise also precluded any inconvenient revelations about Pakistan's hospitality.
What it does is crumble aides' accounts of Obama's undaunted bravery making the "Go" decision, despite the opposition of Valerie Jarrett and Joe Biden. Of course, he would go. Can you imagine if it came out now that the president of the United States had passed on such a good a chance to nail the world's most wanted fugitive?
That, along with numerous incidents including prisoner trades and ongoing releases of known terrorists, would have pretty much confirmed widespread suspicions of dangerous anti-Western sympathies by the man who spent his formative childhood years growing up in a Muslim household in the capital of the world's most populous Muslim nation.
This way, it's just another Barack Obama lie.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/051115-751922-seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden-raid-obama-lie.htm#ixzz3ZyZDlVrM
No comments:
Post a Comment