The man who shot Liberty Bin Laden

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-01-12 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

Every time I listen to Barack Obama describe how he repelled down a rope from a stealth helicopter on a dark Pakistani night and took down Osama Bin Laden I am reminded of the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

Seldom has a story been more dishonestly spun than the one surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Barack Obama is celebrating the deathday of Obama Bin Laden with a party from himself. I caught a post over at Weekly Standard in which Dan Halper notes that the smirking Obama once again suggests that Mitt Romney would not have made the decision to kill Bin Laden. Obama is quoted as saying:

"I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and to take out bin Laden," Obama said, obviously taking a shot at Romney. "I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. And that's been at least my practice. I said that I would go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him--and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it."

But here's the part that caught my eye:

"I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and to take out bin Laden,"

As if going into Pakistan was his decision. Or his plan.

It wasn't.

Going into Pakistan was George Bush's decision, based on the advice of a CIA analyst named "John."

While he was shepherding the hunt for bin Laden, John also was pushing to expand the Predator program, the agency's use of unmanned airplanes to launch missiles at terrorists. The CIA largely confined those strikes to targets along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But in late 2007 and early 2008, John said the CIA needed to carry out those attacks deeper inside Pakistan.

It was a risky move. Pakistan was an important but shaky ally. John's analysts saw an increase in the number of Westerners training in Pakistani terrorist camps. John worried that those men would soon start showing up on U.S. soil.

"We've got to act," John said, a former senior intelligence official recalls. "There's no explaining inaction."

John took the analysis to then CIA Director Michael Hayden, who agreed and took the recommendation to President George W. Bush. In the last months of the Bush administration, the CIA began striking deeper inside Pakistan.

Barack Obama adopted John's and Bush's plan. Then he co-opted it.

"John" persisted in the hunt for Bin Laden for a very long time. Then in 2007 a co-worker of John's targeted "Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti."

All the while, John's team was working the list of bin Laden leads. In 2007, a female colleague whom the AP has also agreed not to identify decided to zero in on a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, a nom de guerre. Other terrorists had identified al-Kuwaiti as an important courier for al-Qaida's upper echelon, and she believed that finding him might help lead to bin Laden.

"They had their teeth clenched on this and they weren't going to let go," McLaughlin said of John and his team. "This was an obsession."

It took three years, but in August 2010, al-Kuwaiti turned up on a National Security Agency wiretap. The female analyst, who had studied journalism at a Big Ten university, tapped out a memo for John, "Closing in on Bin Laden Courier," saying her team believed al-Kuwaiti was somewhere on the outskirts of Islamabad.

The intel used to find and kill Bin Laden came from a career CIA analyst- not from Barack Obama.

[skinkinthegrass]

*cue the Pual Shanklin piece from Rushbo's show*

[skinkinthegrass]

*cue the Paul Shanklin piece from Rushbo's show*

[Grampa3711]

And, B Hussein handled operational control to Panetta, who passed it on to Rear Admiral McRaven, so that if anything went wrong, B Hussein would be two steps removed from failure. As my vet says, “Brave, Puppy, brave!”

[LegendHasIt]

Oh, Man, I wish I had thought of this one.

[TigersEye]

Obama said, obviously taking a shot at Romney. "I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. And that's been at least my practice.

Oh. OK.

"We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there." - Senator Barack 0bama

[Scoutmaster]

Love the premise, but as a Scoutmaster I frequently rappel down a rope (well, before this whole shoulder thing). And I am repelled by Obama. But I don’t think Obama “repelled down a rope.”