Posted on 05/06/2011 6:15:03 AM PDT by MattAMatt
The official White House account of Osama bin Laden's demise has seen more slapdash cosmetic surgery over the past week than your average "Real Housewives" reality-show star. President Obama's allies attribute the bungled "narrative" (their word, not mine) to the "Fog of War." But each passing day -- and each new set of hapless revisions -- shows that what really ails the administration is the Fog of Fog.
Errors happen. Miscommunications happen. Confusing the name of which of bin Laden's myriad sons died (Hamza, not Khalid), for example, is no biggie.
But the hourly revamping of key details of Sunday's raid suggests something far beyond the usual realm of situational uncertainty that accompanies any military operation. The Navy SEALs did their job spectacularly. The civilians tasked with letting the world know about the mission, however, have performed like amateur dinner theater actors in a tragi-comic production of "Rashomon-meets-The Blind Men and the Elephant-meets-Keystone Kops."
Incapable of straightforward answers, Team Obama's clarity-challenged civilians have led nauseated news-watchers through more twists and turns than San Francisco's Lombard Street.
Take your Dramamine, and let's review.
Take One: Bin Laden died in a bloody firefight.
On Sunday night, Obama dramatically told the world that "after a firefight," our brave men in uniform "killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
Embellishing the story the next morning, White House deputy national security adviser John Brennan said at his briefing that bin Laden "was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. ... And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don't know. ... It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight."
Take Two: Bin Laden did not engage in a firefight.
The day after Brennan disclosed such vivid details, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney walked them back Michael Jackson-style. Bin Laden, he said in version 2.0, "was not armed." Brennan had clearly implied that bin Laden "resisted" with arms. Carney amended the narrative by insisting that "resistance does not require a firearm." How exactly bin Laden resisted, Carney would not say.
It's been all downhill, uphill, K-turns and 180s ever since. Fasten your seatbelts:
Take Three: Bin Laden's wife died after her feckless husband used her as a human shield.
Take Four: Bin Laden's wife did not die, wasn't used as a human shield and was only shot in the leg. Someone else's wife was killed, somewhere else in the house.
Take Five: A transport helicopter experienced "mechanical failure" and was forced to make a hard landing during the mission.
Looks like my old Ford.
Truth One: Obama didn't support the raid. The photo of the situation room during the raid confirms this.
Truth Two: Obama and his immediate, personal, staff decided to use the successful raid as a reelection tool. The constant overuse of “I”, “me” and other such pronouns, even for him, lends credance to this.
Truth Three: Obama was in such a rush to control the news flow that he repeated previous mistakes and misspeaks. An initial announcement, from the Oval Office, followed by a detailed briefing the following evening by a senior staffer introduced by Obama would have been perfect and helpful to them. Instead we a keystone kop routine.
“The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets. They have smothered our batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are advancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Black Smoke but in instant flight.”
A palace coup with Osama removed from power? I can live with that...
The Mexican version is invisible. Silent but deadly.
Speaking of which it was VERY VERY silent last night. No fireworks, gunshots, music nuthin’.
What happened to the Cinco de Mayo my neighborhood loves so much???
Txe Fog of Txe Fog!
Simple marginalization. This turd is grinding himself down faster than you could chew a pencil down in a sharpener.
Helpful hints are being dropped here and there by unidentified parties; His response to such is more detrimental to him than the assault itself. He must respond to every one of them; It is the nature of the malignant narcissist to publicly defend ones ego.
There are people laughing their bums off about this. Nothing new under this sun, except to those who do not understand what is happening. Toying with malignant narcissists is what some people do. Like playing with kittens. Generation after generation, they always do the same fun things.
Wrong tense. There was a coup.
The Commander in Chief took his orders from the military, not the other way around. (Assuming Ulsterman is accurate).
Anyone who has seen the situation room photo knows this at a visceral level.
A petulant little boy sits in the corner while the adults run things.
I have several family members in the military, including a family member who is currently instructing Virginia class submarine crews on launch procedure.
There is simply a point where rational people assume control and maintain a system that is reliant on itself, or dead. It is not a takeover. It is a self perpetuating system based on the hard reality.
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