Posted on 04/13/2009 6:07:49 PM PDT by tobyhill
Reporting from Washington -- Before ending a pirate standoff with three fatally precise shots, U.S. Navy SEAL snipers had passed on multiple opportunities to fire.
They had moved into position after the White House expanded the authority it had given the world's most powerful navy against a rag-tag foe holding an American hostage.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Most excellent post. Agree 100%.
Absolutely. He could only restrain the Navy to a certain point without risking absolute outrage at home. Now he is behind the eightball with everybody cheering the result and his mindless minions heaping the credit on him.
He is p,laying it both ways if the capt had died he would have blamed the navy
Absolutely. This was quite plain with, e.g., Gergen out there saying he didn't need to be awakened for this. The plot line as passed through the MSM ( it's so blatant! ) was that the whole thing was beneath his notice and a distraction. It was of course how he plays everything - holding it at arms length, just so he can be flexible in his ex post facto posturing.
I’m with you 100%!
I was willing to extend the benefit of lack of onsite information to the Obama administration, given the successful final outcome. But if the SEALs had clear daylight kill shots, they should have been taken. Instead, the SEALs apparently had much tougher shots when the time came. Thank God they were up to the task.
ping
"If the goal was just to kill these guys there were opportunities where we could have shot them," said a military official. "This was not the outcome we wanted. We wanted those three guys to give themselves up."
Total BS. His incompetence is scary. This was a very easy situation compared to what we are facing with Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, the Iranian terrorist regime and North Korea and compared to what we will be facing in the future. If it took him almost three days to order the shooting in this situation that could have been resolved in the first day then what is he going to do and how long are we going to wait for him to make a decision when we are faced with real and big crisis from the much more dangerous enemies that I mentioned above.
CNN was running a super today that said, "Obama stops pirates". That takes spin to a Dervish-like level of insanity.
No problem at all.
I received an email that O is bringing back 80,000 troops from Iraq to America for any “emergency: i.e. in case we get fed up with the usurper destroying country and driving it into bankruptcy.
An interesting and likely position. Can you imagine the conversations these young men had while waiting on ZERO to abandon the BFI? I wondered why a hostage negotiator could get there (if one did) and not a proper weapons team.
More, you don’t need snipers to level the top of a fiberglass lifeboat if the hostage is in the water like Captain Phillips was. A 50 cal or two operated by seamen will do just fine without too much accuracy. Keeps the pirates heads down too. They not only weren’t authorized they were most likely UNAUTHORIZED to fire.
We need a top attorney who is a former JAG officer to file a case with SCOTUS on the BC/NBC issue. They need thouands of actove military listed as John & Jane Doe to protect them.
Send it up to SCOTUS so they can tell the military they have no standing in protecting and upholding The Constitution.
Show us your email. The troops are coming home because Iraq has turned out to be a success and we don't need to be there forever. Where else are these troops going to go? Their home base was the US to begin with?
Thanks for your post. Something about this made no sense to take so long and then the first words I heard was the WH was taken back at how this went down and I said OOPs! I had a feeling then the Navy finally acted as a measure of last resort because ZERO couldn’t make up his mind.
I started reading through the article, and here are some pertinent points about that...
Most of all, they waited as a series of seemingly insignificant moves — from extending the pirates a rope to bringing an injured brigand onboard — improved the sharpshooters’ odds for success.
[ ... ]
A military official speaking on condition of anonymity said the sniper team had multiple opportunities to shoot, but held off, not believing Phillips was in imminent danger.
The military thought they had a crucial breakthrough on Sunday morning. The youngest pirate, who had been injured, asked the SEALs if he could come aboard the Bainbridge to make a phone call.
[ ... ]
“If the goal was just to kill these guys there were opportunities where we could have shot them,” said a military official. “This was not the outcome we wanted. We wanted those three guys to give themselves up.”
[... if there is a problem with this quote, then I’ll try to restate it myself, by rewriting it...]
FR has many retired Seals, I notice they are very quiet. Perhaps the speculators and armchair warriors should learn from this.....
Some people give Stalins propaganda writing team a run for the money...
Well because of President Bush strong leadership and the incredible professionalism of our brave troops we won the war in Iraq.
So instead of taking the first opportunity to end this, Obama's directives prevent the SEAL team from taking the first and/or best opportunity to save the captain's life. He was only saved by the raw, amazing skill of the SEALs, able to have three snipers make nightvision head shots against targets pitching up and down in six-foot swells. Sorry, but I'd rather take the sure shot at the moment it presents itself if it is three pirate gang-bangers against a brave American captain.
BO needed to be briefed on the media situation along with the tactical situation. When people started to become impatient, the situation had changed politically.
Reagan would not have cared about which way the wind was blowing, so a single tactical briefing would have sufficed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.