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Old School
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 Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:07 pm Post subject: [mcgruff] Obama kills bin Laden |
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We've all witnessed the crime dog's knob gobbling over Obama's tactical genius in personally taking command of the bin Laden raid in Abbottabad.
Just one problem.
| Leon Panetta wrote: | Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.
The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am. |
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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So what's your point?
Obama isn't trained in military strategy. Can't people just accept that bin-Laden was killed under Obama's watch and be satisfied? What did you want the president to do? Go in there and shoot the guy himself?
If some people believe Obama is some military genius then they're pretty naive, but I personally haven't heard much about that. What I have heard much of is Republicans going on about "Obama didn't kill Bin-Laden, he just got out of the way" "The president should not take any credit for it" etc. |
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Muso
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | So what's your point?
Obama isn't trained in military strategy. Can't people just accept that bin-Laden was killed under Obama's watch and be satisfied? |
We all understand that, mcgruff is the one that thinks that Obama's some sort of military genius... even though Obama fought tooth and nail against the very policies that led to Osama's location in the first place. Taking a victory lap for policies he opposed is just, well, pathetic really.
Kudos to Obama for not getting in the way of the operation, but if he would have had his way from the beginning that operation would have never happened.
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aidanjt
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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Speaking of strategical ineptness, how are those two invasions going?
In any event, no matter what Obama did, or didn't do, he'd still suck anyway.
Didn't kill or capture Bin Laden? Obama sucks.
Killed Bin Laden? Obama sucks.
Captured Bin Laden and brought him to the US for justice? Obama sucks.
The republitards are too mentally ill to realise that their hate is irrational and ideological.
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Old School
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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This post has nothing to do with bashing Obama. I said all along that I thought he made a gutsy and correct call; it is about those that tried to fabricate the idea of The One as a battlefield tactician, fine tuning the operation down to the type of equipment used.
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Old School wrote: | | This post has nothing to do with bashing Obama. I said all along that I thought he made a gutsy and correct call; it is about those that tried to fabricate the idea of The One as a battlefield tactician, fine tuning the operation down to the type of equipment used. |
If people did try to make out that Obama was like that then it was a foolish decision. In that case both the rhetoric from those people ("Obama was the military mastermind") and the Republicans ("Obama had nothing to do with it") are wrong. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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You are creating a false dichotomy. While I commend your spirit of bipartisan cooperation and search for balance, you're missing the mark on this one.
Republicans were not saying "Obama had nothing to do with it," they were saying that Obama had nothing to do with it other than giving his high-level go-ahead after reviewing the plans and making inane, sophomoric suggestions, and that he deserves credit for nothing more. They pointed out that the CIA and Department of Defense had been given as a top priority the capture or elimination of bin Laden almost a decade earlier and had been working hard to locate him all that time. They pointed out that the key intelligence which finally made this possible was actually developed during the Bush Administration (some of it as a result of "enhanced interrogation" in Guantanamo, which Obama actually railed against and swore to put a stop to, even if he actually hasn't). All of this is true.
On the other hand, the White House and zombie-like Obama worshipers immediately started falling over themselves to grab as much credit as possible for Obama, because he had turned out to be a fucking disaster -- a laughing stock -- and they were desperate for anything good to say about him. One of those cockenspiels was mcgruff, who made up all kinds of bullshit, extracted directly from his anus or the drippy pie-holes of similarly sycophantic knob-gobbling pontificators universally having zero military or Federal executive experience, absolutely no fucking clue what they were talking about, and a complete dearth of facts other than the lies and propaganda clumsily spilled by the White House that first day like the eager seed of premature ejaculation all over themselves and our Special Operations community in a scandalously unethical attempt to grab as much credit as possible for fail-bot Obama, who was sucking hind tit in the polls at the time, if you recall. Half the shit they said was so blatantly false it had to be retracted outright, and, other than blowing all kinds of classified operational details which probably got 24 operators killed on a similar mission a few weeks later, the rest survived only as "plausibly true" and only in the minds of those predisposed to believe ANYTHING that would attenuate the persistent vaginal burning, itch and odor resulting from constantly trying to deny the reality they had been conned into electing a lying, hapless buffoon.
On the one hand, you've got truth and reality; on the other you've got utter bullshit. There is no balance here.
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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Obama made campaign promises about Bin Laden, and as soon as he took office he instructed the CIA to make this their top priority. He was kept fully briefed of their progress at all times and when they found Bin Laden, he was adamant about choosing the ground op rather than any of the other options, such as an air strike.
When the detailed plans were presented to Obama he made a crucial change (the backup chinook close at hand if things started to go wrong) which turned out to be vital to the mission.
The final decision to proceed was his and his alone. It was no better than 50-50 that Bin Laden was actually there but the potential political fallout of a failed mission in a foreign country - especially one with such a difficult relationship with the US - was huge. Obama took a gutsy decision, like he's paid to do. That the "timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands" alters nothing. That was just his job, once the plans had been discussed, amended, and finally approved by Obama.
Obama led every step of the way, made all the right decisions, and just did everything you would have hoped a president would do. He deserves at least as much credit as the members of the intelligence services who followed the trail leading to Abbottabad, and the special forces who executed the mission.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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Not even close, and no he doesn't.
Here's you.
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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I think we need to give credit where credit is due on this one. Obama did not stop them from killing bin Laden.
Since his constituents are so opposed to the military, he took a huge risk. Thank you, Mr. President.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | I think we need to give credit where credit is due on this one. Obama did not stop them from killing bin Laden.
Since his constituents are so opposed to the military, he took a huge risk. Thank you, Mr. President. |
I agree. He could have just had the target struck by a barrage of cruise missiles. I think he saw it as a political gamble, however, and did it for personal gain.
I also blame him for the deaths of everybody in that Chinook that was taken out a couple of weeks after, because of all the operational details the White House leaked unnecessarily (and is still leaking, in the form of a fricking movie, for political gain). We didn't need to give up any of that information, but they just had to fap and try to create the impression they were deserving of credit, by rolling in as much of it as possible.
You can tell from the famous photo who is in charge and who is along for the ride. See the looks on the faces of Obama and Hillary? That's fear, bewilderment, and helplessness -- they don't even know what the fuck is going on.
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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Agreed. My point was more that it was going to happen unless he stopped it. He was simply notified they needed his 'go.'
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Yeah that and everything else he did: telling the CIA this was their number one priority, choosing the ground op over the "nuke the site from orbit" option ( ), adding an emergency Chinook to the plan (vital as it turned out), and finally deciding the benefits of possibly finding Bin Laden in the compound outweighed the risks.
The whole thing was led by the president. He didn't just sit there while everyone else was finding Bin Laden and forming a plan of attack. That's absurd. Admittedly, it's the kind of thing Bush would have done while the grown-ups got on with the business of government, but it's naive in the extreme to think that's how a normal presidency operates.
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Old School
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 12:32 am Post subject: |
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What is your source about the extra helicopter? Joe Biden?
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:11 am Post subject: |
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Actually I got that slightly wrong. Obama wasn't completely happy with the original plan and asked if anything could be done to provide some backup if things went wrong. It was McRaven who specifically suggested the chinooks and a small backup force.
There's a documentary you might be interested in: Shoot to Kill: the Hunt for Bin Laden.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:58 am Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | Yeah that and everything else he did: telling the CIA this was their number one priority, choosing the ground op over the "nuke the site from orbit" option ( ), adding an emergency Chinook to the plan (vital as it turned out), and finally deciding the benefits of possibly finding Bin Laden in the compound outweighed the risks.
The whole thing was led by the president. He didn't just sit there while everyone else was finding Bin Laden and forming a plan of attack. That's absurd. Admittedly, it's the kind of thing Bush would have done while the grown-ups got on with the business of government, but it's naive in the extreme to think that's how a normal presidency operates. |
It's not absurd. It's a fact.
The CIA had known about the courier for a long time, and they finally obtained his name in 2007. They were trying to locate him and had narrowed down the location to a couple of areas within Pakistan by 2009, and were aggressively developing the situation. Obama didn't even know this was going on, because he famously sent a memo to Leon Panetta suggesting that the "hunt for bin Laden" had slipped off to a back burner status. The reality of the situation is that it was never on the CIA's "back burner"; it was on the President's back burner. He didn't even know what the fuck was going on, because his real top priorities were trying to get his abomination of Obamacare passed by hook or by crook and to somehow manage to create the impression that this effort was not a disastrous failure, which it was.
As a result of his memo, Obama started getting occasional briefings, which amounted to "nothing new". Then in the Summer of 2010, the CIA pinpointed the courier by eavesdropping, and found bin Laden's Abbottabad compound by watching him. Obama received briefings as they developed the intelligence and was along for the ride, having zero input.
Once the intelligence was of operational quality (i.e. "target-ready"), the CIA went to DoD to organize a mission, and they detailed the JSOC commander, then Vice Admiral Bill McRaven, to handle it. This is exactly how I described the way these things work when we talked about this before, and this is exactly what happened. McRaven then prepared three alternative courses of action, just like I described to you, and presented them to the President with one as the "recommended course of action". That's how I told you it's done, and that's what they did. These were the options (two of them being ones I told you were probably included):
1. a special operations air assault on the compound
2. obliterate the compound with indirect fire (JDAMs dropped from B2 bombers)
3. organize a joint US/Pakistani raid on the compound
Obama then agreed with the recommended course of action. In this case, there was really only two choices; the third one I can tell from experience was thrown in just to be dismissed for operational security reasons. The JSOC Commander wanted to do the raid. So did Panetta, because he wanted positive confirmation of the target's identity. Gates, who didn't want to be the obvious sacrificial lamb if the mission failed, officially recommended course of action 2 (although the truth is that he probably agreed with COA #1 and didn't put up any real resistance). In my opinion, these courses of action were crafted specifically to steer the President into choosing COA #1, because #2 could have been modified to minimize collateral damage by using a different weapon, and COA #3 was ridiculous and destined to fail, probably just thrown in to make Secretary Clinton look stupid by saying she thinks it's the way to go.
Obama asked a lot of questions, and contrary to mcgruff's confusion and naivety, did not add an "emergency Chinook" to the plan. As I said before, contingency transport is always a part of such plans. Obama's one contribution to the plan was this: McRaven's contingency plan in the unlikely event that the raid force were to become fixed by Pakistani ground forces (not al Qaeda, but the Pakistani Army) was to avoid battling it out with them, hunker down, and wait for a diplomatic solution. Obama told them not to do that, but to get out at all costs (he didn't want the Pakistanis to have us by the balls), and he told McRaven to ensure there was an adequate contingency force on standby to help them do so (which there would already have been, since a reserve or contingency force is always a part of such plans).
At any rate, whether the contingency force was Obama's idea or a standard part of any such plan, it was neither needed nor used. This Chinook full of standby troops was not the Chinook that was brought in to evacuate the raid team after one of the Blackhawks had a tail strike. You can't use a full helicopter to transport anything. The helicopter used to evacuate the raid team was an empty one, on standby for specifically that purpose, not to provide additional combat power if they needed to fight their way out. This is exactly what I told you when we were discussing this the last time, and it has since turned out to have been exactly correct. I was even right in my guess that the reason the helicopter went down was due to a tail strike.
So, in short, Obama's one contribution to the plan was never a factor. Other than that, all he did was watch as the CIA continued to develop intelligence collected under Bush (under Bush policies he railed against and pledged to put an end to) and then go along with the recommendations of the JSOC Commander. He does deserve credit for doing that, because it was a political gamble, but that's all he did.
Actually, he did more, after the fact. After the raid, he or his staff spilled the fucking beans in their eagerness to create the appearance that he deserved credit, and revealed a crapload of sensitive information which probably led to the deaths of 31 personnel who were executing a similar mission a short time later.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:59 am Post subject: |
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Is that the Obama campaign's propaganda film? The so-called "documentary"?
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pjp
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:00 am Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | | The whole thing was led by the president. He didn't just sit there while everyone else was finding Bin Laden and forming a plan of attack. That's absurd. |
So you think he's a micro-manager? In all seriousness, he shouldn't be in the weeds. His responsibility is "Getting him is a priority", "Here are the resources I'm willing to authorize", etc. The Ops teams manage the details. And even if he was a micro-manager, there's no way he can be that involved and get anything else done. The President doesn't have that much free time.
Given that bin Laden had been on the list for so long, should it be surprising that Obama would continue pursuing him? Or maybe that is the real surprise.
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:19 am Post subject: |
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Did he micro-manage the effort? No. Did he lead it? Yes. A military operation in a foreign country is above all a political decision and so politicians have to be in charge.
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pjp
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:41 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, that's the "Getting him is still a priority" and "Here are the resources" and "The Paki PM will NOT be collateral damage."
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Muso
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:53 am Post subject: |
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mcgruff, just give up. You have no clue about the US military.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 4:46 am Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | | Did he micro-manage the effort? No. Did he lead it? Yes. A military operation in a foreign country is above all a political decision and so politicians have to be in charge. |
He didn't lead it. He approved it.
The only leadership he showed here, and I give him credit for it, was probably unnecessary. By requesting monthly updates from the CIA on the efforts to locate bin Laden, he ensured that it was clear to them that it was a priority. This was good executive leadership, unnecessary since they were already all over it, and quite probably inconsequential, but it was the correct thing to do.
That, however, does not equate to leading the effort to hunt him down or leading the operation to take him out. Usage of that word in those contexts goes too far into implying a direct and active involvement, which he did not have.
He made sure it was still a priority (which it was); and he approved the recommended course of action. That's it. Then he and his PR staff did everything in their power to take as much credit as possible, and fool naive people like yourself into thinking what you have been thinking.
He spent 15 minutes a month on it, in passive listening mode, between waffling about Guantanamo, waffling about gay rights, waffling on pulling troops out of Iraq, waffling about what Obamacare was going to not include, waffling about the stimulus and unemployment, waffling on what to do about the oil spill, waffling on climate change, waffling about his budget, waffling on how many troops to send to Afghanistan, waffling about spending cuts, and what he did the most of: flying around campaigning a constant stream of lies and bullshit to keep his poll ratings up. That doesn't qualify as "leading the effort to take out bin Laden".
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Old School
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:26 am Post subject: |
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I still say it was a gutsy call on the President's part.
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Muso
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:29 am Post subject: |
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| Old School wrote: | | I still say it was a gutsy call on the President's part. |
For giving an "OK" for the SEALs to go into Pakistan... yeah, I can see that.
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richk449
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:34 am Post subject: |
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| The Earth wrote: | | Old School wrote: | | I still say it was a gutsy call on the President's part. |
For giving an "OK" for the SEALs to go into Pakistan... yeah, I can see that. |
Yea, it takes a lot of guts to order a bunch of soldiers to go kill a dude. The real gutsy move would have been to insist that the military bring Osama back for a trial. |
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