Denying The Obvious


Rush Limbaugh is right, you know.    He was right, yesterday, about one thing when he said of the raid in Abbottobad

Not Mitt Romney. Not John McCain. Not Jimmy Carter. Joe Biden is the only guy that said: Don't go get Bin Laden.

Jimmy Carter did not say "don't go get Bin Laden"- there has been no report of the former President's argument in favor of, or against, entering Pakistani territory to pursue Osama binLaden.  

There was, as we have been helpfully reminded, comment by both Mitt Romney and John McCain urging caution toward violating the sovereignty of a foreign nation and possibly upsetting Pervez Musharraf, who was later driven in disgrace from Pakistan.      But President Obama's decision to approve a helicopter raid to assassinate public enemy #1 was especially bold because Joe Biden was not "the only guy" to oppose the action, unless Bob Gates sexual identity is at issue.

Limbaugh argued in the same rant about President Obama "And he wasn't even the man in charge of the actual operation.  That was the guy named McRaven."

Fortunately, writing in The New Yorker on August 8, 2011, Nicholas Schmidle puts to rest both the claim that only the Vice-President opposed the raid and the inference that the decision to proceed was primarily that of Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven.    He explained

In late 2010, Obama ordered Panetta to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound. Panetta contacted Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the SEAL in charge of JSOC. Traditionally, the Army has dominated the special-operations community, but in recent years the SEALs have become a more prominent presence; McRaven’s boss at the time of the raid, Eric Olson—the head of Special Operations Command, or SOCOM—is a Navy admiral who used to be a commander of DEVGRU. In January, 2011, McRaven asked a JSOC official named Brian, who had previously been a DEVGRU deputy commander, to present a raid plan....

On March 14th, Obama called his national-security advisers into the White House Situation Room and reviewed a spreadsheet listing possible courses of action against the Abbottabad compound. Most were variations of either a JSOC raid or an airstrike. Some versions included coöperating with the Pakistani military; some did not. Obama decided against informing or working with Pakistan. “There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,” a senior adviser to the President told me. At the end of the meeting, Obama instructed McRaven to proceed with planning the raid.
Brian invited James, the commander of DEVGRU’s Red Squadron, and Mark, the master chief petty officer, to join him at C.I.A. headquarters....

On March 29th, McRaven brought the plan to Obama. The President’s military advisers were divided. Some supported a raid, some an airstrike, and others wanted to hold off until the intelligence improved. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, was one of the most outspoken opponents of a helicopter assault. Gates reminded his colleagues that he had been in the Situation Room of the Carter White House when military officials presented Eagle Claw—the 1980 Delta Force operation that aimed at rescuing American hostages in Tehran but resulted in a disastrous collision in the Iranian desert, killing eight American soldiers. “They said that was a pretty good idea, too,” Gates warned. He and General James Cartwright, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, favored an airstrike by B-2 Spirit bombers. That option would avoid the risk of having American boots on the ground in Pakistan. But the Air Force then calculated that a payload of thirty-two smart bombs, each weighing two thousand pounds, would be required to penetrate thirty feet below ground, insuring that any bunkers would collapse. “That much ordnance going off would be the equivalent of an earthquake,” Cartwright told me. The prospect of flattening a Pakistani city made Obama pause. He shelved the B-2 option and directed McRaven to start rehearsing the raid.

Brian, James, and Mark selected a team of two dozen SEALs from Red Squadron and told them to report to a densely forested site in North Carolina for a training exercise on April 10th.

The Vice-Admiral was the manager overseeing the operation.    But the plan was devised by a guy identified as "Brian," who was one of three individuals who scheduled training of the Navy SEALs.      McRaven, at Obama's direction, chose the specific night of the raid, but only after in late April then-C.I.A. Director Leon

Panetta and the rest of the national-security team met with the President. For the next few nights, there would be virtually no moonlight over Abbottabad—the ideal condition for a raid. After that, it would be another month until the lunar cycle was in its darkest phase. Several analysts from the National Counterterrorism Center were invited to critique the C.I.A.’s analysis; their confidence in the intelligence ranged between forty and sixty per cent. The center’s director, Michael Leiter, said that it would be preferable to wait for stronger confirmation of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. Yet, as Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser, put it to me recently, the longer things dragged on, the greater the risk of a leak, “which would have upended the thing.” Obama adjourned the meeting just after 7 P.M. and said that he would sleep on it.

President Obama didn't merely order action to eliminate (capture or kill, apparently at the SEALs' discretion) Osama binLaden.    He opted- against the advice of Secretary Gates and others- for a helicopter assault rather than an airstrike, even though it exposed Americans to being killed, which would have been damaging operationally and disastrous politically.     He ordered the raid to take place within a few days of a meeting with his national-security team (which would not include McRaven) rather than to wait until the intelligence community might be able to confirm binLaden's presence.

Of course, President Obama's superb judgement in the events leading to the death of Osama binLaden sholdn't in itself be enough to warrant his re-election.   (His opposition is.)   But given the panic displayed by Republicans accusing the President of "spiking the ball," it appears the GOP fears that it will be a decisive factor.      If Barack Obama were taking untoward political advantage of this military action, he might have done something like this (from dailykos):

Share |

Mental Confusion

The chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl, an Islamist political party in Pakistan, told the nation's Parliament "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace, they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad.... "

The Long War Journal reports that the Taliban are advanceing on the districts of Swabi, Mardan, and Malakand, and on Mansehra and Haripur. Ominously (emphasis mine),

The Taliban takeover of Haripur would put the Taliban on the doorstep of Islamabad and would also put two major nuclear facilities at risk.

Haripur borders the Margala Hills, a region in the Islamabad Capital Territory. Haripur also borders the Punjab districts of Attock and Rawalpindi.

Attock hosts two major nuclear facilities in Pakistan: the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex and the Kamra (Minhas) Airbase. The Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex host three sites where nuclear weapons and components are stored and assembled and aircraft and missiles are modified for use in nuclear attacks. The nearby Kamra Airbase is thought to host attack aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Apparently, this would little concern former Virginian governor Jim Gilmore, who afterward lost badly a Senate race and in his effort to claim the Republican nomination for President in 2008. According to the online edition of the Hampton Roads, Va. newspaper, The Daily Press, Gilmore has blasted Congressional Democrats and President Obama in a fundraising letter, claiming

....Our greatest danger comes from what's happening in Washington, D.C.

Thank you, Barack Obama. And running mate Joe Biden, former DNC head Howard Dean, and the Democratic campaign committees for the House and the Senate. If not for you, Gilmore and his crowd might be running the country. And we could have had another four years of his party: one whose ardent supporters went on and on about "radical Islamism" and "Islamofacism" while the President they supported conducted a war against a secular regime in Iraq, the assignment of which resources undermined the far more important task in Afghanistan. And a regime which subsidized a President- since forced to resign- of Pakistan, who turned around and made deals with Islamist terrorists which only emboldened and strengthened them.

We now have a chief executive who recognizes the importance of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region- and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee says he and his allies are the greatest danger faced by the United States of America. Fortunately, the adults have taken over, and some Republicans will learn to adjust, and catch up with the rest of the country, in time.

Bluff and Bluster

John McCain certainly was decisive at the forum hosted by Reverend Rick Warren of Saddleback Church on Saturday evening, August 16. He repeated his talking points with evident conviction, though as befits McCain, he may completely contradict those points, or claim he never made them, within days.

As he has throughout his campaign to gain the Repub nomination for President, McCain tried (and probably succeeded) to convince his audience that he is determined to capture Osama bin Laden. He issues the same vow repeatedly. He was asked:

How about the issue of evil? I asked this of your rival in the previous thing. Does evil exist and if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it or defeat it?

He responded:

Defeat it. Couple points, one, if I'm President of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do that.


A little reality check. Here is a portion of a 7/6/08 posting of talk-show host and columnist Michael Smerconish, for whom the issue of terrorists operating out of Pakistan is a paramount issue:

To be sure, the United States should consult Pakistan about such actionable intelligence, Obama told me, but “we shouldn’t need permission to go after folks that killed 3,000 Americans. That’s part of the reason that I’ve been a critic from the start of the war in Iraq. . . . I felt we had a war that we had not finished".....We spoke again April 21. I asked Obama if he was prepared to stop writing the monthly check to Pakistan - payments now exceeding $10 billion. His reply: “Absolutely. [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf was receiving billions of dollars and not doing much with it.

On June 16, I asked John McCain about Obama’s willingness to take action where Pakistan would not.... (and he answered in part) “. . . We have to have the cooperation of Pakistan in order to have these operations succeed,” McCain said. “. . . [I]f you alienate Pakistan, and it turns into an anti-American government, then you will have much greater difficulties.”


This is nothing new. On August 1, 2007- as he did later in debate- the Illinois senator explained "if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and (Pakistan) president Musharraf won't act, we will." McCain criticized Obama's argument. But this is telling: When Smerconish told McCain that because of this one issue he might vote for the Democratic presidential candidate "for the first time in my life," the Arizona senator replied "Well, then I tell you, my seeking the support of the American people, frankly, is over a lot more issues than that but I understand how important it is to you.”

That's right. This is the guy who admits that economics is not his strong suit but whom the media claim is some sort of foreign policy sage. And he is suggesting the American voter should consider overlooking his position on terrorism emanating from the Persian Gulf. Which raises two questions about John McCain: 1) If he is willing to follow Osama bin Laden to "the gates of hell," why not to Pakistan? and 2) If not national defense, what possible reason is there to vote for him?

Failure In Pakistan

The report in yesterday's (6/30/08) New York Times, "Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan," reveals much about the Bush policy in the Persian Gulf.

We read of the plan devised by administration officials in late 2007 to enable American commando forces to operate more smoothly in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, headquarters of al Qaeda, where peace agreements brokered by President Pervez Musharaff have allowed militants to operate increasingly freely. The plan, however, has stalled amidst bureaucratic in-fighting, a risk-averse attitude in Washington, and excessive concern about imperiling Musharraf's standing among Pakistanis.

The Times reports "it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world." In fact, Pentagon consultant and RAND Corporation terrorism expert Seth Jones explains "the United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Those who imply that diminished American casualties in Iraq during the "surge" justify continuation, or even launch, of the war should heed this important observation by The Times reporters: "current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas." Consequently, according to the Times, "leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil." Yet another unintended consequence of Bush's folly.

Terrorism, Pakistan, And Obama

Let's go over a couple of the facts about Pakistan:

-in September, 2006 President Pervez Musharraf negotiated a deal with the tribal warlords of northwestern Pakistan, effectively ceding all control to them, while the Pakistani army would be removed from that region;
-Osama bin Laden is believed to be holed up in northwestern Pakistan;
-The United States pays $80 million a month to Musharraf's government, payments thus far totalling approximately $5.6 billion, presumably for anti-terrorism efforts; and
-the recently released National Intelligence Estimate argues that al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself in northwestern Pakistan and the U.S.A. (or, the "homeland" to those who share the Nazi's fondness for the term) "will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years" due primarily to al-Qaeda.

Thus paying attention, on August 1, Barack Obama gave a statement outlining his policy on terrorism. It included the following:

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.

The following day, Obama (according to WashingtonPost.com), responding to a question about use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan or Pakistan), stated "There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons and that's not a hypothetical that I'm going to discuss."

In the Presidential debate of 6/3/07 from Manchester, New Hampshire, Senator Clinton, asked if as President she would enact a no-fly zone in Darfur: "well, but we're not going to engage in these hypotheticals"; and about a missile strike against Osama bin Laden that might kill civilians: "I don't think it's useful to be talking in these kinds of abstract hypothetical terms." So on 8/2/07 she criticized Obama's refusal to discuss a hypothetical situation by arguing that he should not be discussing a hypothetical question: "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons." (If this is incomprehensible to you, you're paying attention.) Of course, Obama's response was not that of a President discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons- but rather that of a candidate, a distinction lost on a candidate who herself refuses to answer "hypotheticals."

Fortunately, Senator Clinton did not criticize Obama's readiness to strike terrorist camps in Pakistan, if necessary, by conventional means. Others,however, were not so reticent. "It is dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression that a President would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power," intoned Senator Dodd, aghast that a Presidential candidate might actually tell the American people what he would do as President. Warning "it is important not to unnecessarily inflame the Muslim world," Governor Richardson, in his rush to split infinitives and reassure Muslims, inadvertently implied that Muslims everywhere approve of the terrorism bin Laden and the Taliban have provoked. And still auditioning for Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, Senator Biden remarked "the way to deal with it is not to announce it but to do it," apparently forgetting that, not currently being President, the Illinois Senator cannot "do it." Obama's statement, Biden continued, puts Musharraf "in the position that makes it virtually impossible for him to do anything other than what he's done, basically cut a deal with the warlords on the border." (Which, obviously, is the situation that Obama's consideration of a strike against terrorist camps is a reasonable response to. This can get very confusing.)

Senator McCain, whose foreign policy expertise has been demonstrated by his steadfast support of Mr. Bush's counterproductive invasion of Iraq, also criticized Obama's stance against the terrorist camps in northwestern Pakistan. And Bush spokesman Tony Snow lectured "our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government..." seemingly unaware that when a sovereign government declares a portion of its territory off-limits to its own security forces, it has ceded a significant portion of its sovereignty (and usefulness to a "war on terror.")

What does Senator Obama understand that these guys don't? A "war on terror" must be more than a slogan.