Rumsfeld scrapped raid - 6 years before calling OBL kill 'easy call'

[Grassy Knoll]

Source: politico.com

My colleague Mackenzie Weinger just posted a comment from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioning just how tough a call President Obama made when he gave the kill order to the SEAL team targeting Osama bin Laden.

“You mentioned there was a tough decision,” Rumsfeld said on Tuesday night on Fox News. “I don’t think it was a tough decision. We’ve seen a lot of instances where presidents over the years have had to make decisions like that.”

But six years ago, Rumsfeld himself called off a major raid in Pakistan, citing many of the same factors that Obama administration officials complicated the OBL mission.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/rumsfeld-called-off-bin-laden-raid-despite-downplaying-122287.html

[sakabatou]

1. They didn't want to get him

They wanted a boogey man instead.

[Ken Burch]

3. An early OBL capture meant no war.

Couldn't have that. Having the war was the only way to get Dubbikins re-elected.

[pscot]

9. Plus the Saudis wouldn't have approved

Bush didn't want to offend his family's business partners.

[Iliyah]

2. Rumie is a jackass

all the failed decision he and the Bushies + Cheney did for 8 effing years.

Cheney has gotten a new heart and he is still evil as hell. Rumie is plain stupid.

[Marie Marie]

4. Yes Rumie is stupid. And like most of the stupid,

incredibly arrogant. He failed big time and will go to his grave never realizing that.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

25. "Rumsfeld is the most ruthless person I know...

..." - Henry Kissinger

Rumsfeld isn't/wasn't dumb, stupid or arrogant. He knew what he wanted, "oodles and oodles of money for him and his friends".

Don't forget, aspartame (nutrisweet) wasn't approved as a food additive/artificial sweetner until Rumsfeld headed the corporation that came up with it. This despite the FDA being sour on it. No pun intended.

[SunSeeker]

5. K&R

[benld74]

6. Rumy had pressing business in Iraq to tend to

[JBoy]

7. The bad guy's always north, south, east or west of anywhere you look.

[Grassy Knoll]

8. The reason the right is so pissed about bin laden....

Obama showed that righty's don't corner the market on fighting
the war on terror, a mantra righty's have held to what they are all about,
A granola eating tree hugger can't possibly be that heroic. Obama pulled the
pants down on that rhetoric, and the bees started buzzing. LOL

[glowing]

10. Yeah, they would loose their oogy boogy man

[Alcibiades]

11. This is swift boat all over again

They are "attacking the enemy's strengths." Their goal is to create an environment in which the president cannot claim success for killing OBL, much like 2004, when they succeeded in creating an environment wherein Kerry could not draw the contrast between himself and Bush in re Vietnam.

They are doing this now because this sort of big lie takes time to sink in. They will repeat it over and over again: "Obama is politicizing the death of OBL." They have to do it now so it won't be a new message in November, because, if they do bring it up for the first time in, say, October, it simply serves to remind everyone that Obama got Osama, whereas Willard's biggest foreign policy coup is deciding which countries to offshore American jobs to and where to hide his millions.

[SemperEadem]

21. the difference between 2004 and now

is that Obama's got a rapid response team which counters their bullshit within 24 hours.

Kerry did not have that, nor did he have the will or stomach to get down into it and land punches.

Obama's got sharks, squids and barracudas on his team--all of which don't mind a fight. Kerry didn't. He had guppies and minnows.

[Alcibiades]

22. Absolutely true

I know Kerry had some good people working for him, though: the direction for the campaign was too old-school establishment, and we brought a knife to a gunfight. Everyone on the left now understands this will be a brawl, no genteel affair.

Though Kerry should have understood that after 2000.

Still, 2004 seemed to me to be a particularly badly run campaign. I was here in NC, home of the VP nominee, and we got nothin. In contrast, in 2008 the Obama peopple did almost everything right, here in NC and elsewhere.

[Old and In the Way]

12. I suspect we had good intel all along as to where OBL was.

If we knew in 2006, we probably knew in the days after Tora Bora and probably after this specific instance. The underlying plan in the Bush administration was to keep OBL under wraps...available for the occasional videotape to spook the American voters, but not so free as to create real problems. We paid Pakistan a lot of money for help in combating terrorism...but I'm jaded enough to believe that a good chunk of it was to keep a tight rein on OBL.

[usregimechange]

13. Mediablast this, fits are narrative and is true.

[annabanana]

14. k&r./tweeted/faced/emailed .. n/t

[alp227]

15. Right-wing pundits who were howling over Obama's similar decision:

(crickets) (crickets)...then back to Obama-bashing.

if you want to know how the "Obama waited 16 hours" story spread, the Daily Mail (won't link...you can do the search yourself) in the UK made a big FUSSY STORY out of this passage from the New York Times' indepth "Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden" story:

Last Thursday, the day after the president released his long-form birth certificate — such “silliness,” he told reporters, was distracting the country from more important things — Mr. Obama met again with his top national security officials.

Mr. Panetta told the group that the C.I.A. had “red-teamed” the case — shared their intelligence with other analysts who weren’t involved to see if they agreed that Bin Laden was probably in Abbottabad. They did. It was time to decide.

Around the table, the group went over and over the negative scenarios. There were long periods of silence, one aide said. And then, finally, Mr. Obama spoke: “I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now — I’m going to go back and think about it some more.” But he added, “I’m going to make a decision soon.”

I peeked at "The Savage Nation" on Monday, and guest host Jeff Kuhner was HOWLING and HYSTERICAL. (I could only stomach only a minute; his whole commentary is on youtube here.)

[Grassy Knoll]

17. Jeff Kuhner steals 100% of his act from Lumpy the Cyst .........

another right winger deeply upset Obama did what a repig couldn't. Boo Fuckin Hoo.
Hey wingers your ass clown is showing.

[SoutherDem]

16. Obama could cure cancer and he would be blamed for putting oncologist out of work!

We all know if Bush did get OBL it would have been a gutsy move, but since Obama made the call it was a no brainer. We also know if Bush got him every commercial would remind people of this fact, but since Obama recalled the anniversary it is political. It is also safe to say if the mission had failed Romney would show how the "go" decision was a bad one and the "no brainer" would have been to do nothing. And, if Bush did it and it failed it was still a gutsy move and the reason was the Clinton Military. The Republicans are simply pouting because Obama did what Bush didn't. I won't speculate if he could have or would have just that it didn't happen under Bush.

But, I did have a friend who said it happened when it did for political timing. I explained if he wanted the political timing he would have waited for October 2012 about one month before the election, the next best time would be October 2011 so the anniversary would be at election time but the timing was about as poor as you can get. But, it goes to show that the Republicans feel nothing Obama has done, is doing or will do is good.

[just1voice]

18. Bush told the FBI to lay off the Saudis prior to 9/11 as well

Coleen Rowley had massive intel on all the 9/11 "pilots" and repeatedly demanded they be further investigated.

Not that anyone gives a sht now in "let's just put it behind us" America.

[The Second Stone]

19. The righties don't know how to fight wars

because they stay at home making the bucks. Virtually all of Bushie's cronies dodged the Vietnam draft because, like Cheney, they had other priorities than serving their nation.

Romney is another one who skipped serving. He has always served himself well. But not this country. He exported lots of jobs, and made money doing it.

[deacon]

20. The easy decision is a vote for Obama. n/t

[polly7]

23. Rummy needed his wars. nt.

[ieoeja]

24. Bush, Tora Bora, 2001. Rumsfeld, Pakistan, 2005. Obama, Pakistan, 2011.

One of these things is not like the other. Two of these things do not belong.


We could toss "Carter, Iran, 1980" into the mix as well. It failed, but he made the gutsy call. Then there was "Clinton, Somalia, 1993" which succeeded, but was redefined as a failure by the GOP (which the military blames on the "Liberal Media" ignoring the fact that the news pretty much did nothing except give the GOP a platform).

[catbyte]

26. Once an asshole...

...always an asshole. No wonder he's the most despised Secretary of Defense in US history.

[magic59]

27. Republicons are soooooo jealous

They are green with envy, wish they had the guts to do the job. What a bunch of crybaby losers.