NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: The Gang That Couldn’t Spin Straight
This “analysis” by The Associated Press can only be described wishful thinking:
In the denouement to the daring raid that brought down Osama bin Laden, the president has in effect been reintroduced to the nation.
While taking care to strike the right tone - trying to savor the success of the dramatic covert operation without appearing to gloat - Obama has offered himself as a decisive leader willing to take bold risks. …
"It sheds a new light on him," says pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "What happened here may improve impressions that he is a strong and forceful leader, and that's the enduring potential benefit."
With all due respect to Kohut, the new light quickly became a harsh a spotlight on the ineptitude of Obama and various hapless members of his administration who were repeatedly forced to walk back and correct their descriptions of the “denouement.” As The Washington Times scathingly notes:
Had U.S. special-operations forces handled the Osama bin Laden takedown the way the White House conducted public relations, they would have landed in the wrong compound and proceeded to shoot themselves in their feet. The raid took months of meticulous preparation, but the communication strategy apparently was whipped up on the fly. The post-kill message is inconsistent and confused.
Bin Laden had a weapon and went down fighting. Osama did not have a weapon but was resisting - somehow. Weapons were within his reach, but not necessarily that he was reaching for them. Bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield, and she was killed. There was no human shield. It was not his wife, and she was shot in the leg. The mission was to capture or kill the terrorist leader. The mission was only to kill him. Now the terrorist's daughter is claiming that he was first captured, then killed. …
The White House attributed the message chaos to "fog of war," but the murkiness is self-imposed. Counterterrorism honcho John O. Brennan, chief source of most of the romantic and ultimately false details of the incident, later had to admit lamely that he was not the best source because he was "not there." Press secretary Jay Carney simply punted all questions to the Defense Department, knowing the Pentagon can answer nothing about classified operations. It took Vice President Joe "Loose Lips" Biden to reveal that the Navy SEALs performed the mission.
There’s been so much dissembling and backtracking on just what went down during the raid on Usama bin Laden’s compound, Rush Limbaugh thinks that the Obama administration is trying to hide something, Mediaite reports:
Rush suggested, “if your spouse has three different versions of a night out with the girls, she’s hiding something, right?” From there, Rush said the Obama administration is so determined not to say Obama ordered an assassination that they keep coming up with “contorted versions of self-defense.” As it becomes less clear whether there actually was a “firefight” or whether Bin Laden was completely defenseless, Rush is accurate to recognize it is a little troublesome why all administration officials can’t get the story straight and stick to it.
So why can’t the administration just come out and admit that Obama authorized the SEALs to bring bin Laden in dead, not alive? Because, you know, that’s not who Obama is.
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