President Lied About Osama Bin Laden Raid

[deacon blues]

From the liberal news organization The Hill:


An expose published on Sunday alleges that President Obama deceived Americans with his narrative of the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Author Seymour M. Hersh accuses Obama of rushing to take credit for the al Qaeda leader's death.

This decision, Hersh argues in the London Review of Books, forced the military and intelligence communities to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

“High-level lying nonetheless remains the modus operandi of U.S. policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no,” Hersh wrote of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

Hersh based his report on a single, anonymous source. This individual, he said, is a “retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abottabad.”

Hersh’s source alleged that the Pakistani government had an active role in approving and implementing the raid on bin Laden’s compound.

In addition, the source said that the Obama administration originally agreed to announce bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike rather than shot during an active Special Forces mission.

“Obama’s speech was put together in a rush,” Hersh wrote of Obama’s announcement of Operation Neptune Spear to Americans.

“This series of self-serving and inaccurate statements would create chaos in the weeks following,” he added.

“This was not the fog of war,” Hersh quoted his anonymous source as saying.

“The fact that there was an agreement with the Pakistanis and no contingency analysis of what was to be disclosed if something went wrong – that wasn’t even discussed,” the source added.

“And once it went wrong, they had to make up a new cover story on the fly,” the source said of Obama’s advisers’ response to his speech on the raid, Hersh wrote.

Hersh’s report also accuses the Obama administration of embellishing the details of the raid itself and presenting al Qaeda as a bigger threat than it actually was before bin Laden’s death.

The White House did not comment on Hersh’s claims.

[Pressing-On]

Deacon, site your links, please.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...bin-laden-raid

We will have to see what the marine, Robert O'Neill, has to say about it. He runs around doing interviews about the raid. Interestingly, in a recent interview, he stated that Hillary has a good head on foreign affairs and would make a good president. I didn't trust him after that comment. lol

[Originalist]

Another attack on Obama because he's black!!

[n david]

A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis.

The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it.

This is ridiculous. How many times have the Saudis proven to be actively involved in terror and we just give them a pass? We should have let Hussein invade SA back in Desert Storm. I hope isis/isil starts attacking SA. And if they do, while I know it wouldn't happen, I'd love the US to stay out of it and make SA defend itself.

‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?”’

‘Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’

So obama's signature achievement in the WAT is ordering the Seals to shoot an invalid who was apparently on house arrest and under the guard of Pakistan's isi. Obviously he had to lie to make himself look better. Who wants to be known as the President who ordered the assisination of a cripple who wasn't even a threat anymore?

High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no.

IMO, this doesn't apply to just obama. This is modus operandi of most US Presidents, especially those within my lifetime.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

We will have to see what the marine, Robert O'Neill, has to say about it. He runs around doing interviews about the raid. Interestingly, in a recent interview, he stated that Hillary has a good head on foreign affairs and would make a good president. I didn't trust him after that comment. lol

O’Neill even told Fox News that he and his fellow Seals thought ‘We were going to die.’ ‘The more we trained on it, the more we realised … this is going to be a one-way mission.’

But the retired official told me that in their initial debriefings the Seals made no mention of a firefight, or indeed of any opposition. The drama and danger portrayed by Bissonnette and O’Neill met a deep-seated need, the retired official said: ‘Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen.’

If the author of this article is correct, then O'Neill's a liar.

[Pressing-On]

Originally Posted by n david

If the author of this article is correct, then O'Neill's a liar.

I've seen him acting a little more arrogant the more he is interviewed. JMO, though.

[GISG]

I don't believe the conman or anyone associated with his administration is capable of the truth.
There has been no price to pay for the provable lies he has told since.......I'm going as far back as the age of accountability.
If the press had a conscience and did their jobs properly, this clown wouldn't have made it past his last drug fest, never mind the highest office in the world.

[Pressing-On]

Originally Posted by GISG

I don't believe the conman or anyone associated with his administration is capable of the truth.
There has been no price to pay for the provable lies he has told since.......I'm going as far back as the age of accountability.
If the press had a conscience and did their jobs properly, this clown wouldn't have made it past his last drug fest, never mind the highest office in the world.

Not that lying hasn't been going on, but when Clinton made his notable - "I did not have sex with that woman", it has been all downhill from there - Lying being the NEW normal.

[n david]

What about this author? He quotes a lot of unnamed people, which, while not surprising considering the topic, is something I think about when reading the article.

[GISG]

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

Not that lying hasn't been going on, but when Clinton made his notable - "I did not have sex with that woman", it has been all downhill from there - Lying being the NEW normal.

Correct. Lying is the "new normal" for democrats only, I should note.
Conservatives cannot have ever known someone who lied....once.