Obama Set To Blame Admiral If Osama Mission Went Bad

Typical. I see how Obama played both sides of this mission.

Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. Here’s the text, which summarized the situation:

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.

This, of course, was the famed “gutsy call.” Here’s what Tom Hanks narrated in Obama’s campaign film, “The Road We’ve Traveled”:

HANKS: Intelligence reports locating Osama Bin Laden were promising, but inconclusive, and there was internal debate as to what the President should do.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: We sat down in the Situation Room, the entire national security apparatus was in that room, and the President turns to every principal in the room, every secretary, “What do you recommend I do?” And they say, “Well, forty-nine percent chance he’s there, fifty-one … it’s a close call, Mr. President.” As he walked out the room, it dawned on me, he’s all alone. This is his decision. If he was wrong, his Presidency was done. Over.

Only the memo doesn’t show a gutsy call. It doesn’t show a president willing to take the blame for a mission gone wrong. It shows a CYA maneuver by the White House.

The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Get-bin-laden-memo-CYA

 

I don't see how his presidency was at risk either. If they were wrong and OBL was not there, they would have left and no one would have said anything. If there had been a big disaster and they lost the entire team, they no doubt would have tried to cover that up, which would have meant a big payoff to the paki bastards who were hiding him.

The republicans shouldn't even talk about foreign policy in the campaign. For one thing, their track record is atrocious, and for another, Obama has basically continued Bush's policies, even the ones he criticized. The only thing I would say is Obama pulled the rug out from under an American ally and installed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which reminds me a lot of Jimy Carter doing the same thing to the Shah of iran and putting islamists in charge.

 

This is not a nice way to refer to our allies in the war on terror. Why do you refer to them as such? If they are so bad, why do we keep giving them weapons (both Republicans and Democrats)?

 

In a world of bullshit - a few truths leak out.

If you were commander in Chief... would you allow this?
Do you think Cheney would have allowed this?

"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."

This pretty much confirms the thing we all heard. It was the military telling the President they would not take no for an answer this time.