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Osama Bin Laden is dead!!!


acockasian

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Revealed: The disagreements and tension in the White House bunker as SEALs closed in on their prey halfway around the world

 

 

Presidential aides have given countless briefings presenting Barack Obama as a decisive commander in chief with a studied calm and steely resolve since Bin Laden was killed.

 

[color:red]But fresh details emerged last night that it actually took 16 hours for him to decide that the world’s most wanted terrorist should be taken out.

 

Far from making his mind up quickly, Mr Obama kept his top military officials waiting overnight before finally telling them: ‘It’s a go.’[/color]

 

Presented with the latest intelligence last Friday, Mr Obama could only muster silence before telling his top military staff: ‘I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now – I’m going to go back and think about it some more. I’m going to make a decision soon.’

 

The following morning, a full 16 hours later, four senior aides were summoned to the White House Diplomatic Room to be told the operation could go ahead.

 

The delay meant that, in part due to bad weather, the earliest the attack could be carried out was Sunday.

 

Republicans grudgingly came out in praise of Mr Obama but reminded him that it was the result of years of hard work.

 

Former vice president Dick Cheney said it would be ‘a tragedy’ to spend so much time ‘patting ourselves on the back’ that we miss the next attack.

 

But he added: ‘The administration clearly deserves credit for the success of the operation.’

 

Mr Obama received extensive praise from the EU anti-terror chief, who went as far as saying he hoped the killing would lead to a second term for him.

 

Gilles de Kerchove said: ‘I hope that this will help him be re-elected.’

 

 

...

 

 

But Obama took the decision to go in with the Navy SEALs after deliberating for 16 hours.

 

Officials said the photo, taken by the White House photographer in the building’s high-tech Situation Room communications nerve centre, was not choreographed.

 

But you can see why they chose to release this particular one. It shows a leader, who has been derided for his unemotive, overly detached demeanour, instead looking every inch the concerned commander-in-chief, his attention riveted on the fate of the men he has sent into battle.

 

It is possible to miss Barack Obama at first glance, his tall frame hunched in the corner in his golfing clothes (he had just played that Sunday morning), his trademark bottle of mineral water on the table in front of him.

 

That said, it is impossible not to recognise his intense gaze as, jaw clenched, he watched live video feeds of the attack.

 

Reinforcing the reported blokey informality of which his fans are proud, he has given up the padded leather presidential chair for a uniformed underling, perhaps so Brigadier General Marshall ‘Brad’ Webb – the most junior man in the room – can have space at the conference table to use his Hewlett Packard laptop.

 

Indeed, the usual rules whereby National Security Council members sit closest to the President in strict order of seniority appear to have been junked in the crisis.

 

Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, has drawn up a chair between that of the President and Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State.

 

In her tweed jacket, Mrs Clinton would look her usual composed self if it wasn’t for the hand covering her mouth in apparent shock.

 

The raid which killed Bin Laden lasted 40 minutes and the Al Qaeda leader was unarmed

 

Across the table, Vice President Joe Biden looks more relaxed in his open collar but out of shot are the rosary beads that the staunchly Roman Catholic was playing with during the ordeal.

 

Others dealt with the tension in different ways, several pacing around the room. But Mr Obama barely moved, looking ‘stone faced’ throughout, according to an aide.

 

The Situation Room, a highly secure suite of rooms on the ground floor of the White House’s west wing, was created in 1961 to address President Kennedy’s complaints about the supposed poor ‘real-time’ information failures which hampered another U.S. surprise strike – the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

 

On Sunday, officials had cancelled all White House tours to avoid the possibility of a tourist or visiting celebrity accidentally running into the security officials and their tense work.

 

The group gathered at noon without the President. A member of staff went to Costco, a local grocery, and returned with lunch – turkey in pita bread wraps, prawns, crisps and fizzy drinks.

 

They spent the next two hours watching video and audio feeds from the CIA whose director, Leon Panetta, was connected to the Situation Room via a video link to his office at Langley, Virginia.

 

Just after 2pm, Mr Panetta outlined the raid for a last time and, within an hour, began talking them through the operation. And then, ‘They’re in Pakistan,’ he announced simply.

 

The raid lasted 40 nail-biting minutes. ‘It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here. The minutes passed like days,’ said John Brennan, Mr Obama’s chief counter-terrorism advisor, who was standing behind Mrs Clinton during the operation. [color:red]Both Mr Panetta and Mr Brennan had supported the ground strike over waiting.[/color]

 

The President, he said, was ‘very concerned’ about the safety of the U.S. troops. ‘That was what was on his mind throughout.’ The watchers had an early jolt of fear on that front when one of the helicopters crashed over the compound, although all its occupants were safe.

 

The atmosphere was ‘very tense, a lot of people holding their breath’, Mr Brennan added. Nobody dared speak for fear of talking over one of the regular updates from Mr Panetta.

 

Minutes passed before Mr Panetta came on air again to say: ‘We have a visual on Geronimo.’

 

It took a few more nerve-racking minutes before he was on the line again. ‘Geronimo EKIA [Enemy Killed in Action],’ he said.

 

Confirmation that the Seals had found their quarry was greeted with a ‘tremendous sigh of relief’, said Mr Brennan. There was silence in the room. ‘We got him,’ said Mr Obama.

 

But the ordeal was not over. Another stomach-lurching moment came when the Pakistanis scrambled jets after discovering the unauthorised helicopters in their airspace. Fortunately, the troops were over the border before there was any military contact.

 

Andy Card, the chief of staff to George Bush who was the first to tell him about the 9/11 attacks, spoke of the extreme tension his successors would have been under in that room.

 

‘You try to plan for every contingency,’ he told the BBC yesterday.

‘It’s easy to plan for optimism. I would always try to make sure there were some sceptics in the room to ask challenging questions of those that were making the plans.’

 

‘But then you watch with bated breath as the plan is implemented. I am sure there were some quiet prayers that this would go well – there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in this raid.’

 

He added: ‘There’s a lot of tension and ultimately the President’s decision is a lonely decision.’

 

 

 

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I would regard making a snap on the spot decision as a bit too reckless. If he waited too long I'd be criticizing him for indecisiveness. 'Sleeping on it' is a common thing. Taking a few hours, away from it all to get as much objectivity as possibe.

What I am glad to read was his concern over the safety of the troops. Refreshing from someone who never served in the military. All too often presidents are willing to sacrifice american lives over some political objective (Johnson, Nixon).

Hillary said during the primaries, who do you want to be at the end of the phone when a crisis happens. She said due to her experience she'd be better to handle it than Obama. He's a cool customer though, seemingly a bit arrogant and cocky but that can work to ones advantage as much as it can easily be negative.

 

It went well. In today's world, the whole process will be micro analyzed to death. Moreso perhaps than any other President. It went well, I'll just like to leave it that. I have a feeling if one were in the room when other historic decisions were made, the facts would be a bit different than how its been told.

 

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Mastermind of terror... or a doddery old fool?

 

 

The idealistic portrait of the guerrilla leader secluded in his lair turns out to be an illusion. Footage of Osama Bin Laden’s life inside his shabby Abbottabad compound might have come from a care home in Hastings.

 

There he sits, in a woolly cap and brown blanket, silently rocking to and fro in front of a small TV.

 

He is not watching a shopping channel on daytime TV, but old footage of his younger self – waving an AK-47 assault rifle in the Afghani hills, or acting with faux presidential grandeur in one of his jihadist broadcasts.

 

That the Pakistanis subsequently found ‘herbal Viagra’ in Bin Laden’s medicine cabinet sheds further light on the super terrorist’s vanity. The new footage reveals that before taping his broadcasts, he used dye on his beard and hair to achieve the impression of virility.

 

The unkempt figure hunched before the TV seems much older than his 54 years. Occasionally, he can be seen forgetting his lines in otherwise well-crafted propaganda broadcasts.

 

The release of the videos – recovered from Bin Laden’s compound – by U.S. intelligence officials is clearly designed to expose the Bin Laden myth as a carefully manufactured fraud: the godfather of terror reduced to a doddery old man with nothing to do but watch videos of himself.

 

. . .

 

 

 

 

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Geeeze. Here in farangland. The right of right - right wing radio ranters state that it took him 9 months to make a decision.

 

16 hours? That is lightning speed compared to these radio personality wankers.

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The proof its real is that no one in the Republican establishment has challenged it. If they thought there was ample proof from all the 'obvious false birth certificate' birthers who claimed the docs he presented were faked, they'd be on it. Their lack of involvement says enough.

 

The long form wasn't out two seconds and cries of fake were banded about. Not only fake but they said it was very obviously faked. Now, you'd think with this much time to get it right, someone who wanted to fake a birth certificate wouldn't make the obvious mistakes birthers were saying were on it. Obama has the best forgers at his disposal and a 'bad copy' is all he could come up with? Give me a break.

 

Trump is as close to the establishment as you can get and he hasn't claimed its fake. He's now focusing on his school records, which is even more ludicrous. How do you fake NOT attending Columbia and Harvard? Columbia and Harvard says he went there.

 

As I said, I've got nothing against conspiracy theories. I've got a few of my own (JFK assiassination..hmmmm) but this doesn't stand the reason and logic test for me.

 

If the argument is that the Republicans are in on it, then why? If they aren't then why aren't they pursuing it if the evidence so far is almost irrefutable as some say. I'd get a kick out of it if we elected someone who didn't qualify. It would make my otherwise boring life infinitely more interesting to see how that would unfold but I don't see how its possible. Not in today's world.

 

 

Just to add some gasoline to this. The right of right - right wing radio personalities here in farangland state that the birth certificate is moot. That his mother married an Indonesian and that his Indonesian step-father adopted him. And by adopting him in Indonesia his US citizenship became annulled. And that is a real fact according the the "experts" on the right radio.

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