Posted on 05/02/2012 9:01:12 AM PDT by Signalman
A backlash is growing to the victory dance over the terrorist's death, fueling concerns that Obama's biggest foreign policy success could be turned against him
Many Navy SEALs are not happy that President Obama is "taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden," says Toby Harnden at Britain's The Daily Mail. Quoting retired and active SEALs, both on the record and off, Harnden makes the case that many SEALs resent Obama for using the group as "ammunition" in his re-election campaign. Some U.S. commentators dismissed the report as a conservative hatchet job, but others aren't so sure, saying Republicans could use the SEALs' alleged complaints to undercut Obama's most visible foreign policy success, much the way the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth decimated John Kerry's image as a decorated war hero in 2004. Is Obama about to be swift-boated?
Obama is skating on thin ice: "The frustration — or even anger — within the SEAL community is real," and if Obama's not careful, he could see his greatest foreign policy asset slip away, says Michael Hastings at BuzzFeed. Conservatives' "stagey outrage" over Obama trumpeting the death of bin Laden could find a more publicly palatable vehicle in the SEALs, and I wouldn't be surprised to see "navysealsagainstobama.com sprout up soon." The Obama campaign might want to reconsider whether "spiking the football, again, and again, and again, in public" is such a good idea, after all. "Will the Navy SEALs swift boat Obama?"
Maybe he deserves to be swift-boated: "When you take too much credit, you open the door to blowback that gives you too little," says Paul Mirengoff at Powerline. The SEALs' reaction to Obama's "campaign of self-congratulation" was utterly predictable, and the president's real problem is that he doesn't have much else to brag about. "Other than the killing of bin Laden, nothing much springs to mind." "Obama encounters blowback from the SEALs"
But Obama is not going to back down: Mitt Romney's campaign is trying to "push what amounts to a 'Navy Seals for Truth' pitch," but it can't hide the fact that Mitt is weak on this issue, says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Romney says "even Jimmy Carter" would have ordered the raid on bin Laden, but his past statements, in which he played down the possibility of sending troops into Pakistan, legitimately call into doubt what Romney would have done. You can "expect the Obama campaign to keep hammering the fact that Romney opposed" an aggressive policy vis-a-vis bin Laden. "The British are coming"
And he shouldn't cave to Republican bullying: The so-called outrage over bin Laden is a transparent effort "to intimidate Democrats into not mentioning" his death at all, says Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. From George W. Bush down, Republicans consider 9/11 their issue, and "it really grates their cheese that Obama, of all people, is the one who has earned the right to boast about killing bin Laden." Republicans will "wail" every time Obama mentions anything connected to 9/11, and Democrats "should be afraid no longer" to present themselves as the toughest party. "How the GOP became a party of whiners over Osama"
As a Vietnam vet, and a supporter of the 2004 swift boat campaign against Kerry, Obama, giving himself all the credit for the killing of OBL, makes me sick. I will fully support the SEALS.
“Swift Boating” means telling the truth about scumbag ‘Rats?
Forget Swift-boating. I say Zer0 should be keel-hauled.
They say Swiftboat as if it were a bad thing and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The SBVfT were combat veterans from both sides of the political divide, interested in setting the record straight for the honor of their service. God Bless them for their service to our Country, first in Vietnam and more recently on the Homefront, still cognizant of their oath.
The lowest, most disgraced SEAL has more class than the entire collection of the Cretin-in-Chief and his West Wing Clown Show of Felon/Cretins.
If Obama had a shred of decency and integrity, he would make a public televised statement that he deserves very little of the credit, that he was just the sitting president at the time, and the Navy SEALS and the attached supporting units deserve all the credit.
Jst saw this on another thread....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsrSAqRrCc0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
FUBO!
The dead members of SEAL Team 6 are all ex-SEAL’s, too. They paid the price of defiance.
As a Swift Boater, you had the luxury of speaking from relative safety back then. This is the Chicago Machine you’d be up against now, plus a fully fanatical devoted media and Black Panther stormtroopers.
Good video, but these threads on YT always attract bigots masquerading as conservatives. I wish video posters would moderate their posts.
It has to rile them that they remain professionally and fastidiously neutral, regardless of who their Commander in Chief is or their opinions of him, only to have Obama turn around and stick one up their backsides like this.
That's why he feels he has to act like a macho-man, because he isn't one.
Too little is being made of the fact that B Hussein handed operational control to Pannetta, who passed it on to Rear Admiral McRaven, so that if anything went wrong, B Hussein would be two steps removed from failure. As my vet says, “Brave, Puppy, brave!”
And by “Swift-Boating” I assume they mean “Tell the Truth.” The biggest open secret in DC is that Zero was out of the loop on OBL, it was Panetta’s call.
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