Bin Laden Killing: How the White House, Pentagon and CIA Botched the Storyline

Fox News ^ | 5/6/2011 | James Rosen

[markomalley]

From the very first moment the world learned that American forces had killed Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, even the tiniest details from the momentous event have captivated the nation. Every single nugget of data has been the stuff of breaking news, handheld "alerts" and watercooler discussion, in a way the country has never previously witnessed.

No landmark event of the 20th century, from World Wars I and II to the Cuban missile crisis, from the moon landing to the fall of the Soviet Union – not even the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- have been as widely transmitted, reported on, written about, and talked about by as many people, across so many different platforms of communication, as the killing of bin Laden. Within days, it has become a singular event of the Information Age.

President Obama's decision to withhold the classified photographs and video associated with the mission has ironically served to deny this most modern of events one of the key ingredients present in virtually all other watershed news events in recent memory: pictures. We've had them from the Kennedy assassination and its Zapruder film to 9/11 and its camcorders. The Arab Spring comes via YouTube cell phone video, linked to from Twitter.

Indeed, in their sheer number of rate of disclosure, the details of the bin Laden mission have formed their own digital assault: They've poured forth virtually non-stop since the president finished speaking in the East Room of the White House, at 11:44 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday night, May 1, nine minutes after he had begun.

The riotous cacophony of claims and counter-claims has emanated from official podiums and anonymous sources, reputable reporters and unknown websites, everything, it seems, equipped with a screen, a speaker, or a mouth. Yet so grandly cinematic is

[Yo-Yo]

This is what you get when you have amateurs and adolescents in charge.

[TomGuy]

Per FoxNews Alert, al Qaeda released a statement this morning on some website confirming UBL is dead.

That should give OHB some wiggle room on the 27+ versions of the story from the White House.

[alQ — ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ photo!’]

[icwhatudo]

Still wondering how you fly the body 200+ miles to Bagram or Jalalabad, do DNA and facial recognition testing, then fly the body 800-1000 more miles to the North Arabian Sea...all in 8 hours.

If you have 24 hrs under Muslim law...why the rush to ditch the body? Many media sources claim both transports were done by helicopter.

[dirtboy]

Per FoxNews Alert, al Qaeda released a statement this morning on some website confirming UBL is dead.

That would quell some of the conspiracies. But the plain truth is the Obama Admin managed to take what should have been a grand tale of American retribution and screw it up royally by not being able to get the facts straight the first time ... or the second ... or the third ... or the fourth.

Absolutely inexcusable in this day and age of real-time communications capabilities.

[dirtboy]

If you have 24 hrs under Muslim law...why the rush to ditch the body?

It is truly amazing you didn't have someone saying, "Hey, wait a minute, is this really that great of an idea in the age of festering internet conspiracies?"

Who knows, there might have been such a person who was utterly ignored. It seems that making sense is not an avenue for career advancement in the Obama Administration.

[DoughtyOne]

He's young!

He's brilliant!

He's dynamic!

He's athletic!

He graduated Might Ya Crone Louder?

He's provided another doctored document to prove he's was natural born...  the media is buying it.  All is forgiven.

He just took down the world's leading terrorist, through shere determination, and personal devotion, something "Bush didn't care to do" by implication.

Oh yes, a Seal team helped.

He was just the toast of the world.  He traveled to New York to remind us.  There he was, Mr. Backbone to the masses.

And yet, today, his administration is on the rocks.

They can't get the forty minute story straight.  Forty fricken minutes and after close to 100 hours, we're no closer to knowing what actually happened than we were on Sunday night.

They keep changing the facts by the hour.  "Hello A.P., yes this is the White House.  We have a new story to go out.  Yes, please send a runner.  No, better yet, send one every hour until we tell you to stop."

At least three different international agencies are demanding details about the operation, signaling an investigation into the legality of what he must have approved.

It's less than 100 hours later, and Obama's been proud an way to cocky to conduct our business.  What's new?  "Four!!!"  His whole admistration is best typified by this, "He's playing through!"

People are talking.  Generally that's the public.  Today it's Washington insiders, lots of them with way to much access to information, and not a muzzle in sight.  Even a box of dental gause could help.

Friday looks to be more of the same, the Oval Office coming apart at the seams.

Even the Left has finally had their fill.  Championing the Messiah on Sunday, picking up the Palm Fronds on Thursday.

Who is this guy?  They thought they knew him on Sunday.  It's Friday and they've never seen him before.

This guy is on his own, his ass hat clowns unable to help him right the ship of state. They're all a little dingy and already bailing water as fast as they can.

So what's next in the Keystone White House?  It's not longer cops.  It's now flops.

The film is advancing at break neck speed.  Guys in stiff suits are running around looking quite silly.  Once in a while they stop to update us again.  When they do, it's sillier than the last time.

You almost hear the piano pounding out a staccato tune driving home the hilarity of what's taking place.

Whatever IS taking place sure isn't very presidential.  It's way to jerky, way to sophomoric, way to embarrassing for most U. S. Citizens.

If there was ever a need for a matinee, a great short second flick to lift us up after this dreadful first movie, this would be it.

This Saturday at the Begieu, one can only hope they'll present something off the scheduled program.

Can this idiotic team hold it together until then?  At this point, I'm not really sure.

You've got a world-class important event that has just taken place with incredible planning and execution by some of the bravest men we've ever seen.

And then you've got the D-Team back in Washington putting a stain on it all, with all the fervor of a dedicated group who loathed this nation with a passion.

One could almost say it looked like he was doing it on purpose, but he wouldn't do that would he?

Would he?

I guess I shouldn't ask questions about this guy.  We've been trashed for asking almost anything about him up until now.

Ah, who needs to know this little stuff? It's not important.

Well, now we have international agencies asking questions.  Frankly that infuriates me.  It infuriates me that they are asking qestions, and it infurates me that this certain brilliant guy can't get his act together long enought to take care of business, quit embarrassing our nation and the fine men who did our dirty work for us on Sunday last.

If this man isn't careful he's going to do serious damage to our nation.  Of course there is the version that goes like this, If this man works this just right, he can do serious harm to our nation.

Oh but that couldn't be the right version.  This guy loves our nation.  He only hung out with a domestic U. S. terrorist and a preacher that damned the U. S. for twenty years because he loved the U. S. so much.  That's what I've been told, but I haven't been able to ask any questions.

We mustn't ask questions.

This is like the nightmare that never ends.  At some point you'd almost think this prick would surrender the keys and move on.  I guess you only do that after you've done what you've set out to do.

The nation is still standing.  He's not done yet.

[livius]

Why we were observing Muslim law in the first place is the main question!

But aside from that, one of the reports said that they had used an instant facial recognition technique similar to the way your photo program “tags” faces in a group photo, but much more precise and fed with much better data. Since they often view through something similar to videocams rather than with the bare eye during these events, the people in the party would have easily been able to identify him visually with the aid of this technology.

I think Pakistan was in on it (although of course its government has to maintain deniability), but even if it wasn’t, if OBL was under observation by the CIA for months, they had plenty of time to gather visual recognition data and probably even get a saliva sample or something else that they could check against his sister’s DNA, which they had gotten several years ago after her death in a Boston hospital.

So I don’t think the identification is really a problem. But I do wonder why they wanted to ditch the body so fast.

[MrEdd]

Funny, I havent paid nearly as much attention to the death of this dime a dozen jihadist as I did the moonlanding in 69.

I guess it is because there will always be 15 or 30 new muslim nutjobs replacing each one that passes.

[IMR 4350]

It’s called orchestrated chaos and there is nothing amateur about it, it’s working perfect.

[Coldwater Creek]

Can't wait to hear the account of Dear Leader's meeting with the S E A L's at Fort Campbell. Why not their home base at Oceana? My guess is that there must be a campaign stop on the way.

[FreedomPoster]

From what I’ve seen, the military and CIA botched nothing. That leaves one entity to blame this on, the only one who has made official statements. Figuring out who that is, is left as an exercise for the reader. It shouldn’t be hard.

[Jack Hydrazine]

With so many versions of OBL’s death out there I’m beginning to think he was never killed but instead was interrogated and placed under the federal witness protection program.

Now he is living it up on a Caribbean island somewhere sitting back in his hawaiian shirt sipping Mai Tais all day while taking in the view of the ocean.

[DoughtyOne]

The Seals probably have too much class to out the CIC.

I’m sure he’ll give us a glowing report.

Perhaps he’s going to drop by some place and tell them all about his heroic acts of last Sunday.

[LottieDah]

“With so many versions of OBL’s death out there I’m beginning to think he was never killed but instead was interrogated and placed under the federal witness protection program.”

If that is the case, OBL died a natural death and then the a drama was spun around it to make Obama look good.

[InterceptPoint]

Well done James Rosen. Excellent summary of how the Obama White House totally confused us about how this operation actually went down.

At this point I would have to say that Panetta is the only administration official that you might just trust. It looks like the rest of them just make it up as they go along, particularly Brennen.

And Brennen has certainly upped his grade to a 4-star bozo. And this guy is trusted with National Security? He has to go.

[sniper63]

Obamas response to seeing the picture........”ewwwwww, that’s just too icky, we don’t want the people to see that.”

[The Sons of Liberty]

Bin Laden Killing: How the White House, Pentagon and CIA Botched the Storyline

The "Community Organizer" and lying SOB was in charge, right?

Next question.

[Eye of Unk]

Obama used the same tactics when a copy of his REAL Kenya birth certificate was being talked about, the Obot Anti-birther Brigade immediately flooded the web with all kinds of similar copies, poorly made obvious fakes, a rather convincing fake that fooled many and then some idiotic foolish examples just for show so anything at all no matter how well made, or how verified as to the origin was being accepted.

And thus we are seeing the very same strategy from Obama, confuse the people with useless drivel until their ears and eyes hurt.

And this will be the template for all future activities.

[tom h]

"Obama Admin managed ... screw it up royally by not being able to get the facts straight the first time ... or the second ... or the third ... or the fourth. Absolutely inexcusable in this day and age of real-time communications capabilities."

Such confusion is completely and totally the responsibility of BHO. Until Jan 2009 he had never led so much as a Boy Scout troop or school PTA meeting. Plus his administration is filled with doofuses like Biden. No wonder the storyline was mangled so many times.