Posted on 09/11/2012 8:30:01 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is speaking out for the first time about the Navy SEAL who continues to make headlines with his revealing book about the night Osama bin Laden was killed.
Panetta spoke with "CBS This Morning" co-host, Norah O'Donnell, and while he maintained that Americans have a right to know details about the raid, he came out against the SEAL -- who goes by the pseudonym Mark Owen -- and his book. "There's no question that the American people have a right to know about this operation," Panetta said. "But people who are a part of....
(Excerpt) Read more at m.cbsnews.com ...
“...Except when it comes from the West Wing of the White House.”
Ooopsie!
Of course the American people have a right to the truth, so long as we can spin it into a lie. How dare someone tell them the way it really happened!
The only part that seems odd to me is that there weren't any provisions at all to take Osama bin Laden prisoner. From this book it is clear that the Seal teams were free to shoot first and ask questions later. While some of the other men in the compound were armed or could reach loaded weapons easily, bin Laden wasn't armed and could have been overpowered easily and snatched. I realize that there were political downsides to taking him alive but think of all the intelligence information we could have beaten out of him and the moral power we could have held over the al Qaeda network by capturing him a meekly as a lamb.
I have had some experience with SEALs in the past, not all favorable. They really are "armed sailors" which is not always a good thing. The overall impression is that they bashed around the compound, blasting holes in things with explosives and shooting anybody who gave or might have given resistance. Not a subtle, stealthy commando attack as much as a noisy raid with an emphasis on killing bin Laden, not capturing him.
But Daniel Ellsberg was "freedom of speech", right Leon?
...it is an amazing book. These guys are truly the best.
Correct me if I am wrong but the biggest difference in accounts I noticed is the SEAL said usama was shot first in the hallway. So the accounts are different but I am not convinced the admin version exists because of any particular agenda. It sounds like the military debrief was flawed and now they are embarrased at their mistakes - not lies.
I have to believe that, with at least several weeks having passed now since the book came out, and at least several high-level 0bama people commenting on it to the effect that “...he [the author] might be in trouble...” with no actual follow up, there is nothing in it for which they feel that any charges will stick for a court win.
The continued saber rattling is just to make a point that only 0bama will decide when to release this type of “classified” info, and he is ticked off that someone is making money at the same game, IMHO.
I’m not sure that you’ve got the right explanation. I haven’t read the book, so I am just basing this on what I’ve read about the book.
The writer claims that the mission was a kill mission from the start. That was the goal, and that the administration tried to claim that the mission was to take him alive if possible. That’s the difference. If they found him sound asleep in his bed, they would have put a bullet in his head. They wouldn’t have arrested him and tried to bring him to the USA. Obama tried to soften the account.
Look up the book, “Lone Survivor.”
No one in the Pentagon threw a fit when that was published.
I’ve read both books now. If anyone can explain how one is worse than the other for security then I’m all ears.
Then go read the several dozen other SEAL books written by SEALs.
What’s the big deal? Obama. That’s it.
“The writer claims that the mission was a kill mission from the start.”
He says, in the book, the opposite of what you’ve written. I read the book.
Shoot first...of course....No one knew who he was until after he was croaked".
Remember Saddam announcing...."Wait...I am the Great Saddam"....Great my a**. "The President sends his regards".
Well, this wasn't the same situation...This was no hole in the ground...This was a fort with armed guards.
His story really gave me a sense of the goodness and love of country of these warriors.
Panetta, we are sick of paying through the nose for a government that hides the truth from its employers, the taxpayers. We would be better off having this oppressive behemoth off our necks and out of our pockets. Every state would be able to run its territory better than this inept, blind, greedy federal government.
Hey. You talk about that like it's a bad thing.
Seriously, though, I would think that once those bullets began coming through the door the SEALS were trying to break down, any stealthy operation was DEFINITELY out of the question then, never mind having an unannounced helicopter come crashing down outside the door.
That old saying about "Once the firing begins..." is probably spot on here.
Perhaps Panetta believes that the laws only apply to the peasantry...
We heard loud and clear....everyone in the compound was a potential suicide martyr wired and or armed.
“The only part that seems odd to me is that there weren’t any provisions at all to take Osama bin Laden prisoner.”
Says who?
I recommend a re-read of the book. That they didn’t take any chances with him isn’t surprising. OBL got shot in the head in a dark hallway before he was positively ID’d.
I’m surprised by all of the comments claiming to “know” that the senior DEVGRU members were keen on a straight-up assassination mission of the most valuable intel target in the world.
OBL got shot because he was a coward. He just wasn’t a big enough coward to keep himself alive.
Perhaps the CIA should be asking this of their boss.
It was not a kill mission. The objective was to capture.
However, they were engaged by enemy fire upon entering the compound, and every male they encountered along the way was armed.
Bin Laden peaked his head out of a door way and was instantly shot. The SEAL who wrote the books says that he looked different than they expected. He had died his beard black.
They weren’t there to kill him, but they weren’t there to get killed, either. At the end of the day, they are trained killers, not cops. So it is no surprise that UBL wasn’t going to be arrested unless he surrendered.
I was sickened by the way that CBS handled the whole story (not that it was unexpected). CBS handled the story as someone who had done something wrong and the question was “what was going to be the consequences of his wrong-doing”? “How would the government respond?”. There was NO mention of the fact that the White House had been leaking classified information like a sieve, and that it was practically co-producer of a Hollywood Film to boost Obama’s ratings. There was NO mention of that.
If the tables were turned, and Bush were still in office when this happened, and the Bush White House had been leaking classified information about the raid, and participated with Hollywood (like THAT would have happened) on a premier movie, and a Seal member had come out with a book like this, the CBS story would have been about the courageous whistle-blower and how the evil Bush administration was persecuting him.
What a corrupt main-stream media we live with.
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