I mean, I’m still astounded by him going after a country with nukes. That takes big ones. And he didn’t pull the Clinton act of telling them ahead of time which may have warned him and allowed him to escape(like what happened in the 90s). Even Reagan’s raid on Libya in 86 we told people ahead of time and it allowed him to get out of dodge. He managed to keep this totally secure. Abbottabad and Rawalpindi are heavy military areas in Pakistan. It can’t be that easy to fly a few choppers in there with a huge assault force. What if the Paks picked up on it and thought India was coming after them or something?
He’ll get big creidt for this and barring some huge economic collapse(much worse than it is now, a new recession, 10%+ unemployment, $5+ gas, etc...) it likely sealed his re-election.
I can’t say with certainty, but I am sure both Obama and Bush made it clear to the Paki government that were coming after OBL where ever he is. I am sure Paki probably gave their blessing for that, for no other reason than they could not deny such a request with the world pressure post 9/11. As I said before, Obama did his job here, but it was nothing extraordinary.
Most Americans will have other things on their minds in the next 18 days, never mind the next 18 months.
How did that work out for GHWB when he went from a 90% post war approval rating to a defeat at the polls in.......18 months?
George HW Bush had 90% approval after the first Gulf War and it evaporated before the election lasting only long enough to intimidate Democrats except Bill Clinton away from running.
Pretty soon the stories will emerge which will diminish Obama's role relatives to the role of the professionals and expose the shameless self-promotion in which he engaged in his announcement. But you are right, Obama deserves a certain amount of credit and we should give it to him.
PAKIS KNEW EXACTLY WHERE OBL WAS LIVING:
On where he was found:
Abbottabad is essentially a military-cantonment city in Pakistan, in the hills to the north of the capital of Islamabad, in an area where much of the land is controlled or owned by the Pakistani Army and retired Army officers. Although the city is technically in what used to be called the Northwest Frontier Province, it lies on the far eastern side of the province and is as close to Pakistani-held Kashmir as it is to the border city of Peshawar. The city is most notable for housing the Pakistan Military Academy, the Pakistani Army’s premier training college, equivalent to West Point. Looking at maps and satellite photos on the Web last night, I saw the wide expanse of the Academy not far from where the million-dollar, heavily secured mansion where bin Laden lived was constructed in 2005. The maps I looked at had sections of land nearby marked off as “restricted areas,” indicating that they were under military control. It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in the Pakistani Army.
The initial circumstantial evidence suggests that the opposite is more likely—that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control.