WASHINGTON – C.I.A. Director Panetta has been candid about this, even as supposed “experts” hedge. There was a shoot to kill order on Osama bin Laden. But Moore’s criticism of the rolling storyline edit, even if details of any military operation change as debriefings are co-mingled, is a development Obama didn’t need. But as you can see from the video above, the White House isn’t paying attention to the noise and it’s likely most of America isn’t either.
MICHAEL MOORE: Common sense tells you he was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children. I have a lot of faith in Obama, but we’ve received three different stories in three days. We heard, “There was a firefight.” “He used a woman as a shield.” Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn’t armed. – Michael Moore: ‘Bin Laden Was Executed’
Another narrative has popped up on the fringes about the legality of the OBL mission. Along with it has come some suggesting Osama bin Laden should have been captured and tried. The notion that the SEAL Team Six warrior shouldn’t have double-tapped OBL upon seeing him the most outrageous commentary so far. I could care less if bin Laden was armed, whether he lunged for a weapon, or simply stood there frozen in disbelief that Americans had tracked his ass down. When you’re in a dangerous situation confronting a mass murdering terrorist you don’t pause to check details after you get him in your sights. You shoot to kill.
There was no debate among former Seal members that whoever had shot Bin Laden had done the right thing. – In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ All-Star Team
Capturing and trying bin Laden would have been a nightmare shop of horrors logistically. Some offering this up as a preferred solution are creating a fantasy situation in their heads that could never be replicated in reality. Ignoring the ramifications of what doing so would bring on the United States, fomenting a national security problem that would have been near to untenable, was a non-starter.
As we learn more about the mission, one of the critical members of the SEAL Team Six raid wasn’t human, it was a secret stealth helicopter, which allowed the mission to be entertained in the first place.
From Brian Ross of ABC News: In the course of the operation that cost the al Qaeda leader his life, one of the two Blackhawk helicopters that carried the SEALs into bin Laden’s Pakistani compound grazed one of the compound’s wall and was forced to make a hard landing. With the chopper inoperable, at the end of the mission the SEALs destroyed it with explosives.
But photos of what survived the explosion — the tail section of the craft with curious modifications — has sent military analysts buzzing about a stealth helicopter program that was only rumored to exist. From a modified tail boom to a noise reducing covering on the rear rotors and a special high-tech material similar to that used in stealth fighters, former Department of Defense official and vice president of the Lexington Institute Dan Goure said the bird is like nothing he’s ever seen before. […] —more at ABC News—
Now we know how the helicopters were able to go in and out in the dead of night into Pakistan, without being heard.
The components to pulling off a mission of this magnitude are continuing to sink in as the full details emerge; inside Pakistan, without them knowing it, further emphasizes the truly risky nature of Pres. Obama’s decision to give this plan of attack a go in the first place. If it had failed it would have meant his presidency, resulting in a lift for the far Right that would have been impossible to beat back.
That’s the level of belief and trust Pres. Barack Obama had in C.I.A. Director Panetta and his team, the U.S. military command, led by Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, and the SEAL Team Six men (and one hero war dog), who accomplished the near impossible inside Pakistan.
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.