Via Theo.

Frank J. Fleming marvels at what true genius can accomplish.

Sure didn’t take long for Obama to squander the goodwill from killing bin Laden. I mean, you got the most wanted man in the world, so how do you take that and start to make yourself look like an idiot? Well, let’s have Obama show us how.

So there’s debate about releasing the photos of Osama. I don’t even really care about it. Obama administration could have just said, “We’re not going to release the photos because we don’t feel like it.” and I would have been fine with that. Instead it’s the usual, “If we release the photos, it will make Muslims in the Middle East mad.” Really? There are Muslims in the Middle East who just give us hugs all the time, but if they see a photo of dead Osama they’re suddenly going to become murderous? But they were okay with us killing him — just don’t want to see the photo? I’m sorry, but anyone who would be stirred up to commit murder by an Osama photo are people we should be already hunting down and trying to kill — so stirring them up will just make them easier to find. But it’s hard to believe it will stir them up since so many in the Middle East are just constantly angry all the time at the most moronic things imaginable. When do we just say, “These guys are angry idiots constantly getting enraged by everything, so let’s stop worrying about what will make them angrier lest we catch some of their psychosis trying to think like them.”? If we want to end anger in the Middle East, let’s just send the message that being stupid angry is how you get dead. So everyone who is like, “Me see photo! Me want to murder now!” why don’t you learn to count to ten before you end up like Osama. And the Obama administration: Stop trying to coddle the feelings of people who celebrate a mass murder and instead concentrate on the feeling of your own people.

And then there is the changing story of how the assault went down. Now I, like pretty much every American, don’t really care how it went down as long as we got the end result of taking out Osama. The official report could have been, “Osama begged for mercy while we ripped off his leg and beat him to death with it,” and everyone would be like, “Great job, Obama!” But instead we keep getting this changing story about whether Osama was armed or not and whether he used a human shield — things we don’t even really care about — and now they’re like, “We’re done talking about this.” Hey, Obama, no one cares what the details of what happened in the raid, so just stop looking weasely about it.

So just, a couple days later, we go from Obama’s one flash of competency to looking like this probably all happened in spite of him, because, really, what an idiot.

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Jim Treacher says that President Obama is taking his victory lap in a clown car.

It’s been less than 72 hours since President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Since then, his administration has been hard at work screwing the whole thing up.

Let’s start with that speech Sunday night. It was originally announced for 10:30 but didn’t happen until 11:30. By that time, the news Obama was supposed to be breaking had broken already. Not the best start. Presumably he was delayed arguing with his speechwriters about keeping in all the “I,” “Me,” and “Mine.” Everything having to do with this raid was “I”; anything that could be attributed to the Bush administration was “We.” “I gave the order, I did this, I did that.” The hallmark of any great leader is a willingness to bravely take credit for the hard work and sacrifice of others.

Then there’s the official narrative of the raid, which has already gone through more versions than the Star Wars movies. First Bin Laden had a gun; then he didn’t. He hid behind one of his wives, who was killed; wait, no, scratch that, she’s alive and wasn’t his wife. Maybe? Now Leon Panetta says he and President Obama didn’t actually see the whole thing go down, after the White House made a point of releasing that instantly iconic picture of the whole gang watching it go down.

Isn’t it kind of important to get all that stuff right the first time? Personally, I don’t care if Bin Laden was holding a tray of freshly baked cookies and asking our boys if they wanted any tea when they shot him. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? As far as I’m concerned, Osama Bin Laden committed suicide by 9/11. But now the White House just looks like a bunch of bumblers. If you’re not exactly sure what happened, why give details you might have to retract? How in the world do you screw up a win this big? (Amanda Carey has a wrap-up of the inconsistencies in the official story.)

And now the Obama administration is showing decisive leadership on the issue of dithering. “Gee, should we show the pictures of Bin Laden with his Navy SEAL makeover? Won’t that make people mad?” The Abu Ghraib pics were in the public interest; visual evidence of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 isn’t. Keeping us from seeing flag-draped coffins was bad; keeping us from seeing a blood-drenched mass-murderer is good. Now they’ve finally decided not to release the pictures, after Panetta already said they would. I’m sure that’s Obama’s final decision unless he changes his mind. Stay tuned for the latest round of polls.

Read the whole thing.

Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid.

Bookworm Room lists the contradictions in the narrative as it exists.

Doug Ross outlines the simple facts which play havoc with one of Barack Obama’s principal campaign issues. Say, how is Eric Holder’s plan to prosecute CIA interrogators going?

1. 2003: Enhanced Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad Results in the Nom De Guerre of bin Ladin’s Courier…

2. 2004: Enhanced Interrogation of al-Qahtani Confirms the Nom De Geure of bin Ladin’s Courier…

3. 2006 (?): Enhanced Interrogation of an Al Qaeda Captured in Iraq, Ghul, Produces the Real Name of the Courier…

4. 2006-2009: NSA Begins Furiously Intercepting Any And All Communications Made By Anyone “al-Kuwaiti” Has Ever Known…

5. Late 2010 (?): al-Kuwaiti Places a Very Ill-Advised Phone Call… “[conversing] with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence… the courier [then] unknowingly led authorities to a [bizarre] compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad…”

6. 2011: Surveying Abbottabad, We Grow Confident We’ve Found Bin Ladin’s Hideout…

7. April 29-May 1 2011: Obama’s Team Tells Him They Have High Confidence Bin Ladin (or at Least His Most Trusted Courier) is In the Compound, and Obama Agrees, and Orders the Raid; On May 1 It’s Executed By SEAL Team 6…

8. May 2011: Begin a Disinformation Campaign To Convince the Public That 2003-2008 Never Happened.

WH CLAMS UP: NO FURTHER DETAILS OF RAID…

FLASHBACK: Obama lifts photo ban on U.S. military coffins…

The president agonizes over this decision.

After mulling it over for a couple of days, while America and the world waited eagerly for more information, that brave and bold Barack Obama decided that the best policy with regard to Osama bin Laden’s death photos and the videos of the attack on his compound was his own traditional approach to releasing information like birth certificates and school records: no voluntary release.

CBS reports:

In an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s “60 Minutes” conducted today, President Obama said he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden taken to prove his death.

“It is important to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool,” said the president. …

The president said he had discussed the issue with his intelligence team, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and that they agree with the decision. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that Mr. Obama made the decision today.

I would say that the president is behaving with a characteristic timidity and bias toward concealment and self protection, and in a situation of this kind his approach is completely a mistake. The whole point of sending in troops and not simply bombing the compound into oblivion was to prove that Osama bin Laden was killed. In the age of cellphone cameras and the Internet telling the world that you will not release documentary evidence of what happened and the results inevitably makes you look guilty and deceptive. The result will be an intensification of questioning and an escalation of challenges to you account.

I think the odds are good that Obama will eventually be forced to release that photograph and video, and he will consequently and deservedly look stupid and manipulative as the result of this bad decision.

slightly Photoshopped detail

I commented yesterday on how much the photograph of the Administration’s security team released by the White House appeared to me to make the president look like an irrelevant spectator watching from the background.

I was clearly not the only one who noticed, and you can see that the left’s commentariat is on the job spinning this photograph into proof of precisely the opposite.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in the Atlantic, contends:

Why amazing? Because the President seems so small and peripheral to the action. He is hunched down, seated on the margins of the meeting, seemingly trying not to take up space. It appears as if he couldn’t even find a place to put his jacket. By contrast, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, practically bestrides the room like a Colossus (an affable Colossus, if you know him). I was struck, when I saw this photo, that the Bush White House would have ever released a similar photograph. This is not to cast aspersions on Bush, but could you seriously imagine his public relations releasing an image of him leading from behind, as it were?

I was just talking to David Brooks, and he, too, was struck by this photo. He noted that the President most likely had to move seats to see the screen, but he did not move to a central seat, but to a small chair against the wall. The negative interpretation of this, of course, is that the President wasn’t running the meeting, but both of us found this impossible to believe. The positive interpretation is that the President is so confident in his power that he is comfortable even in a corner. This speaks well of him, to my mind; a president who kills America’s enemies without swagger is better than a swaggerer who doesn’t kill America’s enemies. (Maybe here I’m casting a few aspersions on Bush.)

Stephen Green (better known as Vodkapundit) describes the current administration as “The Gang That Could Shoot Straight — But Not Much Else.”

The plan for killing Osama Bin Laden was perfectly conceived and as perfectly executed as any special forces operation since Israel’s raid on Entebbe. But the follow-through has been strange at best, sometimes bordering on incompetence.

First, there was that weird burial at sea “in accordance with Islamic tradition.” There, the White House managed to annoy most everyone. There are those like me, who thought Bin Laden’s corpse was treated with too much respect, to those in the Islamic world now inflamed because it wasn’t really done properly after all.

Then there was the president’s oddly bloodless speech Sunday night. For almost ten years we’d been trying to get the guy who murdered 3,000 Americans, attacked our military HQ, and ripped the heart out of the New York City skyline. The effort spanned two continents, four or five countries, a Caribbean Navy base, and the persistent efforts of two presidents, the American intelligence community, and the best of the best of our special forces. And yet President Obama sounded as if he were announcing a “worthwhile Canadian initiative.”

Now the Administration can’t even decide whether or not to release a photo of the body.

Frank J. Fleming has words of comfort for all those deeply concerned.

Don’t Worry: Osama Was Shot in Accordance with Islamic Tradition.

Frank J. Fleming knows the very first thing that went through your mind when you heard of bin Laden’s death: were all the religious niceties observed?

I know what was probably the first thing to go through your mind when you heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed: Was his dead body handled properly according to Islamic tradition? Well, on behalf of the U.S. government, I am happy to tell you that yes, it absolutely was.

Read the whole thing.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. (click for full-sized image)

Looking at the Times’s photograph (by Pete Souza) of the White House National Security team once again, I am struck by how much Barack Obama appears to be a passive outsider on the sidelines, while the group sitting and standing on the right side of the picture, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, seems to be in command and in charge.

It’s just an impression I got looking at the photograph, and it may not mean anything, but I then came upon what purports to be a leak from a knowledgeable insider.

This alleged witness claims that Barack Obama was taken in hand by his senior military and intelligence staff and steamrollered into permitting the mission to go ahead.

From Ulsterman via Theo.

HC = Hillary Clinton

CoC = Chain of Command/Commander in Chief

[There was a s]ignificant push to take [bin Laden] out months ago. Senior WH staff resisted. This was cause of much strain between HC and Obama/Jarrett. HC and LP were in constant communication over matter – both attempted to convince administration to act. Administration feared failure and resulting negative impact on president. Intel disgusted over politics over national security. Staff resigned/left. Check timeline to corroborate.

Now Intel already leaking to media facts surrounding how info obtained. Namely from enhanced interrogation efforts via GITMO prisoners. Obama administration placed in corner on this. Some media aware of danger to president RE this and attempting protection. Others looking for further investigation. We are pushing for them to follow through and already meeting with some access.

Point of determination made FOR Obama not BY Obama. Will clarify as details become more clear. Very clear divide between Military and WH. Jarrett marginalized 100% on decision to take out OBL. She played no part. BD worked with LP and HC to form coalition to force CoC to engage.

IMPORTANT SPECIFIC: When 48 hour go order issued, CoC was told, not requested. Administration scrambled to abort. That order was overruled. This order did not originate from CoC. Repeat – this order did not originate from CoC. He complied, but did not originate.

There is no way to know if there is any truth in all this. If so, I expect we will hear more along these lines.

If the report is false, I would say that it was dastardly and outrageous to fabricate such a thing libeling a president who has just made a courageous decision.

I was persuaded to pass it along because the source is right: anti-Obama Intel leaks are popping out all over, identifying the crucial roles played by enhanced interrogations and renditions in making the operation that killed Osama bin Laden possible. I would still file it in the “Interesting, But Not Known to Be True” category.

Pakistan’s current President Asif Ali Zardari (Wikipedia bio) assures us today, in the Washington Post, that Pakistan has been even more the victim of Islamic extremist terrorism than the United States, and is on our side in the war against al Qaeda.

He is the widower of Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December of 2007 by indigenous Pakistani Muslim extremists belonging to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al Qaeda-affiliate group, so his personal antipathy to Islamicist terrorism is believable. Mr. Zardari is, on the other hand, a notoriously corrupt politician, with a record of two convictions and imprisonments for kickbacks, who has demonstrably misrepresented his own educational credentials, and who is referred to derisively in his own country as “Mr. Ten Per Cent” in reference to his corruption scandals. So his word is not exactly to be relied upon.

We know now that when Osama bin Laden’s trail grew cold in 2005, he had begun hiding in a high-walled safe house in Abbottabad recently constructed at a site previously used for the same purpose by Pakistan’s intelligence service and located only 800 meters from the Pakistan Military Academy in a summer resort community popular with Pakistani senior military officers and government officials, located only about 45 road miles (roughly 72 kilometers) from the capital.

Osama bin Laden’s targeting of the United States for terrorist attacks constituted an act of remarkable perfidy and ingratitude because bin Laden had previously been himself a recipient of US aid and support in the Islamic holy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

It seems that the US has been dealing for decades now, over five presidential administrations, with an extremist Islamist axis combining Afghans, Pakistanis, and wahabi jihadists from the Gulf States who have all accepted friendship and financial and material aid from the United States in liberating Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion, and then turned on America and West as a target of terrorism.

Pakistan has, in the aftermath of 9/11, accepted billions and billions of dollars of US aid and pretended to be a US ally, while continually using claims of sovereignty to restrict Allied operations against Taliban and al Qaeda targets and constantly exploiting claims of civilians casualties to hamper and demonize Allied air attacks.

It seems impossible to believe that Osama bin Laden has been sitting for almost six years in his walled compound in Abbottabad without the knowledge and assistance of significant parts of the government of Pakistan.

The recent Raymond Davis affair in which Pakistani authorities unlawfully detained an American holding diplomatic credentials after he shot a couple of thugs on motorcycles who were menacing him, and which ended with the payment of “blood money” for his release, actually delayed the US operation to eliminate bin Laden.

Last month, Pakistan was urging Afghanistan to reject an ongoing strategic partnership with the United States.

The denoument of the long search for bin Laden exposes in sharp contrast the hypocrisy, perfidy, and double-dealings of Pakistan and poses the direct question: What is the US Government going to do about this, now that it knows?