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.

Anxious liberal democrats watch seal team invade Osama bin Laden’s secret compound.

Iowahawk explains that, with a democratic administration in power, avenging 9/11 is cool again.

[I]f you had asked me 48 hours ago whether Osama Bin Laden would ever brought to justice I would have probably answered “no.” Like many Americans I had all but abandoned hope that we would ever capture or kill the 9/11 mastermind, and had resigned myself to the idea he would die an old man thumbing his nose at us from some comfortable cave in Waziristan. Well, I can happily report that I completely underestimated the skill, courage, and perseverence of America’s military. And, almost as happily, I can report that I also completely underestimated the capacity of America’s erstwhile “peace community” for turning on a dime and embracing the kind of all-American xenophobic flag-waving bloodlust they only recently decried. So today I stand proudly with my new friends of the formerly antiwar left in a mindlessly jingoistic salute to President Obama for an extralegal military assassination well done.

Yes, it’s true that some pre-January 2009 antiwar activists have remained morally and logically consistent in their opposition to America’s military presence in the Mideast; but, thank God, it appears now they were only a tiny, insignificant minority. Recent events have happily made clear that the antiwar movement of 2001-8 was overwhelmingly dominated by a vast silent hypocritical majority of craven political opportunists awaiting a Democratic administration to gleefully celebrate the covert execution of a man whom, until 28 months ago, they would have described as a “tragic civilian casualty.”

Read the whole thing.

The Wall Street Journal has a photo slideshow.

No guarantees of authenticity. I will reported any subsequent debunkings of this photo.

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Minutes later: Yes, it seems that it is a fake. Too bad.

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An hour or so later:

The Administration has real photographs of the dearly departed, but is fussing and fidgeting about releasing them. I think we all know that they will do so in the end. It is important to prove that he’s really dead. So they are just demonstrating how feeble they are by temporizing.

Jake Tapper:

The Obama administration has photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body and officials are debating what to do with them and whether they should be released to the public, officials tell ABC News.

“There’s no doubt it’s him,” says a US official who has seen the pictures and also reminds us that OBL was 6’4”.

The argument for releasing them: to ensure that the public knows and can appreciate that he’s dead. There is of course skepticism throughout the world that the US government claim that it killed bin Laden is true.

The argument against releasing the pictures: they’re gruesome. He has a massive head wound above his left eye where he took bullet, with brains and blood visible.

Via Ric Anderson, US House Press Gallery Staff.

The remains of executed pirates used to be covered with tar in order for the remains to stand gibbeted and exposed as long as possible to deter other potential offenders.

Today’s good news was marred by a conclusion featuring the kind of nauseating multicultural grovelling and cant which has become de rigueur in Washington.

The Politico reports:

Asked how bin Laden’s body will be treated, a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call that “we are ensuring that is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition.”

The official, who refused to be identified, said the matter is “something that we take very seriously, and so, therefore, this is being handled in an appropriate manner.”

Early Monday morning, a U.S. official confirmed reports that the body had been buried at sea.

Peter Bergen, a national security analyst, predicted on CNN that bin Laden’s face will be shown because of visual evidence that must be displayed. He also noted that Islamic law calls for bodies to be buried within 24 hours of death.

“In Islam, the body has to be buried in 24 hours,” Bergen said. “That will happen.”

The Administration’s decision to dispose of Osama bin Laden’s remains at sea in order to preclude his burial site serving as a shrine for jihadi pilgrimages has the drawback of making his death more easily deniable.

Osama bin Laden was anything but an honorable adversary. The 9/11 attacks were unprovoked, the tactics used were dishonorable, and the targets chosen were principally civilian non-combatants and included women and children. We ought to be doing the opposite of taking his barbarous and fanatical superstitions “very seriously.”

We should be arranging matters specifically to emphasize the vindication of American justice and the most complete expression of revenge for the wrongs inflicted on 9/11. The disposal of Osama bin Laden’s thoroughly perforated remains ought to have occurred in a manner conspicuously inflicting dishonor and contempt and in direct and explicit violation of Islamic religious taboos.

Since Islam demands burial within 24 hours, the responsible authorities should have taken care to expose Bin Laden’s corpse publicly for an extended period of time. If it were up to me, I would have exhibited it at the 9/11 site, arranged so as to be consumed over a very extended interval by the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields.

Osama bin Laden was residing in a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 80 miles north of Islamabad. The compound was located just north of a hospital for women and children and a movie theater and roughly 800 feet to the east of the Cantt Police Station.

Just short of a decade after the 9/11 attacks, the United States has brought Osama bin Laden to justice.

Bin Laden was found by tracking a courier identified by Guantanamo detainees, according to “a senior White House official.”

MSNBC:

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, “detainees gave us information on couriers. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, his pseudonym, and also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden.”

In 2007, the U.S. learned the man’s name.

In 2009, “we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track.”

In August 2010, “we found their home in Abbottabad,” not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital.

“When we saw the compound, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound.”

The plot of land was roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area. It was built in 2005 on the outskirts of town, but now some other homes are nearby.

“Physical security is extraordinary: 12 to 18 foot walls, walled areas, restricted access by two security gates.” The residents burn their trash, unlike their neighbors. There are no windows facing the road. One part of the compound has its own seven-foot privacy wall.

And unusual for a multi-million-dollar home: It has no telephone or Internet service.

This home, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded, was “custom built to hide someone of significance.”

Abbottabad, Pakistan, named for the 19th century British officer General Sir James Abbott, who pacified and governed the district 1849-1853, is described in Wikipedia as “well-known throughout Pakistan for its pleasant weather, high standard educational institutions and military establishments.”

American justice (and military operations) proceed rather slowly. The courier was identified in 2007, his area of operation ws identified in 2009, Osama’s compound was identified last August, and they were planning the assault since February. The president and the National Security Council Five pondered what to do in the course of five meetings since Mid-March, and President Obama only finally gave the go-ahead order last Friday, April 29th.

The raid was executed by a U.S. Joint Special Operations Command Special Mission Unit (SMU) from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU — formerly known as Seal Team Six). The seal team unit arrived via two helicopters, one of which had mechanical difficulties and has been reportedly destroyed by US forces. Other US personnel operated as spotters on the ground, and a drone was deployed overhead just in case.

A firefight (yet to be described in detail) occurred in which Osama bin Ladin, one of his sons, two couriers, and a woman whom the ever-chivalrous Muslims attempted to use as a human shield were killed.

Amusingly, Sohaib Athar, a Pakistani who tweets as Really Virtual, essentially live blogged the attack on Twitter.