bin laden: another story
 

President Obama stepped up to a podium in the East Room of the White House that night to announce bin Laden’s death. That rapid announcement, explained Pfarrer, posed a major threat to U.S. national security.

“There was a choice that night,” Pfarrer told TheDC. “There was a choice to keep the mission secret.” America, Pfarrer explained, could have left things alone for “weeks or months … even though there was evidence left on the ground there … and use the intelligence and finish off al-Qaida.”

But Obama’s announcement, he said, “rendered moot all of the intelligence that was gathered from the nexus of al-Qaida. The computer drives, the hard drives, the videocasettes, the CDs, the thumb drives, everything. Before that could even be looked through, the political decision was made to take credit for the operation.”

Correcting the

I see a few problems with that. First off its not like alqueda did not know that OBL was dead. Once the tail motor of and advanced helo is paraded on TV it kind of limits York suspects. First to mind would be the US and Israel. I do not see how mining the data for intel was affected by the declaration of is death.

If you are robed of your credit cards are you going to canced them right away or wait till out find out who stole them?

The only way his theory holds water in my opinion is if no one knew OBL was dead. Given that the IS or what ever the Pak SS was called knew he was there do you not think that info would have been divulged to the proper people in al queda?

What?!?!?! Botnst starts another thread criticizing Obama? Shocking I tell you shocking! I wonder if Obama has ever done anything right. I'm surprised he doesn't forget to breathe.

Look at it this way: Would the capture of bin Laden alive have changed things? The data collected may have been viable much longer. Why? al-Qaida is like most terrorist organizations: highly centralized. Most, if not all, of the major decisions come from central headquarters, ie OBL, himself. The cells are not given leeway to make independent decisions. If he is dead, they can scrap almost everything. If he is alive, they have to regroup and decide whether to wait for any forthcoming directives or assume he is not coming back and then proceed with choosing new leadership.

So the sieve-like Pakistani intelligence people would have kept all of this hush-hush I'm sure. Everyone knows that when it comes to keeping a helicopter crash at a CIA hit on Obama secret, there is no one like the Pakistanis when it comes to watching our back.

What an utterly stupid article.

Thats the big what if. I suspect not. While it is true about the cells and the centralized command I bet they have fail safest in place that if contact is not made at certain times every scaters like a roach.

I dont think Obama would have advertised OBL death had there been spoilage of the Intel. As stated above, its not like the Pakistanies would have kept it a secret.

Bin Laden was blind. How the hell did he decide to dive across the room to get his gun? He was going to shoot at... what? Noises?

What a lousy President he is; can't even get the killing of Osama B. right. The elections must be around the corner...

There's a reason every time you now see Jimmy Carter; he's smiling............

You can interpret it any way you wish, but I would suggest that this is simply an alternative interpretation to the official version. If you believe either version as written you are a 24K fool, but don't let me stand in your way.

I suggest the Bill Clinton method, in which you take multiple plausible theories and triangulate them. Each story will be close to the actual events (including the ISI's story). None of them will be precise because everybody has stuff they'd like to hide. But each new story narrows the narrative a bit. Including this one. Is it the whole truth? Hardly likely. There is no doubt in my mind that the author has a particular view he wishes to advance for his own reasons. Same with everybody else, including the President.

But like I said, take the simple view if it fits your world view.

Some people will do anything to sell a book, and many want to believe anything they read help keep books flying off the shelves.

Well, this version has some elements that seem more correct than the official story. The idea that there was a 45 minute firefight before getting into the compound, and that OBL was still in his bed after that was always a bit suspect, IMO.
It seems far more likely that the team landed on the roof, and gained access quickly and dispatched OBL in a matter of minutes.
As to the claim that useful intel was minimized by the President wanting to quickly claim credit----that seems much less likely to me.

Everyone that was there or knows anything factual about the event is sworn to secrecy therefore anyone flapping their gums about it is breaking their oath of secrecy so all credibility that they may have had is gone in my opinion.

I have only one account that included JSOC's Task Force Orange which is set up to do these things coincidentally a member of TFO has never wrote a book, spoke to the media or anything like it in the last 10 years of their existence.

do the math.

I recall telling a guy about a great book call Horse Soldiers, his reply to me was the only problem with the book was the author was not there and those that were there abide by their oath and won't come out to call the author a phony.

Is there anything called OPSEC anymore????

There is and it is being exercised, the books are being written by people not under oath or have any first hand knowledge of operations so they are free to write their fiction novels without legal recourse.