Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Unconfirmed Report: Leon Panetta, not President Obama, issued order to kill bin Laden

Right off the bat, I want to remind you that this is unconfirmed and has a very good chance of being false.  However, referencing a story that appears in the PJ Tatler (which also isn't sure if this is real), a "White House insider" supposedly had this conversation with...someone:
Q: You stated that President Obama was “overruled” by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound. Was that accurate?

A: I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama) I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.” There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so. President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.

I was correct in stating there had been a push to invade the compound for several weeks if not months, primarily led by Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and Jim Clapper. The primary opposition to this plan originated from Valerie Jarrett, and it was her opposition that was enough to create uncertainty within President Obama. Obama would meet with various components of the pro-invasion faction, almost always with Jarrett present, and then often fail to indicate his position. This situation continued for some time, though the division between Jarrett/Obama and the rest intensified more recently, most notably from Hillary Clinton. She was livid over the president’s failure to act, and her office began a campaign of anonymous leaks to the media indicating such. As for Jarrett, her concern rested on two primary fronts. One, that the military action could fail and harm the president’s already weakened standing with both the American public and the world. Second, that the attack would be viewed as an act of aggression against Muslims, and further destabilize conditions in the Middle East.

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2 comments:

  1. This sounds fishy

    BUT

    If true, Obama doesn't deserve an iota of credit for bin Laden's brain plastering.

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  2. Upon closer inspection of the article, it appears a well-informed. A little TOO well informed. Why would an insider talk to some blog instead of Fox or the NYT?

    Also, some of these points (presumably)come from private conversations. Even the highest aides aren't there for personal conversations of the President. Until we get a report from a real news source, it's not true.

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