By Jessica Hopper, Subrata De and Tim Uehlinger
Rock Center
President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the “most important single day” of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.
“I did choose the risk,” the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams. “The reason I was willing to make that decision of sending in our SEALs to try to capture or kill bin Laden rather than to take some other options was ultimately because I had 100 percent faith in the Navy SEALs themselves.”
A year after the May 1, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama and several of the advisers who helped plan the operation, known as “Operation Neptune’s Spear,” spoke exclusively to NBC News, reflecting on the tense months spent planning and debating the feasibility of this daring raid. The interviews occurred before the president made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Tuesday, where he and President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement on the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
“This had to be such a close-held operation,” the president said. “There were only a handful of staff in the White House who knew about this.”
The president did not share news of the mission’s launch with his staff, or with the first lady.
“Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,” Obama said. “We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape.”
The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.
The lead
After years of hunting bin Laden, the Central Intelligence Agency got its biggest break in late 2010.
Helmed by then CIA Director Leon Panetta, the agency identified the home of bin Laden’s courier in the upscale town of Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Satellites revealed someone else living at the same compound: a tall man walking in the courtyard that analysts dubbed “The Pacer.”
“Ultimately it was a 50/50 proposition as to whether this was actually bin Laden,” Obama said.
He and his advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hammered out the possibilities.
Clinton said that she was brought into the process in January 2011 when a series of intensive meetings began in the White House Situation Room, or “Sit Room.”
In March of 2011, the president ordered Admiral William McRaven, then commander of Joint Special Operations, to outline a possible raid on the suspected bin Laden compound.
“I remember the moment in the Sit Room with General McRaven,” Clinton said, “and, you know, someone said, ‘Well, this sounds really dangerous and we’re going to expose our guys and what do we know is going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Well, with all due respect, we’ve done this hundreds of times.’”
In fact, the night bin Laden was killed, Special Forces carried out several other missions in the region.
“What may not be known is in addition to this operation that night, this specific one, there were multiple operations just like this going on in Afghanistan,” said retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Some of them actually more difficult than the one that got bin Laden. And when I say more difficult, I don't think higher strategic risk, certainly not more important, but physically more difficult, more dangerous than the one that our great Special Forces executed.”
The dress rehearsal
The plan to raid the compound in Abbottabad developed rapidly and by April 21, 2011, Admiral Mullen attended a dress rehearsal in the Nevada desert.
“When I actually went to the rehearsal and watched it at night at a place where they built a compound just like Abbottabad and watched it in execution, that just gave me great confidence that they could execute this,” Mullen said.
He met every member of the SEAL Team Six that would ultimately carry out the mission.
“I got to look each of them in the eye. They showed me in their execution of rehearsal and also in that steely-eyed glare that they give you that they were ready to go,” Mullen said.
Some of the men weren’t yet aware who they were preparing to attack, but Mullen’s presence signaled that they were going after a high-value target.
“They knew certainly how critical this was. They knew who they were and who they were working with,” he said. “They may not even have known it was bin Laden at that point, but I'm sure they suspected it.”
One week later, it looked like weather conditions in Pakistan would be perfect for the raid — a moonless night with clear skies. If the raid didn’t happen that night, it could be months before weather conditions would be appropriate again for this high-risk operation.
Making the decision
Armed with the confidence that the Special Forces could carry out the mission, it was decision time. So on Thursday, April 28, 2011, the president gathered his advisers in the Situation Room, located below ground level in the White House.
“There was no consensus,” Biden said. “The president on the last day got us all down in the Situation Room and he said, ‘Okay, it’s basically a roll call.’”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recommended an air strike with no forces on the ground. CIA Director Panetta supported a raid by Special Forces and so did Secretary of State Clinton. Vice President Biden wanted to wait on further proof that bin Laden was indeed in the compound.
“It was never contentious because I think everybody understood both the pros and cons of the action,” Obama said. “People who were advocating action understood that if this did not work, if we proved to be wrong, there would be severe geopolitical consequences and obviously most importantly, we might be putting our brave Navy SEALs in danger.”
During the meeting, the president never indicated which way he was leaning. After the discussion, he dismissed his team and said he’d have a decision in the morning. He had dinner with his family and then went to his study after his wife and daughters went to bed.
“Well, there is no doubt that you don't sleep as much that evening as you do on a normal night,” the president said. “I stayed up late and I woke up early.”
The next morning, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he told his national security advisers that the mission was a go.
“You have some serenity in knowing that you've made the best possible decision that you can and, you know, in that situation you just, you do some praying,” Obama said.
A trio of national security advisers – John Brennan, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough – had prepared briefing points for the president, but it was clear his mind was made up.
“My recollection is that he said, ‘It’s a go, we’re going to do the assault. We’re going to do the raid. Complete the orders, let’s go,’” said Donilon.
Keeping the Secret
In order to not raise suspicions, the president and his advisers had to keep up their weekend plans.
Secretary Clinton said she faced an awkward question at a wedding for one of her daughter’s friends.
“It was so ironic,” she said. “All these smart young people who work in all kinds of enterprises, one of them came up and said, ‘Do you think we’ll ever get bin Laden?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I have no way of knowing, but I can tell you this, we’ll keep trying.’”
She also hid the raid from her husband.
“This was such an important secret to keep,” she said. “No one in the State Department knew. “I just felt a personal responsibility to keep it close, but that meant that I was basically, you know, having to consult with myself, to be honest.”
Moments after giving the go-ahead for the raid, the president and the first lady boarded Marine One on a trip to inspect tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And on Saturday night – the evening before the raid – he attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and chuckled when a joke about bin Laden was made by comedian Seth Meyers.
“That was a little bit of acting going on there because my mind was elsewhere,” he said.
National Security Advisor Donilon said that when he left the White House Correspondents’ Dinner early, a reporter asked why he was leaving before the event concluded.
“I got this thing tomorrow,” Donilon said as offhandedly as he could.
The raid
On Sunday, May 1, 2011, the president’s advisers gathered in the Situation Room at around 11 a.m. Half a world away, the SEAL team waited for nightfall.
So as not to arouse suspicion that a major gathering was under way in the West Wing, the team ordered pizza from several different places and also sent someone to Costco to get food.
The president played nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base before heading to the Situation Room at around 2 p.m.
“It is one of those rare moments when you know that the man you’re watching is putting everything on the line,” Biden said. “Everything on the line. Not only risking the lives of these incredible, incredible warriors, but also knowing that if he’s wrong about this man, he’s going to pay a very, very high price for it.”
At around 2:30 p.m., word arrived that the first wave of helicopters had left Jalalabad, Afghanistan, for Abbottabad with Navy SEALs, a Pakistani-American translator and a service dog named Cairo. At the president’s request, two Chinook helicopters stayed close by with additional SEALs as backup.
“They were accustomed to operating in the dark,” Obama said. “They were accustomed to landing in the compounds where they weren’t sure what was behind closed doors. These guys were all trained to do that.”
“A lot of them had as much gray hair as you and me and, you know, if you had passed them on the street, you might have – and if they were in civilian clothes – you might have thought they were accountants or doctors or, you know, worked at Home Depot.”
After the mission started, the CIA provided audio and video of the raid in real time in a smaller room next to the Situation Room. The atmosphere, said Admiral Mullen, was tense.
Soon, the president and his advisers began crowding into the room where the video was being played, which was never meant to hold as many people as it did that day. Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb was receiving and interpreting information from the mission. Never expecting Obama to come in the room, he was sitting in the chair intended for the president.
“He started to get up and people were starting to go through the protocol and figuring out how to rearrange things,” the president said. “I said, ‘You don’t worry about it. You just focus on what you’re doing. I’m sure we can find a chair and I’ll sit right next to him.’ And that’s how I ended up (on a) folding chair.”
The group watched the hazy, but intelligible images and gasped when the first helicopter’s rotor stopped turning and it suddenly dropped, crashing over a stone wall.
“That helicopter didn’t make it to the right spot and everyone went, like, ‘Whoa,’” Biden said.
Obama remembers seeing the Secretary of State cover her mouth with her hand.
“It was just the shock of the moment,” Clinton said. “It was, I mean, all of us sitting there, and I would even predict probably our military and defense colleagues, you know, for a minute were kind of holding that breath again.”
The mishap was blamed on a bad downdraft and unusually warm temperatures, which can affect lift and maneuverability. The president called it a “touch and go moment.”
“The only thing that I was thinking about throughout this entire enterprise was, ‘I really want to get those guys back home safe,’” he added. “I want to make sure that the decision I’ve made has not resulted in them putting their lives at risk in vain, and if I got that part of it right, if I could look myself in the mirror and say as commander in chief I made a good call.”
Back inside the Situation Room, the loss of a helicopter didn’t make any difference in Admiral McRaven's monotone play-by-play voice, beamed in from Afghanistan.
“Did not miss a beat. He is a cool customer,” said Obama.
Clinton recalled watching the SEALs leave the helicopters.
“We could see our guys moving,” she said. “It was an intense experience for all of us because it was real time, visually, until we lost the visual connection inside the building.”
The SEALs had moved inside the compound with their body armor, weapons and night vision.
“At this point, I think all of us understand that we’re a long way to go before the night is done,” Obama said. “And, you know, I’ve said this was the longest 40 minutes of my life.”
As the SEALs moved inside, the national security team listened for “Geronimo,” the code name for bin Laden.
“We knew that was the call sign and when we heard that, they felt they had identified Geronimo, that was the first moment, and then Geronimo KIA,” the president said.
Several members of the president’s national security team told NBC News that there were provisions in place to take bin Laden alive.
“But we also understood that it was not likely that he was going to be giving himself up in that way,” Obama said, “and that there was a strong possibility that he would end up being killed if in fact he was in the compound.”
Along with precision and planning, prayer played a role for some of the president’s closest advisers. Vice President Biden and Admiral Mullen both nervously spun rosary rings on their fingers as they received word that the body of the man they believed was bin Laden had been put on a helicopter with U.S. forces.
“We knew the mission had been successful in that bin Laden was on board, but then it was an hour flight back,” Biden said.
Biden had begun to put his rosary away when he felt a tap on his shoulder from Mullen.
“I leaned down," Mullen explained. "I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, not yet. Keep it going because as important as killing, capturing or killing bin Laden was, it was more important to get him out.’ And so we were a long way, even as we got bin Laden, his body in that helicopter, we were a long way from completing that mission at that point.”
The death photo
When the SEAL team made it safely back to Afghanistan, photos were transmitted to the president and his team to offer photographic proof that bin Laden was dead.
When asked about seeing the picture of bin Laden, who had been shot in the head, the president took a long pause.
“I think it’s wrong to say that I did a high five,” he said, “because you have a picture of a dead body and, you know, there’s I think regardless of who it is, you always have to be sober about death. But understanding the satisfaction for the American people, what it would mean for 9/11 families, what it would mean for the children of folks who died in the Twin Towers who never got to know their parents, I think there was a deep-seated satisfaction for the country at that moment.”
Secretary Clinton believes strongly that the president was right not to release the photos.
“I looked at them,” she said. “Obviously, (it's) never easy to see any dead body, but it was part of the job. I think we made the right decision not to sensationalize this, not to desecrate it, so to speak. His body was flown to a Navy ship. It was given a proper Islamic burial at sea and I think that we handled it exactly right.”
After the president and his team felt confident that bin Laden was indeed dead, they began calling Cabinet members, Congressional leaders and foreign heads of state.
The president called Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
“I think it was an important symbol of who we are as a people,” he said of the calls. “We get into these partisan fights, administrations come and go, but there’s a certain continuity about who we are and what we care about and what our values are.”
For Mullen, one of the most important calls placed was to his Pakistani military counterpart about the crashed helicopter.
When the first pictures of the wreckage emerged hours later, aviation websites went wild. The crashed chopper appeared to be proof of a stealth version of the Blackhawk that the United States had been rumored to be developing for years. Its noise-reducing technology and unique fin had been designed for near silent, invisible operation. In coming days, neighborhood children picked through pieces of what had been among the military's best kept secrets.
“I called General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani in Pakistan,” Mullen said. “I felt obligated to let him know what had happened … and then part of that conversation was about the helicopter and I said, ‘We need that back.’”
As more calls were made, the news began to leak, spread at lightning speed by the Internet. The president and his advisers, however, were unaware that throngs of young people were pouring into Lafayette Park to cheer outside the White House.
“The thing that surprised me that night and I don’t think we had planned for was the public reaction,” Donilon said. “We walked out and we could hear the noise and I remember very clearly turning to whoever was walking next to me saying, ‘What is that?’”
Secretary Clinton described it as an “astonishing moment.”
“We could hear this roar. We had no idea what it was,” she said. “Then all of a sudden we were able to decipher, 'U.S.A., U.S.A.'”
Telling his family
Before the president heard the cheering crowds and addressed the nation, he checked in with the first lady.
“She’s at dinner," he said. "I let her know, you know, that I’m probably going to miss dinner because I’ve got a few other things going on tonight. It turns out we had a fairly important thing to announce.”
He recalled telling his daughters that bin Laden was dead.
“Malia and Sasha, I think, were too young to fully absorb 9/11. On the other hand, they’ve grown like all our children have grown up in the shadow of 9/11 and terrorism and understood who Osama bin Laden was.”
The president said that the full impact of the mission hit him a few days later when he met the SEALs who had carried out the operation. He said that he gave the pilot of the helicopter that crashed a “pretty good hug.”
“They presented me with the flag that had gone on that mission, signed by all of them on the back and I think it’s fair to say that will probably be the most important possession that I leave with from this presidency,” he said.
Leave a Comment:
I applaud that day but it is a credit to the seals. This is all the president has and it isn't his alone. This was in the works for years long before he graced the white house. I could say more but I will restrain myself.
Bush gave up on finding Bin Laden. He had NO CLUE where he was when Obama took over.
For some reason I think you would be singing a different song if the mission had failed.
Realizing why Bin Laden and his followers hated us so much and dealing with those issues would have been far grander of Obama. I don't justify Osama's actions at all, but we constantly stick our nose in other countries affairs, and kill their citizens. Obama ran on a Platform of "Hope and Change" and the world watched. We ended up hoping he'd change.
The money Bush wasted on a war was not cut back, instead Obama has funneled that money elsewhere and added to it, saying its was Bush who started it...
Obama doesn't even understand the role of the Supreme Courts. He was a law professor? What does that say about what Colleges will accept as Professors? The value we put on higher education when we accept that?
Obama saying this was his greatest day must be because its the only decision he made that made sense and he is full of "hope" that it will "change" my vote his way.
I'll be voting for Ron Paul, and if he can't win Mitt Romney. Simple enough. "Hope and Change you can't believe in" won't get my vote again.
Your position is not without merit. The "whys" of 9/11 were under explored by the Bush administration, and Obama's White House has proven to be similarly oblivious.
There is no doubt that Bin Laden was a terrible criminal and needed to be brought to justice. The Bush administration's approach to the problem was wrong-headed from the start and got worse as it went along. Perhaps by the time Obama came to office there was no chance of reversing it, but he never even showed serious disapproval.
Obama will not be getting my vote either. He has the worst civil liberties record of any president who has served in my lifetime. Fool me twice, shame on me.
It's more than funny that Hussein Zero's "biggest" day of his Failed presidency, was all due to the united efforts of President Bush, Dick Cheney, their security advisers, the Navy Seals, CIA and all other intelligence gathering done for the previous eight years. All things Hussein inwardly Despises. Pathetic that all he deems significant in almost four long years of his incompetence, ALL the credit belongs to someone else.
Obama made the decision he gets credit. Remember Bush the "decider" many gave credit to for his speeches after 9/11? Yeah he did a great job of telling people sorry. Sorry terrorists killed so many on my watch. Sorry we did not find WMDs and started a false war that killed thousands and cost the country it's economy. Republicans get over the fact you got a losing horse and all the name calling and rewriting of history does not change the facts you voted in a loser and we all suffered and it cost your party many members including myself. The fear mongering, the name calling and senseless delusional facts are over they have nothing to prove that any crude we are dealing with today was not part of their decision when they voted in Bush.
Alan
was all due to the united efforts of President Bush, Dick Cheney, their security advisers, the Navy Seals, CIA and all other intelligence gathering done for the previous eight years
Bush admitting he had no clue where Bin Laden was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow-o
Do you kill Bin Laden or not? Tough choice, one that only a community organizer can make. LOL
now that's some funny @!$%#....i just blew coffe all over some LWNJ sitting next to me so i blamed it on obama!
Road, you are aware that 1. we didn't know for certain that OBL was even there, and that 2. in missions such as these, any number of things can go horribly wrong (witness the Iran prisoner rescue mission under Carter).
People without an understand of just how complex and risky these missions are are the first to say "anyone would have made that decision". People who understand covert military missions know just how difficult this decision was.
Not the kind of decision made by a banker (Mittens).
Mark,
Saying let's wait or don't go in was not an option because previous presidents have let such an opportunity slip away. I find it interesting and hilarious that a Nobel Peace Prize winner has to make an assassination the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. Not one word about ObamaCare. Not one word about deficit reduction. Not one word about decline in unemployment. Instead, he flies cross country to talk about student loans.
Given the Mitten's previous comments it is unlikely he would have gone into another country to get Osama Bin Laden. As to the peril's of the decision check out this article on Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/barack_obama_s_decision_to_go_after_osama_bin_laden_how_the_president_overruled_his_advisers_in_ordering_the_assassination.html
Obama says what he is told to say.
He is slated for reelection and this gloating is propaganda to help that happen.
9/11 and OBL are hyped by the media as part of the false flag psyop to create endless war, impossible debt and a police state - to be followed by depopulation.
This is the Rothschild/Rockefeller/Kissinger/Soros/etc. bankster cult at their daily work.
The same sort of Psyops and propaganda has been used for a long, long period.
But more and more of humanity is waking up to the tricks of the ruling elite slavemasters and they will shortly be on trial for war crimes.
Get the whole story at infowars.net and other sites that have the gits to tell the truth.
Neither Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, or any other minion from that term will be on trial for war crimes. Neither will Obama, Biden, or Clinton be on trial for war crimes. Kissenger hasn't been brought up on charges either.
They just won't be able to leave the US, as Kissenger and Bush has found out, people in other countries will arrest them, so they stay here in the states. And if you believe everything on the internet that you read, I have a bridge I will sell you. Real cheap price for the bridge.
We shall see.
NWoWatchdog - And all of you I worked in New York at the time - my daughter-in-law was there in harms way until we found out she was safe
I lost friends and business associates in 911 - Bush standing there in the rubble promised justice - yet he went on to use Bin laden as all you Republicans say for political purposes
Grand scheme , why catch the bogey man when they can use him to scare you
My President and by the way folks yours to - promised in 2007 he would hunt him down and bring him to justice
Who delivered ? Your white lilly livered showman or my black skinned president?
Sorry - I'm blind all skins are the same color to me - maybe you should be to
ride that dead horse !
I applaud the president however the credit goes to the Navy seals and it has been in the works long before he became president. I could say more but I am restraining myself.
Pat Baker - sorry it was never in the works Bush disbanded the intel looking for Osama - fact look it up - never in the works
They needed a boogey man- to scare the populace
Obama in 2007 made this his mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden - it is in his speeches
Everyone disparages Chicago politics - but you have to understand you harm one or mine you will pay for it
And I say this lovingly as an ex-Chicagoan - my boy came through - did you know Peter Bergen in his new book - said we had an additional four chinooks as a back-up
Our man was determined not one drop of American blood would be spent on this criminal
And he was oposed by the generals - so much for the generals who will tell us what to do and decided to go with our seals on a 40% intel info\
Who's got the cajones you're AWOL all bravado guy with a cod piece claiming "Mission Accomplished" or my guy taking a lesser seat in the corner and making it happen?
Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret) –
Former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts
authority. Graduate, U.S. Air Force War College. 34-year Air Force career.
Quote:
"In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed
nor even heard of an aircraft loss,where the wreckage was accessible, that
prevented investigators from findingenough hard evidence to positively identify
the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft -- and in
most cases the precise cause of the accident. ...
The government alleges that four wide-bodyairliners crashed on the morning of
September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet
not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view. …
With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased
rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged. …
As painful and heartbreaking as was the loss of innocent lives and the lingering
health problems of thousands more, a most troublesome and nightmarish
probability remains that so many Americans appear to be involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history."
It is indeed a sad thing when this is all he has to bring forward as a notable accomplishment.
Not that Bin Laden wasn't important, however, the economy, banks, jobs, prices, debt, spending , government waste, housing, scandals and foriegn policy all were opertunities wasted.
of course it is the most important day. you keep spending and wasting the tax payers moneys like its water. so you should be in jail. that day might be the only thing you did and you had nothing to do with it except say go.
you are a joke mr president. you have wasted more tax dollars in the last 2.5 years than the last 10 presidents spent in the last 50 years combined.
you spend 179,000 per hour traveling around doing town hall meeting. have you ever heard of skype or TV.
there is no reason for you to wasting over 4 million a day traveling.
you are over paid and you are ruining this country from the inside.
it is very sad to watch you waste these funds on a daily bases and stand there and point fingers at others.
you have lied more than anyone in the race but yet you point out what they said 3 years ago.
how about you running speech. "i will cut deficit by 50% my first term" you are a liar. you spent more in your first term than they spent running this country the last 50 years.
thinks ass-wipe.
Why are you worried now about the deficit? Vice President Cheney said "deficits don't matter, Reagan proved that." So, where was your posts complaining back then? Until then, shove it.
No the most important day in Obamas presidency will be when he kicked out of the White House this fall. It is probably too late but maybe just maybe this country can be pulled out of the devastation he is responsible for. Four more years of this idiot and it is over for the United States as we knew it in the past.
There's one thing in this story that has rang true for the United States in military operations since the Cuban missle crisis. Too many military people at the top with no guts or a total nut like Lemay. Some of these people who serve the President in matters like this put saving their job before the safety of our country.
Single Most Important Day - That is really sad for this country.
If he had said the day he signed the health care takeover, I would have agreed that it was the most important day due to its profound effects, not the most positive (in my view), but the most important and would have had more respect for the President sticking to his principles and record. But I guess it's politic to ignore that sweeping legislation now.
No the most important day in Obamas presidency will be when he kicked out of the White House this fall. It is probably too late but maybe just maybe this country can be pulled out of the devastation he is responsible for. Four more years of this idiot and it is over for the United States as we knew it in the past.
Another forum full of angry, frothing teapublicans...
How amusing..
No my friend we're just seeing it like it is. Even your own government controlled media people are scraping to find anything this guy can claim as a success.
No you're not..
You're blathering incoherently. It's been a 3 1/2 year process, to date..
And basically, nobody with any intelligence, perspective, or reason, takes you seriously..
I love that line.....3.5 year process. What process are you referring to? Bet you don't work either. Now go see if the mailman brought your check. Idiot. Man how can you be so short sighted.
He's looking to hang his hat on anything he has done. The question is: What has he done? Poor leader, Poor international policy, poor domestic policies, divided our country. Just a big mouth and no cattle.
Commander Ralph Kolstad, U.S. Navy (ret) – Retired
fighter pilot. Former Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). 20-year Navy career. Aircraft flown: McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom, Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, and Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Retired commercial airline captain with 27 years experience. Aircraft flown: Boeing 727, 757 and 767, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and Fokker F-100. 23,000+ total hours flown.
Quote:
"I started questioning the Sept 11, 2001 “story” only days after the
event. It just didn't make any sense to me. How could a steel and concrete
building collapse after being hit by a Boeing 767? Didn't the engineers design
it to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707, approximately the same size and
weight of the 767? The evidence just didn't add up. ...
At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing757 did quite a feat of flying. I have
6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown
it the way the flight path was described. I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!
Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big
pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where
are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?
I also personally knew American Airlines Captain “Chick” Burlingame, who was the
captain of Flight 77 which allegedly hit the Pentagon, and I know he would not
have given up his airplane to crazies!
And at the Shanksville Pennsylvania impactsite, where is any of the wreckage?!!! Of
all the pictures I have seen, there is only a hole! Where is any piece of a
crashed airplane? Why was the area cordoned off, and no inspection allowed by the normal accident personnel? Where is any evidence at all?
When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little
to believe in the official “story”. ...
Every question leads to another question that has not been answered by anyone in
authority. This is just the beginning as to why I don’t believe the official
“story” and why I want the truth to be told."
Wow, I thought perhaps meeting some of our war wounded would have been more important.
THAT, however, doesn't get votes, huh?
Does anyone know who is responsible for gettin Bin Laden? I am scouring the press to find out who should get credit. If only there were somebody that would stand up and take credit for it. Anybody know?
The Seals collectively decided that it would not be revealed. It was teamwork and they want it recognized as such.
lol, what else does this dufus have to run on? It will be a story a day on Bin Laden from here on out.
I don't believe that Obama had anything to do with the planning of this mission, but I'm sure he made the final decision to go ahead with it! Although he deserves a little bit of credit for that, most of the success goes to the Navy Seals for doing their job and accomplishing the mission.
THe single most important day of the presidencey wasn't killing Bin Laden, it was signing the NDAA on New Years Eve when no one was looking. With a stroke of his pen he single handedly rendered the US constitution completely null and void and undid a fundamental democratic principal that dates back 800 years with the signing of the Magna Carta. This was when Obama showed the world what he is....a Fraud, a wolf in sheeps clothing, and far more dangerous to the american people than Bin Laden ever was.
Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford, U.S. Marine Corps (ret) – Retired U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot with over 300 combat missions flown. Decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross and 32 awards of the Air Medal. Aircraft flown: Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, Lockheed C-130H Hercules. 10,000+ total hours flown. 20-year Marine Corps career.
Quote:
“September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and
the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes. The evidence of
government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment. It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest
danger.”
Lets segment the piece and shove the same med commercial ahead of each segment. FAIL!
I think John Lovitz hit it on the head with this guy... support is starting to fray at the edges.