Osama Bin Laden was once again in our gunsights. We had several different methods with which we could have dispatched him. We had an armed drone, a SEAL team, the Air Force had a bomber – and according to Colonel David Hunt, an analyst for Fox News, we didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t pull the trigger:
We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it. Nice job again guys — now, pull the damn trigger.Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.
You cannot make this crap up; truth is always stranger and more telling than fiction. Our government, the current administration and yes, our military leaders included, failed to kill bin Laden for no other reason than incompetence.
Very serious charges indeed. Taking Colonel Hunt at his word – or at least the word of his source(s) – it may have been helpful for the Fox News military analyst to give us a hint as to why we didn’t pull the trigger. The Colonel makes a charge of incompetence. Fine – prove it. Or shut the hell up.
Hunt gives us a clue, however, as to what he considers “incompetent:”
We have allowed Pakistan to become a safe haven for Al Qaeda. We have allowed Al Qaeda to reconstitute, partially because of money they (Al Qaeda in Iraq) have been sending to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.We are in a war with terrorists. We are in a war with countries that support terrorists. We are in a war with people that fly planes into buildings and who never, ever hesitate to pull the trigger when given the chance to kill us. We cannot win and, I will tell you this now, we are losing this war every damn time we fail to take every single opportunity to kill murderers like Usama bin Laden. Less than two months ago, we lost again.
Hunt’s accusations need to be examined for their authenticity, certainly. But before accepting his charges, it might be best to also look at Colonel Hunt’s idea of what exactly constitutes “incompetence.”
The military and Administration are incompetent for “allowing” Pakistan to become a safe haven for al-Qaeda, and “allowing” them to reconstitute? What an ignoramus. The only way al-Qaeda was ever going to be wiped out is if we had received the permission of the Pakistani government to go into the NWFP - the tribal areas where the writ of Pakistani or any other law has never run – and take out al-Qaeda sanctuaries. That permission was not going to be forthcoming from President Musharraf for the simple reason that it was politically untenable for him to give it. The result of our incursions would have been the kind of nationwide unrest that overthrows tyrants and strengthens radicals. In this case, al-Qaeda and Taliban allies could very well have achieved power if we had been so stupid – a prospect that would have included Islamists with their fingers on the trigger of 70 nuclear weapons.
Going in without Musharraf’s permission would have set off a firestorm of criticism around the world. And despite the fact that the left is urging we take this very course, the minute we were to go in, charges of Bush “widening the war” and “Cambodia Redux” would have been heard from most of these very same folks – including Colonel Hunt.
So we were forced to accept an alternative – that Musharraf would go after the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda with his own army. This he attempted to do in 2004. After a 5 month campaign of playing hide and seek in the rugged terrain with the terrorists while fighting many of the tribes who had allied themselves with his enemy, Musharraf was forced to beat a hasty retreat and sign some humiliating “peace” agreements. These treaties gave the Taliban easy access to Afghanistan and allowed al-Qaeda to set up shop safely in the Waziristans while basically kicking the Pakistani army of the area.
Blaming Bush and the military for the internal dynamics of Pakistani politics and how that extremely delicate situation impacts our mission in Afghanistan was something I thought only idiots on the left were stupid enough to do. Evidently not.
Of course, the left is all over this story saying that there is no way in hell that it’s true. After all, the source is Fox News, right?
So everyone, what is the excuse this time? Must be Clinton’s fault I guess and remember, this is post 9/11.As always, I have a source to back up what I say. That is more than most of the “righties” around here can ever do.
Bu-bu-but that “source” is FOX NEWS! I thought we couldn’t believe anything we hear about the Administration from Fox. Surely there are plenty of lefties out there who will dismiss this story outright because of it’s source, right?
Absolutely astounding. Uh huh… Absolutely astounding. But, yet not at all surprising to hear that BushCo botched another opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden.
Not even a teeny, tiny bit of skepticism? From a network nicknamed “Faux News?”
I’m sorry. For a minute there, I thought Faux News sounded rational.Oh wait. They did.
Of course, they are completely oblivious to this kind of towering hypocrisy. Totally clueless. They see nothing untoward in condemning Fox News when it reports something they disagree with but accept and comment on things they find agreeable.
And what exactly are they agreeing with? A single sourced story where the correspondent either refuses to divulge or doesn’t know the entire circumstances surrounding the targeting of Bin Laden. Why didn’t we fire? Colonel Hunt chalks it up to “incompetence” without offering a single bit of information to back it up. Not one.
And the lefties are agreeing with him – despite their being totally in the dark, along with the rest of us, as to what criteria Hunt is using to make the charge.
Has there ever been such stupidity, hypocrisy, and benighted callousness toward any honest intellectual standard whatsoever?
Knowing the crew in the White House and Pentagon, it would not surprise me in the slightest if the incompetence charge turned out to be true. But maybe we should have a little evidence before reaching that conclusion?
Or do you want to live you life like an rabid left wing hater who allows ideology and unformed judgements rule their thoughts?
8:35 am
Hi Rick. A couple thoughts:
1. The left is jumping on it beacause Fox is slanted to the right, not despite it. Their propaganda catapulting is what gets challenged and called fake; when someone there actually challenges Republicans that’s news even if the challenge itself is dubious.
2. The standard you set for the colonel is much higher than other guests on Fox (or the wider media for that matter). How often do you see analysts challenged on underlying assumptions? It just doesn’t happen, and of course a pox on them for it. To single this guy out is a little strange. (Here’s one random example from yesterday: “Shays condemned a House Democratic leader for saying that ‘if the Iraqi war went well it would be bad for Democrats.’” No House leader said that but it’s passed along uncritically.
I’m a regular reader and think you’re one of the few honest to God intellectually honest voices on the right, but this post has a little flab.
8:47 am
Yeah that is like condemning the New York Times and Washington Post for being lying liberal rags, then citing some of their investigative journalism to justify the need to invade Iraq. Or OMG what if someone actually used a quote from Clinton (who we all know does NOTHING but lie) to “prove” that Saddam had an enormous cache of WMD that he was about to unleash on the world.
But of course, no conservative would ever do something that “hypocritical”.
8:50 am
Thank you for admitting you’re a hypocrite.
8:51 am
If that is what you got out of it then bless you, my child.
9:20 am
Pretty amazing. For six years we have utterly botched catching Osama Bin Laden. Instead of criticizing this utter failure, you shoot the messenger who had the intellectual honesty (on Bush Administration-friendly Fox News, of all places) to note the most recent failure to kill him. I can only imagine your howls of fury if we had President Kerry. You have no shame.
9:25 am
Gee I don’t know. Maybe it’s kinda a good idea to, you know, have proof of incompetence before going off like an idiot and saying so.
Since you’re a mind reader and can glean what Hunt means when he says “incompetent,’ please share.
And then go back to kindergarten and learn how to read.
9:32 am
Your comment was deleted because you didn’t read the post:
Knowing the crew in the White House and Pentagon, it would not surprise me in the slightest if the incompetence charge turned out to be true.
If you are going to criticize me for something, first read the article (if you are capable of doing so) and then comment intelligently.
I guess that lets you out…
10:26 am
See comment above. Double for you.
10:32 am
I have had some problems with the analysis and backing of Col. Hunt for some time. Last year he was reporting on problems that were months if not a year or so old in Iraq and that had been addressed and fixed… yet to him they were ‘current’. I have a tough time believing someone talking about the problems in Anbar last year at this time, when the reports coming there via military and embeds was highly different. How do you count Anbar ‘lost’ when over 10,000 men had signed up from there in one month to join the IA and IP, and the recruits were still flowing in? That, amongst others, really do make me question his sources and reliability.
I honor him for his service, but after that he is a civilian and due the same scrutiny as any other civilian.
There is some I remember from the early Tora Bora incident, and coming from one of the INTEL Community Agencies, the confidence level was not as represented as Osama had already started using doubles and putting parts of his retinue in different areas to confuse where he was. Simple counter-measures, yes… they also do work. Today, if al Qaeda has gone to Tora Bora again, they may learn that it is not wise to go into a place surveyed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Not wise at all…
On the higher level vis a vis Pakistan, the US has never, ever declared al Qaeda to be an organization of international outlaws that respect no law or power other than their own. Congress has the direct power to legislate there via the Law of Nations which is directly mentioned inside the main body of the Constitution. There are a host of outlooks within that which puts forward the proper laws that may be put in place to address those fighting predatory warfare. It goes a fair bit beyond piracy, although that is cited in the US Code directly, also, to cover the land based portions of that form of warfare. It also gives view as to what to do with unwanted foreign recruiters for their military organizations. Which would include every single individual in a ‘charity’ collecting for any organization on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
Going after outlaws who put themselves outside of all law, and giving other Nations fair warning that these organizations mean them no good and that we intend to go after them with all means, is a right all Nations have under the Law of Nations. It is also expected that there will be cooperation to end these lawless scourges and recognition that violation of territory in hot-pursuit can be understood against a common threat. Explain and make amends, of course, that is what diplomats are for… but end the individuals causing the problem and put to heel those that support such ones.
To decry the problem of ‘not getting Osama’ points to the problem in our not naming him, his organization and all that support them as targets due to their being outlaws. It is a problem of being too refined to actually call a predator ‘a predator’. That problem is now decades old and getting worse. Of course addressing that means that politics must be seen as a contributing cause on all sides that puts our Nation and all Nations at peril from those we dare not name.
10:47 am
The US can’t kill Osama. If we do, then we’ll just need to get ourselves a new Osama, which would be a serious pain in the ass. They know where the current Osama is. They’re obviously keeping pretty good tabs on him. He’s more valuable to us alive than dead, especially as a citation for the ‘need’ to spend astounding amounts of cash on war.
Why on earth would the administration take him out though? He’s the most convenient boogyman in the world. He’ll be killed (even if he’s currently dead) soon as his usefulness to the administration is over.
11:04 am
They say you should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Otherwise, I might suspect that Bush/Cheney don’t WANT to kill Osama, because they need a handy bogeyman to scare us into giving them more and more unchecked power. Not to mention the fact that it might annoy some of the Bush family’s good friends and business associates in Saudi Arabia.
11:05 am
I agree with Lisa on this one. Conservatives use liberal sources that they often accuse of lying (which they do all too often) all the time. There’s nothing wrong with a liberal using a right-wing slanted source.
11:25 am
Rick,
I agree with the key points in your post, though I also agree to an extent with Lisa – I remember specifically last year “reutersgate” and aspersion on the AP and others for biased reporting by some bloggers, but when a report came out about Iran’s nuclear program it was used uncritically by some of those same conservative bloggers.
But back to Hunt.
The biggest red flag on this story to me, as someone who worked professionally in the intel community, is the “70%” confidence level. The IC simply does not use such precise numbers for what should be obvious reasons. So I’m inherently skeptical and your points on Hunt providing no evidence for incompetence and his ignorance on the realities of the border with Pakistan are spot on.
The intel community and military uses a couple of different methodologies for judging confidence in information. One you can read about in some detail here (scroll down to the blue area):
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_terror-threat_2007-07.htm
Also used is a “low, medium high” confidence levels. A “high” confidence level is generally viewed as being about 90% or greater confidence.
Of course, without knowing the details of what actually went on and what the source of the information was that UBL was in the convoy, then it’s impossible to determine for certain if Hunt was blowing smoke or not. Still, my experience, having deployed to Afghanistan twice, is that Hunt is full of it.
12:40 pm
I’d like to see some proof too. Unfortunately it is hard to get anything like proof from the secretive administration that occupies the White House. They keep such a tight lid on things not even waterboarding would get us the answers we deserve. Waterboarding much be considered and extreme measure, but isn’t that what we do, use physical duress to get us the proof we require when dealing with terror and terrorism? Plus, torture usually gives the interrogator a hand in shaping the answers to fit their assumptions.
12:58 pm
you know, the fact that it was negative news item about Bush from Fox makes me wonder if it’s much much worse than even they’re willing to report. The fact that Fox is reporting such negative news about the Republicans validates its veracity, but probably downplays it seriousness.
and besides, people on the right hold Fox news up as the gospel, so it must have some truth to it?
1:01 pm
and one more thing sorry, it always seems to be ok for White House insiders or people close to the negotiations to comment as unidentified sources in plenty of other stories that support Republicans…so why not here, especially given the sensitive nature?
1:34 pm
The real question is: what does Hunt mean when he says “is”...how do we define this word rather than incompetent?
2:52 pm
Sue et al:
There is a monumental difference between the way the left says the see Fox News and the right sees WaPo, NY Times, Reuters, CNN etc.
Only the fringe right argues that those other publications are not legitimate news outlets with individuals who exhibit bias.
The left – including “mainstream” blogs – sees the entire Fox Network as not only biased but illegitimate – to the point that they put pressure on the Democratic party not to have their presidential candidates attend any debates sponsored by that network. Almost without exception, they have made it a point to belittle ANY news coming from that network.
And now, all of a sudden, Fox is a font of truth and light.
Nauseating, dripping hypocrisy – among the worst I’ve seen in a while.
3:50 pm
Mr. Moran:
I’m a “centrist”, and most folks I know in the center view Fox News with scepticism. On stuff like weather, sports, entertainment stuff, natural disasters, etc. very few people would dispute that Fox News tries to be objective. On political news, no one (outside of the really ideologically blinkered) would contest that Fox News is totally in the tank with the Republican Party, and is not to be trusted for objective news.
3:55 pm
So does that mean we can’t trust the Hunt story? Or can we?
The trouble when you accuse a media outlet of total and complete bias is that any example to the contrary collapses your little house of cards – as the Hunt story does.
Therefore, you are left, like the rest of us, to take news stories from whatever source, one at a time and examine them individually for bias – something the left and apparently you don’t have the intellectual honesty to do.
4:27 pm
Isn’t circular logic grand…
proof for you and not for me,
lies, deceit, mendacity.
“I always lie,” is what he said,
as the red king yells
“off with their heads!”
4:35 pm
Mr. Moran:
You must be a debater! You just scored a point. Nevertheless, you make a wrong assumption that I instantly discount Fox News on political stories. I stated I do not trust them, not that I have a default rule that Fox News is automatically wrong on political stories. Because I do not trust Fox News, I try to independently verify the story from other news sources (such as the Chicago Tribune, the Economist, the New York Times—two of these sources are conservative and one is liberal) if, for some reason, it seems facially not to be credible. It sounds like you have a similar philosophy.
In terms of intellectual honesty, I hope I possess it, as I’m certain you strive to live by it as well. I would add that many folks on the left (and the right) try to be intellectually honest, but like all fallible humans, sometimes fail. Have a nice weekend.
10:17 am
Actually this is old news from late September when we were pounding the hell out of Al Qaeda in Tora Bora. I do remeber that they thought they were looking at one high profile target, but it turned out to be not # one or # two…but the # three guy on the hit parade. They had him trapped and I do not know what the result was, but it wasn’t Osama or Zwahiri. It was AlQaeda’s military leader and the reason why they thought it was Bin Laden was the number of Chechens in the security detail…..alas I think the Chechens are no more. It seems the big wigs of AlQaeda don’t trust the Pakis or Taliban in their security arrangements.
11:12 am
the Fox News military analyst to give us a hint as to why we didn’t pull the trigger. The Colonel makes a charge of incompetence. Fine – prove it. Or shut the hell up.—— you’re asking for him to forward an opinion not prove a point. Saying what he thought the motives behind the Administration choosing to pull back at the last second would be a guess and you’d likely ridicule him as a libural dem. I think merely reporting on the fact that we had Osama cornered and let him live should spark your sense of outrage and cause you to ask questions of Rumsfeld and bush and Cheney. It sure does for me.
11:28 am
Rumsfeld? Wake up Mr. Van Winkle!
And I still think Hunt should have kept his mouth shut about “incompetence” without giving more info.
What if the weather was bad? What if, as happened during the Clinton Administration, a high ranking foreigner was with Osama and killing him might have caused trouble in other areas of American diplomacy?
What if there were civilians in great numbers present?
There are probably a couple of other reasons why an attack would be aborted that would have nothing to do with “incompetence” – and if you read my post you would know I offer incompetence as a probability.
Too busy being an asshole to read that, huh.
5:17 pm
What if, as happened during the Clinton Administration, a high ranking foreigner was with Osama and killing him might have caused trouble in other areas of American diplomacy?
Part of the news value here is the political context. The Clinton administration was slammed (recently, not at the time) from the right for missing such opportunities. (We know somewhat more about the reasons Clinton didn’t pull the trigger, but not all the facts are publicly available about those decisions, either.)
Surfacing this issue increases the credibility of FNC’s “Fair and Balanced” motto.
This is one of the few cases where Clinton could reasonably be blamed (even by partisan lefties :-), for turning an annual blind eye to the obvious-at-the-time Pakistani (& not so obvious Indian) nuclear ambitions for 6 or 7 years. Some blame also goes to the GHWBush & Reagan administrations. We would have much more freedom of action if Pakistan wasn’t nuclear-armed.
9:09 pm
Tom Paine could read. You obviously cannot:
“Knowing the crew in the White House and Pentagon, it would not surprise me in the slightest if the incompetence charge turned out to be true.”
Strange way to “defend” Bush, don’t you think?
But you don’t think, or read which is why your comment was deleted.
3:53 am
Osama cannot be captured because it will never occur in Iraq. He is our reason for existence abroad. He is the Che Guevara of Islamofascism. As such he has not outlived his usefulness. To think that BushCo missed an opportunity is to only be complicit in your own manipulation. And you know that could never happen.
4:08 am
We needed no permission to invade Afghanistan. We needed no permission to invade Iraq? Are you now saying we need permission to go after the 9/11 mastermind? Or is now Osama ‘contained’? Is he still useful to us? Why can’t we do the job that Musharraf cannot? Why the false impotence? Pakistan or bust!
11:50 am
Rick, it’s very simple:
These are the direct descendants of the Civil War Copperheads. They are anti-American. Treasonous would not be too strong a term. And until the rest of us realize we have the slavery loving Copperheads back, and deal with them as they deserve, we are not going to win the war on terrorists.
2:35 pm
I enjoyed the study that rated the news media using the standard the frequency of think tanks quoted and whether they were quoted in a positive or negative light (i.e. Blah-blah the notoriously liberal think tank or Blah-blah the highly respected liberal think tank). Their findings were that Fox is centerist and everyone else is varying degrees left of center. Though I think that Fox has a conservative majority in it’s commentators, it is not without liberals. while most other networks are without conservatives. Fox also has many more liberal guests than the other networks have conservative guests especially ones that they will let get in a word edgewise.
Fox also didn’t host a republican “debate” full of cupcake questions like all the democratic “debates” have been. Though I think that Fox is conservative, the rest of the networks are so liberal that they make Fox look more conservative than it is.
Rick, I think it is legitimate to ascribe increased credibility to statements because of who made them. The largest study with identical twins to consider the possibility that homosexuality is genetic was done by either UC-Berkley or Oral Roberts. Assume that both have highly regarded science departments, would Oral Roberts finding a connection or Berkley finding no connection give you more confidence in the study than if you reverse who’s finding was who’s?
3:05 pm
To your point that a single-sourced story of this nature should be taken with a grain of scepticism, you’re absolutely right.
But to your point that “The Left” has hypocritically pounced on this story as The Truth . . . who are you talking about? You don’t even say who it is you’re quoting to represent the views of “The Left.” How do we know you haven’t taken a couple of comments from some response thread on some fringe blog?
You start out with a perfectly valid point and then twist it into a completely unsubstantiated attack on “Lefties”
6:56 pm
honestly i dont know which fox network you people are watching. Fox isn’t really a tool of the republican party so much as the news channel of “Whos the next American Idol!!” and “Famous Celebrity videos!” and just a teeny bit of news. Colonel Hunt has always seemed to me to be a bit bloodthirsty, he wants total war on terrorists and as such he gets into trouble with Republicans because he doesn’t follow Republican talking points. A loose cannon, but for now, I guess Fox likes him. That could certainly change.
But, I really think I believe him in this case, and the reason for that is, as George Bush said to Fred Barnes, and which Barnes then repeated to Fox:
“Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.”
That was last year, and I really don’t think anything has changed. Catching Osama bin Laden is a low priority for this administration.
3:34 am
@ Mr. Moran:
“Only the fringe right argues that those other publications are not legitimate news outlets with individuals who exhibit bias.”
I suppose that depends on how you define “fringe right”, doesn’t it?
Oh, and I’m enjoying your re-opened comments section. From your new rules:
“The rules are simple; insult me or other commenters, you’re out.”
You, from this thread alone”
“Thank you for admitting you’re a hypocrite.”
“and then comment intelligently. I guess that lets you out…”
“something the left and apparently you don’t have the intellectual honesty to do.”
“And then go back to kindergarten and learn how to read.”
“Too busy being an asshole to read that, huh.”
I certainly see why you wouldn’t want anybody in the comments to insult you or other posters. Kudos to you for taking a firm stand on allowing open debate, and the moral fortitude to live up to it yourself.
10:43 am
Rick Rick Rick..
You’ll never be able to grasp the nuance of the situation with that Sep. 10th mindset dude.
11:58 am
I do have to admit some surprise that any item that casts doubt on the brilliance of George W. Bush would ever appear on FoxNews. So we are occasionally surprised.
However I’m sure it must have been some sort of accident and the editor who permitted the FoxNews article is now flipping burgers at the FoxNews commisary.
If the article is accurate about the Bush Administration allowing Osama bin laden to get away, again, then two items are sure:
1. The story will never, ever be aired on Fox again (as opposed to the “Bill Clinton let Osama get away” items that Fox airs almost weekly).
2. We can expect a long series of articles from the American Enterprise Institute detailing how none of this is actually George W. Bush’s fault: He the President who is the embodiment of Abraham Lincoln in the 21st Century.
To me personally, this is not anything terribly new: Just another in a long, almost weekly, series of incompetencies, blunders and political hackery that has reached the level when another botched Bush Administration action no longer even merits front-page coverage. In fact, the stories that do make headline coverage, such as the FEMA rescue work in California, are when the Loyal Bushies actually do something right (but then, as with the “press conference”, they can always be counted on to make fools of everyone who ever believed them).
12:56 pm
For far too many of the rabid Bush-haters in the “progressive” blogosphere, maintaining any semblance of consistency, integrity or even sanity is far less important than exploiting any/all public statements which are critical of the Administration (or can be spun that way) to heap scorn on neo-cons, the 24% or whoever they are leveraging against at the moment to gin up their own perceived sense of moral and/or intellectual superiority. Even if Charles Manson were to go on the record publicly with some anti-Bush screed, you can bet there are a few “progressives” who would jump on it.