{"id":19722,"date":"2011-05-02T12:02:05","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T18:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19722"},"modified":"2011-05-02T12:02:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T18:02:05","slug":"where-credit-is-due-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19722","title":{"rendered":"Where Credit Is Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

The credit for the news of the deqth of Bin Laden fairly goes (in addition to the intelligence, military and even some local Pakistanis) \u00a0to the President. \u00a0If it’d failed, it would have rested on his shoulders; it’s only fair that we credit him for the risk he took – \u00a0different though that risk is from the ones the SEALs, the Army chopper pilots and the rest of the guys on the ground took. \u00a0To be honest, given his record so far, I’d have expected him to have launched a Predator strike – something that would have killed him (or someone<\/em>) without the political risk – but also without the certainty.<\/p>\n

Now, here’s the part I’m looking forward to; watching the left walk back the fact that so much of the policies – and so many, I suspect, of the discrete military and intelligence activities that led to this day – were continued under the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Which, again, is no knock on Obama.<\/p>\n

But I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions of the elements of the Twin Cities media who, 24 months ago, were acting like a bunch of 15 year old girls who’d just gotten Justin Bieber tickets after having been allowed into the presence of Seymour Hersh, who was talking (along with Walter Mondale) about\u00a0a story from\u00a0“upcoming book”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command \u2014 JSOC it\u2019s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Hersh, this mattered \u00a0because…:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder President Bush\u2019s authority, they\u2019ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That\u2019s been going on, in the name of all of us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was JSOC troops – officially SEALs, along with Army Special Operations Aviation, but JSOC missions reportedly mix in other troops, Rangers and “Delta” and other units pretty liberally – that carried on the “execution”.<\/p>\n

Just saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The credit for the news of the deqth of Bin Laden fairly goes (in addition to the intelligence, military and even some local Pakistanis) \u00a0to the President. \u00a0If it’d failed, it would have rested on his shoulders; it’s only fair that we credit him for the risk he took – \u00a0different though that risk is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,131,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","category-war-and-peace","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19722"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19724,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19722\/revisions\/19724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}