Bleacher Bums Forum

Michele Brachman was on Fox News Sunday today.  It is the first time I have heard her in other than a few recorded sound bites.

I was quite impressed.  She handled some extremely difficult and complex questions very adroitly.  Perhaps her ignorance of Revolutionary history is compensated by her expertise in current affairs.

Usama bin Laden is dead.

When did he become Usama again?  What happened to Osama?

Nevermind, I just answered my own question.  Osama looks too much like Obama and it might have confused people reading the television and caused a panic.

Monday morning quarterbacking:

Is it significant that he was killed by American forces without Pakistani help?

Is it significant that Pakistan with one of the most thorough and feared intelligence networks in the world couldn't find a guy hiding in a mansion?

Is it significant that we knew where he was since October but we didn't order his demise until the President's rating was at an all time low?

How long will it be before our enemies claim he's really alive and we got the wrong guy?

Who's the devil we don't know that will now take over the network?

Is it significant that we knew where he was since October but we didn't order his demise until the President's rating was at an all time low? (Curt)

I normally avoid the Politics & Religion forum.  I decided to visit it today to see whether anyone managed to find a way of turning Osama Bin Ladin's death into a way to criticize Obama.  Realizing that the irrationality of some Obama haters knows no bounds,  I figured someone here would find a way, even though it would take some exceptional mental gymnastics.


Sure enough, the first attempt has been posted. I admit I didn't expect it come from Curt, though.


Not that it will make any difference, but here are some facts that were ignored in this post.


First, it was not known that Bin Ladin was at this location last October.  That's when attention focused on the building, based on a courier being tracked to there.  There was a suspicion that a major leader was there, and since that time, American intelligence forces conducting substantial monitoring operations.  See below from the NY Times.

Still, it was not until August when they tracked him to the coumpound in Abbotabad, a medium-sized city about an hour's drive north of Islamabad, the capital.

C.I.A. analysts spent the next several weeks examining satellite photos and intelligence reports to determine who might be living at the compound, and a senior administration official said that by September the C.I.A. had determined there was a "strong possibility" that Bin Laden himself was hiding there.

...

Months more of intelligence work would follow before American spies felt highly confident that it was indeed Bin Laden and his family who were hiding in there - and before President Obama determined that the intelligence was solid enough to begin planning a mission to go after the Qaeda leader.

On March 14, Mr. Obama held the first of what would be five national security meetings in the course of the next six eeks to go over plans for the operation.

Secondly, Obama's poll numbers were actually lower in October/November than currently. You can check the Real Clear Politics site for a graph showing this.  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html


Not that such facts will make any difference.

I'm not the one who is paranoid.  You wrote what you wrote. 


It was based on two specific allegations that were false.  If you care about being accurate, you really ought to address that.  People make mistakes (for whatever reason).  If your suspicions about Obama were based on honest mistakes, it would be good for you to acknowledge those and perhaps to apologize for spreading such stuff. 

What is the proper relationship between "justice" and "revenge"?  Is revenge a justifiable goal in itself?

I wonder positioning Panetta as the head man was instrumental in the final result...