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White House rejects Seymour Hersh 'baseless assertions' on bin Laden raid

JANFU

JANFU

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Seymour Hersh accuses Obama of lying on Osama bin Laden raid - CNNPolitics.com

Citing an anonymous "major U.S. source," Hersh writes that the Obama administration cooperated with Pakistani intelligence officials to kill bin Laden, and that the chief of staff of the Pakistani army and director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency knew about the mission, contrary to Obama's claim that Pakistani officials weren't aware of the raid in advance.

A U.S. official with detailed knowledge of the outreach to the Pakistanis after the raid tells CNN that based on the reaction it was clear the Pakistanis did not know in advance
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Thoughts are?
25 Mill bounty, good money.
 
Hearsh does have cred.
 
JANFU said:
Seymour Hersh accuses Obama of lying on Osama bin Laden raid - CNNPolitics.com

Thoughts are?
25 Mill bounty, good money.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't think the WH is really the authority here. If the Hersh story is true then the WH would be the last people on the planet you would expect to corroborate it... and that is even assuming that this WH is generally trustworthy otherwise, which it isn't.

I am not saying that the Hersh story is true, but you would expect the WH to say this regardless of whether it is true or not.

For what it's worth, this would be the second legendary journalist to write an expose on the Obama administration that paints it as an insular, untrustworthy and unscrupulous group.
 
jmotivator said:
Well, I don't think the WH is really the authority here. If the Hersh story is true then the WH would be the last people on the planet you would expect to corroborate it... and that is even assuming that this WH is generally trustworthy otherwise, which it isn't.

I am not saying that the Hersh story is true, but you would expect the WH to say this regardless of whether it is true or not.
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Yes, I would expect and indeed have seen the same in multiple administrations during my lifetime. It's not just democratic WH's that can be dishonest.
 
Montecresto said:
Yes, I would expect and indeed have seen the same in multiple administrations during my lifetime. It's not just democratic WH's that can be dishonest.
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I never said they were, I am simply pointing out that this administration appears from this account to be a rather definite mess that screwed over the SEALs, his SecDef, and the Pakistanis who helped him in order to cover his ass on a small detail that would have been lost in the euphoria of killing bin Laden anyway.

It is interesting to consider, should this story pan out, how many narratives on the left and the right that are blown up with the revelation. For instance, off the top of my head:

1) Without the courier story the waterboarding justification vanishes.
2) If the Pakistanis were holding bin Laden prisoner and released him to the SEAL squad for execution then there was no tough call by Obama. The operation was just shooting fish in a barrel.
3) If This was the result of a negotiation with Pakistan then the SEALs lives were risked for what amounts to a CYA by Obama who then outed them immediately in order to build a lie.
4) "No Easy Day" would be a lie that reflects poorly on Mark Owen.
5) SecDef's account of what happened after the raid would now makes a lot more sense.
6) The doctor who was supposedly outed after confirming OBL would appear to be a lie.
 
Another thing just hit me about the Hersh narrative. The story about the SEALs being forced to sign NDAs after the raid always struck me as odd for two reasons: 1) SEALs are a fairly closed lip, by the book group, so a legal NDA seemed unnecessary where a direct order would have been sufficient and 2) It seemed odd that even with the NDA signed there was seemingly no end of SEAL team accounts of the raid that appeared to violate the NDA, but weren't incurring any legal action by the DOJ.

This would now make perfect sense if the NDA was signed to protect the true story of the bin Laden raid while the account that the SEAL team members were distributing to the public was the lie formulated by the administration.

It also explains with the SEAL team stories didn't always mesh.
 
jmotivator said:
I never said they were, I am simply pointing out that this administration appears from this account to be a rather definite mess that screwed over the SEALs, his SecDef, and the Pakistanis who helped him in order to cover his ass on a small detail that would have been lost in the euphoria of killing bin Laden anyway.

It is interesting to consider, should this story pan out, how many narratives on the left and the right that are blown up with the revelation. For instance, off the top of my head:

1) Without the courier story the waterboarding justification vanishes.
2) If the Pakistanis were holding bin Laden prisoner and released him to the SEAL squad for execution then there was no tough call by Obama. The operation was just shooting fish in a barrel.
3) If This was the result of a negotiation with Pakistan then the SEALs lives were risked for what amounts to a CYA by Obama who then outed them immediately in order to build a lie.
4) "No Easy Day" would be a lie that reflects poorly on Mark Owen.
5) SecDef's account of what happened after the raid would now makes a lot more sense.
6) The doctor who was supposedly outed after confirming OBL would appear to be a lie.
Click to expand...

Perhaps Obama was going to wait a week and then release the news claiming that a predator drone had done the work, but then the helo crashed and required a modified version. If it really was a capture or kill mission, then why is it that the Seal entered the room to find only OBL's wife, OBL standing there with his hand on his wife's shoulder and his young son standing there frozen with shock and proceeded to shoot him dead???? Why wasn't he simply taken captive. There's plenty more about the OBL story that stinks too, and Hersh has just upped the pot.
 
Montecresto said:
Perhaps Obama was going to wait a week and then release the news claiming that a predator drone had done the work, but then the helo crashed and required a modified version. If it really was a capture or kill mission, then why is it that the Seal entered the room to find only OBL's wife, OBL standing there with his hand on his wife's shoulder and his young son standing there frozen with shock and proceeded to shoot him dead???? Why wasn't he simply taken captive. There's plenty more about the OBL story that stinks too, and Hersh has just upped the pot.
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That is the thing that boggles my mind. Why remedy an attempted lie with another more complicated lie? Nobody knew anything about the mission beforehand so just say a covert team took out bin Laden and the rest is a matter of national security. True, not misleading, and clean. But no, if this story is true they lied and just never stopped.

Also, if true this wasn't a capture or kill, this was sending a team to kill OBL in captivity.
 
Montecresto said:
Perhaps Obama was going to wait a week and then release the news claiming that a predator drone had done the work, but then the helo crashed and required a modified version. If it really was a capture or kill mission, then why is it that the Seal entered the room to find only OBL's wife, OBL standing there with his hand on his wife's shoulder and his young son standing there frozen with shock and proceeded to shoot him dead???? Why wasn't he simply taken captive. There's plenty more about the OBL story that stinks too, and Hersh has just upped the pot.
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No one ever believed OBL would be taken alive.
 
I tend to think the guy has a point, but a lot of his info doesn't add up completely, but I always believed that the Pakistanis were involved to some degree.
 
Jack Hays said:
It was a combat mission.
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It was a "kill or capture" mission. But of course nobody believed he was going to be captured, even though he made no aggressive moves and was posed as though prepared for capture. While the first Seal in has stated there were two weapons in the room, neither were in OBL's possession and he gave no indication of a fight.

The Associated Press cited two U.S. officials as stating the operation was "a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender"
Death of Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
JohnWOlin said:
I tend to think the guy has a point, but a lot of his info doesn't add up completely, but I always believed that the Pakistanis were involved to some degree.
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Does that not fail the logic test? If the Pakistanis cooperated, why would we go out of our way afterward to embarrass them by saying we kept them in the dark?
 
JANFU said:
Seymour Hersh accuses Obama of lying on Osama bin Laden raid - CNNPolitics.com

Thoughts are?
25 Mill bounty, good money.
Click to expand...

I read the story and it sounds plausible. And Hersh isn't a crank - he's not always popular, but I don't know of any cases where his credibility has been successfully challenged. So I expect his story is well sourced.

And reading the CNN snippet you quoted makes it seem more likely the story is true.

"A U.S. official with detailed knowledge of the outreach to the Pakistanis after the raid..." If the WH wants to debunk a story, put the official on the record with a name and a title.

Just as a general comment, I'm sick and damn tired of information coming from the Feds through anonymous sources like that, and I'm sick and tired of our "news" outlets allowing that BS. There is absolutely no reason for an official spouting the company line to require anonymity as a condition of revealing what is the approved government position on this.

That's how all those stories about WMD and nuclear threats and all the rest read in the runup to the Iraq war. You'd think the "news" outlets would have learned their lesson and required those sources to go on the record or their talking points don't get published. The spinelessness of our media makes me want to puke sometimes.
 
lol..... Obama /facepalm


It's shocking anyone believed the original narrative of the WH in the first place.


Remember how Obama boasted about "killing bin laden" over and over again.
 
Everyone outside of america knows bin died of kidney disease in 2001.
 
JasperL said:
I read the story and it sounds plausible. And Hersh isn't a crank - he's not always popular, but I don't know of any cases where his credibility has been successfully challenged. So I expect his story is well sourced.

And reading the CNN snippet you quoted makes it seem more likely the story is true.

"A U.S. official with detailed knowledge of the outreach to the Pakistanis after the raid..." If the WH wants to debunk a story, put the official on the record with a name and a title.

Just as a general comment, I'm sick and damn tired of information coming from the Feds through anonymous sources like that, and I'm sick and tired of our "news" outlets allowing that BS. There is absolutely no reason for an official spouting the company line to require anonymity as a condition of revealing what is the approved government position on this.

That's how all those stories about WMD and nuclear threats and all the rest read in the runup to the Iraq war. You'd think the "news" outlets would have learned their lesson and required those sources to go on the record or their talking points don't get published. The spinelessness of our media makes me want to puke sometimes.
Click to expand...

He does have credibility, but he has also acknowledged that he's gotten it wrong before. He even acknowledged a point that he got wrong in this story. I suppose that bolsters his credibility.
 
Hmmmmm, Let's see....former Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill vs. Seymour Hersh's anonymous source......LOL!!!!


Former Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, who shot and killed Usama bin Laden, blasted claims by journalist Seymour Hersh that the government lied about the raid.
[snip]
But the former Navy SEAL is not the only one with harsh criticism. Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland was also skeptical of the report.

"There's a couple things that don't ring true,” she said on America’s Newsroom. "To me, it doesn't pass the smell test.”

'Ludicrous': Navy Seal Who Shot Bin Laden Blasts Seymour Hersh Article - Fox Nation
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BWG said:
Hmmmmm, Let's see....former Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill vs. Seymour Hersh's anonymous source......LOL!!!!
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Where's the conflict. If Hersh's assertions were true, why would the Seal needed to have been privy to it. It would make more sense that the Seals wouldn't be. BTW, I would prefer to see more from Hersh on this.
 
Montecresto said:
It was a "kill or capture" mission. But of course nobody believed he was going to be captured, even though he made no aggressive moves and was posed as though prepared for capture. While the first Seal in has stated there were two weapons in the room, neither were in OBL's possession and he gave no indication of a fight.

The Associated Press cited two U.S. officials as stating the operation was "a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender"
Death of Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Click to expand...
If the story is true, it would make sense to have this as a kill mission.
Either a live rallying point or a dead one, swimming with the fishes. I go with sending him off as fish bait.
 
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