Spiking the Football
Monday, April 30th, 2012There’s a certain etiquette to spiking the football that Mr. Obama lacks. I consider spiking the ball unsportman like, but be that as it may, some relish the practice. Only you don’t spike the ball in the middle of the game after getting a first down while you are losing.
Obama’s newest venture into the realm of the Anti-Midas comes with an ad questioning whether Mr. Romney would have made the same call. (I’ll spare you the ad.) Romney, surprisingly, quipped back “even Jimmy Carter would have made the call.” That will leave a mark.
Then comes Peter Bergen of CNN to further the story, which included this:
Bin Laden’s principal conduit to his organization was Atiyah Abdul Rahman, a Libyan militant of about 40. Viewed by officials in the West as no more than a mid-tier terrorist, Rahman was actually bin Laden’s chief of staff. In a 48-page memo to Rahman written in October 2010, bin Laden told him that al Qaeda’s longtime sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas was now too dangerous because of the campaign of American drone strikes there. The CIA had launched a record number of strikes into the tribal regions during 2010. Bin Laden wrote, “I am leaning toward getting most of our brothers out of the area.”
Bin Laden advised his followers not to move around the tribal regions except on overcast days when America’s all-seeing satellites and drones would not have as good visibility of the area. He complained that, “the Americans have great accumulated expertise of photography of the region due to the fact they have been doing it for so many years. They can even distinguish between houses that are frequented by male visitors at a higher rate than is normal.”
bin Ladin knew he was hot and about to get hotter in October of 2010.
A former intelligence official who was serving in the US government when bin Laden was killed said that the Obama administration knew about the al-Qaeda leader’s whereabouts in October 2010 but delayed taking action and risked letting him escape.