Background on the Bin Laden Op Devised by Obama All by HimselfMay 2, 2011
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RUSH: For the record, ladies and gentlemen, in his brief announcement last night President Obama used the word "I" ten times, he used the word "me" three times, he used the word "mine" five times, and the word "my" three times. Navy SEAL Team 6 was not practicing "courageous restraint" last night. "Courageous restraint" is a new operational tactic that the president, on his own, has instituted in Afghanistan. "Courageous restraint" is not firing on terrorists who might be shielded by women and children, civilians. Last night we know that a woman was killed acting as a human shield for Obama. SEAL Team 6 -- Osama. Right.
I better say "Bin Laden" when I mean "Osama" because I'm just gonna get confused. I feel like I'm Ted Kennedy in here, who himself got it all screwed up. Navy SEAL Team 6 was not practicing "courageous restraint." Also, folks, will the Bush lawyers, who suggested harsh interrogation techniques -- suggesting that constitutionally and legally those techniques were okay -- be hailed as heroes, or will the regime continue to pursue them legally? So, yeah, I don't want to be misunderstood about this. You know, the program is focused on the truth. I am a host focused on the truth. President Obama deserves credit for keeping in play the Bush-Cheney policies in dealing with these people.
Guantanamo Bay, interrogation, rendition, all of the things the Bush administration put into play to win the War on Terror, this regime kept in place. They might have said something else, they might have given their supporters a different impression by saying they're gonna close Guantanamo Bay and they're gonna end all this harsh interrogation technique stuff. But in fact they continued the policies. The Bush policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East, using Special Ops forces -- which were not required to follow any rules of engagement, by the way. Now, I mentioned Al Jazeera -- and, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, fear not. Prior to... I'm like everybody else, I was watching Fox last night.
Actually I wasn't watching television. I was reading a book, and my cell phone started going nuts with people sending me instant messages, and my iPad started vibrating off the couch. I said, "What is going on?" and I looked and the message said: "Turn on Fox! There's a major announcement from Obama coming." It was 10:30. So I turned on Fox, and there's the Grim Reaper, Geraldo Rivera, and I said, "Oh, my God, somebody's died! Who is it? It's 10:30 on Sunday night, who could it be? Somebody's either dead or is gonna be real soon."
I hadn't heard about any increment weather during the day? So what could it be? I said, "Maybe we got Khadafy." That's what I thought at first: "Maybe we got Khadafy." Then the word started leaking that it was Bin Laden, and as close to an on air orgasm as I've ever seen from anybody, Geraldo just started dancing a jig up there on Fox. I said, "Well, who better to have on Fox News when you get Bin Laden than the Grim Reaper himself, Geraldo Rivera."
Then we saw the celebrants outside the White House and in Times Square; and I'm like you, I said, "Where's the store at 11 o'clock Sunday night to go by American flags open?" (laughing) These are the questions that I had, and then Obama came out and made the announcement. There were some conflicting elements that he'd been dead a week ago, that were testing the DNA, all of these things. We found out the operation took place last night, not a week ago. Now, we've heard Andrea Mitchell from NBC and a number of people in the regime praise Al Jazeera.
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RUSH: "Zeroing in on Bin Laden," May 2 from Al Jazeera: "Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed in a 40-minute raid that followed months of planning and years of investigation, US officials said on Sunday.
"Bin Laden went into hiding shortly after the September 11 attacks, so his communications with the outside world were handled by trusted couriers. US spies have been monitoring many of those couriers for years, the CIA said on Sunday." and how were they able to do that? They got the intel from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, which (despite all of his promises) Obama had not shut down, and won't. "'One courier in particular had our constant attention,' a senior administration official said. 'We identified him as both a protege of [September 11 plotter] Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and [alleged al-Qaeda member] Abu Faraj al-Libi.'
"The US spy agency learned his name four years ago; two years later, it tracked the courier and his brother to a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan." This is where this enlarged hut is where Bin Laden was. They're calling it a "mansion." No. It's not a mansion. It's a big hut. I've even seen some of the pictures of the interior. Architectural Digest will not be making a trip over there to do a photo spread. So we've known about this compound for two years. We've known about this enlarged hut for two years. The people "who lived there 'had no visible source of wealth,' leading the CIA to believe that other people lived in the compound.
"US officials eventually came to believe that those 'other people' were Bin Laden and his family, and presented their assessment to US president Barack Obama in September." President Obama has known that we suspected Bin Laden and his couriers were in that hut since September. In other reports, which I just alluded to, CNN had a report that he was there last August. "Several months of investigation followed, and then Obama chaired a series of five national security council meetings to decide on a course of action." You might say, "Well, why should this be such a tough decision?"
Five National Security Council meetings? Eight months to decide to do something? "The council," after all of this time, since last October, "decided on an operation to capture Bin Laden." It did. The original plan was to capture Bin Laden, take him alive, read him his Miranda rights, and supply him with legal counsel. That was the original plan. Then the military wanted to go in with guns blazing -- drones, missiles, and bombs -- and President Obama alone, among all the people at all of these five meetings... President Obama alone, at the expense of the military... Petraeus didn't know what he was doing. Nobody else in the military apparently knew what they were doing.
Obama himself figured it out! Not a single intel advisor, not a security advisor, not one military advisor thought of the idea of killing Osama and getting the DNA. Not one of them! It was Obama himself, and this explains why this was done with ground troops instead of laser-guided missiles. President Obama's original plan was to capture him. The original plan was to capture Bin Laden. Somebody then said, "No, no, no. That's really the worst thing that could happen here." The president said, "But that's what I said I would do. Eric Holder said, that's what we would do: Capture Bin Laden to show we're not savage and so forth."
Somebody realized that that would be a giant mistake. Now, Reuters then has a story... Remember, now, the Al Jazeera story -- and Al Jazeera, Andrea Mitchell and a number of others have said, is the network to emulate. Al Jazeera, they're the stars now. Al Jazeera, that's the network everybody ought to be watching, right? And Al Jazeera story is, "No, we weren't gonna kill him. No, we weren't gonna bomb. We are gonna go in there and we were gonna capture and read him his rights and give him a legal team."
Reuters: "US Team's Mission was to Kill Bin Laden, Not Capture," and that story is today. "The US special forces team that hunted down Osama Bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a US national security official told Reuters. 'This was a kill operation,' the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture Bin Laden alive in Pakistan." So the word went out after the network of record, Al Jazeera came out and described the original mission as a capture mission.
The regime said, "Oh, no, no, no, can't have that." So they called up Reuters, and the word went out to Obama's press minions to tamp down this Al Jazeera story, claiming the mission was intended to capture Bin Laden. The mission all along was a "kill mission," but if it was a kill mission all along why not just bomb the compound, why not just bomb it and then go in and collect the body afterwards? Pakistan let us in there. They're an ally. (Ahem!) They wouldn't have stopped us from going in and getting the body. At any rate, that's where we are in this. Al Jazeera says the original mission was capture.
Reuters comes out and says, "No, it wasn't! The original mission was to kill!" The regime obviously didn't want the Al Jazeera story to survive. The firefight lasted 40 minutes. Well, the operation lasted 40 minutes. We don't know how much of that was intel gathering and how much of it was the actual firefight. We don't know if he had bodyguards. We don't know how dedicated they were. The White House is now contemplating releasing a picture of the corpse. They've got it. They say it's just too gruesome. Now, there's a Spanish website that has put out a head shot of what is claimed to be the corpse of Osama. Your host has seen it. It's not that gruesome. I've seen worse in the Transformer movies.
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RUSH: We'll start in Cleveland with Tammy. Welcome to the program. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call. I really think that you should play the nine minutes of Obama's speech actually on your show today. I was listening to you say that, you know, talking about all the "I's" that he was saying, you know, (imitating Rush) "I did this. It was all because of me, President Obama alone, you know, figured out the idea of killing Osama," and I know you're being sarcastic, but I just think you need to give him a pass on this. I mean he is the commander-in-chief, and I listened to that speech last night, and I didn't hear what you were saying today with the self-congratulatory tone, at all.
RUSH: You didn't hear what I was saying?
CALLER: No. I really didn't.
RUSH: What do you mean you didn't hear what I was saying? You just said you understood what I was saying.
CALLER: Oh, I heard what you said. I listened to the first half hour. That's what I'm saying. I heard what you said, but I also listened to his speech last night, and I didn't get the self-congratulatory tone out of it.
RUSH: Out of his speech?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You didn't think --
CALLER: No, I really didn't.
RUSH: You didn't think that all the use of the word I, me, my -- he was not self-congratulating himself?
CALLER: No. Actually I did not. I just didn't take it that way. I mean I'm not an Obama fan by any means --
RUSH: Ohhh, I misunderstood. I thought you were upset with me for praising Obama.
CALLER: I know you were being sarcastic.
RUSH: I was not being sarcastic. I'm telling you, I was praising Obama for continuing the policies the Bush administration implemented and keeping Guantanamo Bay open and the intelligence gathering operation ongoing in order to get the intel to get the guy. I was being very serious about that.
CALLER: All right, but then sarcastically you did say President Obama alone figured out the idea of killing Osama rather than capturing him.
RUSH: That's what he said. I'm simply reporting what he said. He assembled a team.
CALLER: He didn't say he alone.
RUSH: "I assembled the team." I did this. I got 36 seconds of it here. I don't have enough time to play it for you now. I figured everybody who would call here or listen today would have heard that but, no, it was very obvious that he -- "and finally last week I determined we had enough intelligence to take action and I authorized an operation to get Bin Laden and bring him to justice." Yeah. I, me, my.
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RUSH: So the last caller, the lady said that she didn't hear what I heard when Obama made the announcement last night. What I heard the president say was that everybody else had their ideas but he alone had the right way, and that he put together the team and that he did this, he did that. Here's what he said: " Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of Bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda." Now, look, with all due respect, that has been the policy of this country since 9/11, 2001. It's been the policy of this country for ten years, the killing or capture of Osama Bin Laden. "Then last August after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community..." I could insert Obama quotes about that intelligence community from his time as a United States Senator and a presidential candidate. I'm not gonna do that, but I could. "After years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to Bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located Bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan," across the street from a police station, which is where it was. It was across the street from a police station.
We also, by the way, did not tell the Pakistanis we were conducting this mission last night. They didn't know. "And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence" and again, I could insert past Obama intelligence comments, but I won't "to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan." Now, he had the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House as this program started today, and all he had to say really about Bin Laden in his remarks was the world's a safer place now without Bin Laden. Of course the world's a better place without Saddam Hussein, too, but we're not going to mention that.
Again the SEALs -- I did this in the first hour but I'm cognizant of the fact that some of our EIB affiliates might have preempted this program with coverage of the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House conducted by President Obama because they had been told that in-depth comments about the Bin Laden operation were made. They weren't, no remarks were made. But if you were not here, if you missed the first half hour of today's program, one of the things that I want to repeat to you, and to everybody, is that I congratulated, and I do in this hour as well, I continue my congratulations to President Obama for continuing the Bush administration policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East and keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison open and for keeping the intelligence gathering operation at Guantanamo going. Despite what President Obama had said to his supporters since the day he was immaculated, he did keep Guantanamo open. He didn't close it. He did continue intelligence gathering operations at Guantanamo Bay. He continued, in other words, to implement the policies of the Bush and Cheney administration, which allowed the most competent military operation in the world to finish the job they started nearly ten years ago. And, believe me, for this President Obama deserves credit, he really does.
If you believed what he'd said since the day he was inaugurated, he was gonna tear all this apart. He was gonna get rid of these secret prisons, the rendition secret prisons. Remember, we're being told today that much of the intelligence we learned came from prisoners who were renditioned to some of these secret CIA prisons around the world. It's also a targeted assassination by us, somebody other than Israel. We're also told that the SEALs, SEAL Team 6, gave Bin Laden the option to surrender. Chose not to, so bam, bam, we fired. We're also told that one of Obama's wives pointed him out to our team in the mansion, which, again, is not a mansion. It is a hut on steroids that sits on an acre. Folks, believe me, there's no mansion that sits on an acre, wherever the acre happens to be. They're calling it a mansion. You've seen pictures. It's not a mansion.
Anyway, one of Osama's wives pointed him out to the Special Ops team. So imagine, you're Bin Laden, one of your wives gives you up, the last thing you see is a Navy SEAL pointing an M-5 at you, and then you learn there aren't any virgins. So for these reasons --I'm being entirely serious -- President Obama deserves to be congratulated for continuing these policies that have led to this result. For continuing the policies that continue the war on terror. He even used the word "terrorist" last night, which I thought had been banned from the lexicon of this administration. So just who are we talking about last night? President Obama last night said "I, me, my" numbers of times. "I assembled a team." He didn't assemble the team. These teams fall under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, and they've been operating for almost 30 years. JSOC is comprised of the following: Delta, the 75th Ranger Regiment -- those are the boys at Pointe-Du-Hoc. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. These are the guys that fly the choppers in the dead of night 50 feet above the ground. You had the Marine Force Recon team, you had SEAL Team 6, 1st Special Operations Wing, the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, a few other support elements.
The CIA was also heavily involved, especially units from the clandestine service. Now, that team has been assembled and operating in Iraq and Afghanistan for ten years. Obama did not assemble it, but he did not disassemble it, either, and he led his supporters to believe he would be disassembling this operation, and he did not, and for that he needs to be congratulated which is what I said in the first hour of the program. He left that team and its operation intact, same group that brought down Saddam Hussein. Apparently what happened here is that the CIA, through harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, the couriers, to get information to and from Osama, were given up and identified by inmates at Guantanamo. And again, Obama deserves congratulations for continuing the operation and the intel gathering and whatever techniques were used to gather that information.
There was no television, radio, or Internet in or out of this glorified hut that Osama was living in. So he needed the couriers. There were two of them. One of them might have been a protege of the actual blueprint mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And it was these guys who were tracked, two brothers. They were seen going in and out of the compound, but it was obvious that not even they had the money to buy and support a hut of this size. So it was our assumption that people of some means had to live there. Then the intel produced the fact these couriers were working for Osama, and that's what happened. But Obama did not assemble the team. That team has been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost ten years, same group that brought down Saddam.
So the CIA probably found him through the previously described process, tracking him for months with the help of some Delta guys on the ground. And the team that went in last night has gotta be a mixture of all of these various units of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. And they are the ones who deserve all the credit for this, not a politician or not a bureaucrat in DC, except to the extent that they didn't shut it down. I hope now you understand what I have meant all these years when I've said the Democrat Party, no matter what they've said, when a Republican is in the White House and we are at war, when they end up in the White House and their party is commander-in-chief, they are not going to secure defeat. They're not gonna pull out of Iraq. They're not gonna pull out of Afghanistan. They're not gonna lose a war on their march. They're just not going to do it. Doesn't matter what they've said prior to their election. Doesn't matter.
Now, look. Despite everything that's been said by this president and this regime, look at how now they're beating their chests, "Look what we did. Look what we did," and they deserve congratulations. This is something that Obama inherited from Bush, and we've heard that, have we not? He inherited a rotten economy. He inherited horrible deficit. He inherited recession. Well, he inherited the policy that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
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RUSH: There's a report, ladies and gentlemen, that the Special Ops guys asked Osama to surrender, and that supports the Al Jazeera report that says was the plan: To capture him alive. Remember, there's a bit of a conflict that nobody's really focusing on right now. Al Jazeera's report... Remember, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, a bunch of people, said this is the network to watch. Even Andrea Mitchell said it: This Al Jazeera, that's the network, up-and-coming -- and their report today says this was not a kill mission, it was a capture mission, and there is a report that our Special Ops guys gave Osama the option of surrendering.
He didn't, and so we fired. That gives some credence to Al Jazeera's report that that was the plan. The report that the Special Ops guys asked him to surrender supports Al Jazeera's claim. Navy SEAL Team 6 was flown there in helicopters. The actual fighting apparently was all SEAL Team 6, although on all this you don't know how much of it is true. In fact, we hope we're not told the truth about some or all of the actual operational details, 'cause it is giving up information we really don't need to be giving up. But according to Jacob Tapper of ABC, "The original plan was for the SEALs to rappel down into the compound," and that's how they practiced it in April. They had a replica built of the compound, and they had two practice runs on this thing.
On Sunday, one of the helicopters had an issue and they had a soft landing. Everybody in it survived but they had to blow it up to keep it from being captured. So they blew up the helicopter. Also, according to Tapper, the Navy SEALs were worried that the Pakistan air force would spot the helicopters, and they were worried that they might do something to the CIA contractor that they're currently holding in a Pakistan prison. (Yet these people are our allies.) We're getting little dribs and drabs of this reported to the details of the operation in the days to come.
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RUSH: There is a briefing going on in the White House now. John Brennan, one of their national security people, essentially confirmed the Al Jazeera report that the hope was to capture him alive, but Bin Laden refused to surrender. Now, Brennan also said it's inconceivable Bin Laden did not have a support system within the country of Pakistan. Well, obviously he did. He was there. He had a support system in Pakistan. So that's easy to say. But the hope was to capture him alive.
Now, here's a problem, though. Reuters immediately followed the Al Jazeera story in an attempt to rebut it. "No, no, no. Our plan all along was to take him out." So Reuters has just been thrown overboard by the regime. I shared with you these stories previously in this program. Here's the Al Jazeera story. I don't want make too much of this, but believe me, inside the White House this is a big deal. Al Jazeera zeroing in on Bin Laden. The idea here was to capture him. They wanted to capture him alive. They wanted to interrogate him. They wanted to sign him a legal team and that was the plan. That's what Al Jazeera asserts. Then Reuters came along not long afterwards: "US Special Forces team that hunted down Bin Laden was under orders to kill, not capture."
Okay, so you have those two stories, then here comes Brennan. (imitating Brennan) "No, no, no, no. No, no. The original plan was to capture, not kill." So people at Reuters are not gonna be happy with the regime. They're not going to be happy because they've either been used, because they wouldn't put this out without somebody from the regime telling them to. So the Al Jazeera story stands, the Al Jazeera story was it's a capture mission. Why would Reuters run a story with the headline: "US team's mission was to kill Bin Laden, not capture"? That's 'cause somebody in the regime called 'em up and said, "Look, these guys at Al Jazeera have it all wrong. We never wanted to capture the guy. This was a kill mission from the get-go." But it wasn't, apparently from the White House itself.
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