The Obama "To Make Important Statement" MEGATHREAD

[Admiral Yi]

How *do* you fly helicopters all the way to Islamabad without sirens going off?

[katmai]

How *do* you fly helicopters all the way to Islamabad without sirens going off?

From an article I read earlier this evening

Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country's radar systems, a U.S. official said.

[Razgovory]

Does anyone really think Bush or Clinton or Bush Sr. or Cart...ok, maybe not Carter.

But really, its not like any other President would be all "No no, lets not kill Osama...."

Not Clinton, no.  And I'm not 100% sure about Bush-41.

When did Clinton say, "No no, lets not kill Osama..."

[CountDeMoney]

Obama: "And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaida."

McCain: "You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt used to say walk softly -- talk softly, but carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly. In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable.  You know, if you are a country and you're trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you're going to launch an attack into another country, it's pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us."

Obama: "What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should. Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.  Now, Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears and, you know, I'm just spouting off, and he's somber and responsible."

[Syt]

I like to think that Osama ended like Hitler in Inglorious Basterds.

[citizen k]

Does anyone really think Bush or Clinton or Bush Sr. or Cart...ok, maybe not Carter.

But really, its not like any other President would be all "No no, lets not kill Osama...."

Not Clinton, no.  And I'm not 100% sure about Bush-41.

When did Clinton say, "No no, lets not kill Osama..."

Osama bin Laden: missed opportunities
The CIA had pictures. Why wasn't the al-Qaida leader captured or killed?

By Lisa Myers Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
updated 3/17/2004

As the 9/11 commission investigates what Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush might have done to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, one piece of evidence the commission will examine is a videotape secretly recorded by a CIA plane high above Afghanistan. The tape shows a man believed to Osama bin Laden walking at a known al-Qaida camp.

The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn't he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.

Over the next three nights, NBC News will present this incredible spy footage and reveal some of the difficult questions it has raised for the 9/11 commission.

In 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing killed six people.

In 1998, the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa killed 224.

Both were the work of al-Qaida and bin Laden, who in 1998 declared holy war on America, making him arguably the most wanted man in the world.

In 1998, President Clinton announced, "We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice, no matter what or how long it takes."

NBC News has obtained, exclusively, extraordinary secret video, shot by the U.S. government.  It illustrates an enormous opportunity the Clinton administration had to kill or capture bin Laden. Critics call it a missed opportunity.

In the fall of 2000, in Afghanistan,
unmanned, unarmed spy planes
called Predators flew over known
al-Qaida training camps. The
pictures that were transmitted live
to CIA headquarters show al-
Qaida terrorists firing at targets,
conducting military drills and then
scattering on cue through the
desert.

Also, that fall, the Predator
captured even more extraordinary
pictures — a tall figure in flowing
white robes. Many intelligence
analysts believed then and now it
is bin Laden.

Why does U.S. intelligence believe it
was bin Laden? NBC showed the
video to William Arkin, a former
intelligence officer and now
military analyst for NBC. "You see
a tall man.... You see him
surrounded by or at least protected
by a group of guards."

Bin Laden is 6 foot 5. The man in
the video clearly towers over those around him and seems to be
treated with great deference.

Another clue: The video was shot
at Tarnak Farm, the walled
compound where bin Laden is
known to live. The layout of the
buildings in the Predator video
perfectly matches secret U.S.
intelligence photos and diagrams
of Tarnak Farm obtained by NBC.

"It's dynamite. It's putting together
all of the pieces, and that doesn't
happen every day.... I guess you
could say we've done it once, and
this is it," Arkin added.

The tape proves the Clinton
administration was aggressively
tracking al-Qaida a year before 9
/11. But that also raises one
enormous question: If the U.S.
government had bin Laden and the camps in its sights in real time,
why was no action taken against
them?

"We were not prepared to take the
military action necessary," said
retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who
ran counter-terror efforts for the
current Bush administration and is
now an NBC analyst.

Global dragnet

"We should have had strike forces
prepared to go in and react to this
intelligence, certainly cruise
missiles — either air- or sea-
launched — very, very accurate,
could have gone in and hit those
targets," Downing added.

Gary Schroen, a former CIA station
chief in Pakistan, says the White
House required the CIA to attempt
to capture bin Laden alive, rather
than kill him.

What impact did the wording of
the orders have on the CIA's ability
to get bin Laden? "It reduced the
odds from, say, a 50 percent
chance down to, say, 25 percent
chance that we were going to be
able to get him," said Schroen.

A Democratic member of the 9/11
commission says there was a larger
issue: The Clinton administration
treated bin Laden as a law
enforcement problem.

Bob Kerry, a former senator and
current 9/11 commission member,
said, "The most important thing
the Clinton administration could
have done would have been for the
president, either himself or by
going to Congress, asking for a
congressional declaration to
declare war on al-Qaida, a
military-political organization that
had declared war on us."

In reality, getting bin Laden would
have been extraordinarily difficult.
He was a moving target deep inside
Afghanistan. Most military
operations would have been high-
risk. What's more, Clinton was
weakened by scandal, and there was no political consensus for bold
action, especially with an election
weeks away.

NBC News contacted the three top
Clinton national security officials.
None would do an on-camera
interview. However, they
vigorously defend their record and
say they disrupted terrorist cells
and made al-Qaida a top national
security priority.

"We used military force, we used
covert operations, we used all of
the tools available to us because w
e realized what a serious threat
this was," said President Clinton's
former national security adviser
James Steinberg.

One Clinton Cabinet official said,
looking back, the military should
have been more involved, "We did
a lot, but we did not see the
gathering storm that was out
there."

[Syt]

That poem sucks. Even Shatner reciting it couldn't save it.

[citizen k]

That poem sucks. Even Shatner reciting it couldn't save it.

It's more of a saga.

[katmai]

Did Ank write it?

[jimmy olsen]

That poem sucks. Even Shatner reciting it couldn't save it.

Shatner can save anything!

[Syt]

That poem sucks. Even Shatner reciting it couldn't save it.

Shatner can save anything!

No he can't:

[Tonitrus]

Well, to be fair, no one has ever been able to answer the question, "What does God need with a starship?"

[Barrister]

Good comeback Syt.

[Martinus]

*shrug* We'll see.  Remember how everyone loved George H. W. Bush after the Gulf War ended and his approval rating was like 95%?

Stop quoting Facebook posts by your wife.

[Martinus]

into the midst of a town populated by Pakistani soldier

Wow, the guy must be pretty fast.