Gallup is out with a poll taken yesterday on the issue of who deserves credit for finding and killing Osama bin Laden.
The results are very telling. Understandably, the U.S. military gets the most credit (89% Great Deal, 9% Moderate Amount), followed by the CIA (62/26).
Obama has been criticized for his egocentric speech Sunday night, but if that’s the case it didn’t work, as Obama’s numbers were only 35% Great Deal, 36% Moderate Amount.
And although Obama had nary a kind word to say about the Bush administration’s fight against bin Laden, the public still credits Bush 22% Great Deal, 30% Moderate Amount. That’ not just Republicans, as 48% of Independents and even 40% of Democrats give Bush a combined Great Deal/Moderate Amount rating.
Bush’s numbers are pretty good considering that Bush has been out of office for over two years, and the mainstream media and Democrats relentlessly have pushed the false narrative that Bush was not trying to find bin Laden.
Imagine what the numbers would look like if they said something nice about Bush.
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Comments
The 1% that gave Military no credit for getting OBL are obviously sleeper cells.
Although I understand the point, it shouldn't matter who killed the bastard – he's dead, and that should be good enough.
But, to be fair, if I had a two and a half year record of dismal failures, I would be milking my singular success for all it was worth.
ptcontracting,
I suspect that 1% are the people who believe bin Laden is either still alive or died of natural causes some years ago.
I'll up that…
Imagine if the "main"stream media stopped lying and covering up for the fraudman.
(this explains why Obama was still wearing his golf outfit in the picture on Drudge and why fewer rounds of golf were played by Mr.fraud this past weekend)
http://memeorandum.com/
"White House Insider: Obama Hesitated – Panetta Issued Order to Kill Osama Bin Laden — “What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him -and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound.”
The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett and it remained that way until AFTER it had already been initiated. President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission. Upon his arrival there was a briefing held which included Bill Daley, John Brennan, and a high ranking member of the military. When Obama emerged from the briefing, he was described as looking “very confused and uncertain.” The president was then placed in the situation room where several of the players in this event had already been watching the operation unfold. Another interesting tidbit regarding this is that the Vice President was already “up to speed” on the operation. A source indicated they believe Hillary Clinton had personally made certain the Vice President was made aware of that day’s events before the president was. The now famous photo released shows the particulars of that of that room and its occupants. What that photo does not communicate directly is that the military personnel present in that room during the operation unfolding, deferred to either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates. The president’s role was minimal, including their acknowledging of his presence in the room.”
"
Not that I would take anything away from the military, in particular the intrepid SEAL teams and the rest of their JSOC comrades. But I think it is too bad that even in this spectacular instance, CIA does not get the credit it earned and deserves. The uncommonly smart, dedicated and courageous men and women of CIA persevered for years, following every clue and in the end tracking UBL to his Abbotobad hideout. Imagine how dangerous it had been for hundreds of CIA officers to operate in Pakistan over the past nine years, doggedly running agents and operations amidst millions of people who dislike or detest Americans, Al Qaeda and Taliban informants and even Pakistani "allies" in the Army and ISI who might turn on them.
"Imagine…"
Why imagine anything? It seems what worked in 2008 was to "get in their face."
Not imagining anything per se, but "getting in their face."
I recall (imprecisely) the sage wisdom to "bring a gun if they bring a knife" or something very close to that, and our President, the Commander in Chief and no less, echoing that (or something close to that).
So, when you write "imagine…", I wonder why, and what effect those words will have as compared to the efect our Presidents words had in 2008?
Shhh, don't give them any tips. Because you're right, if BO suddenly started acting like a statesman instead of a spoiled, petty little brat, his numbers would go through the roof. I, for one, don't want to see that.
The Hoover Institution and Sarah Palin
Unless every housewife from Alaska needs a doctrine on the use of force I would say Sarah Palin signaled, once again, she's "in it to win it"
The introduction of her "Palin Doctrine" came simultaneously with the official announcement that Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Schweizer is her new foreign policy adviser replacing Randy Scheunemann. Scheunemann left because he couldn't meet the time commitments she required. Again raising a question – what time commitments? Part time help writing a few speeches or 24/7 for four years minimum.
This is the second Hoover Institution scholar possibly connected to Palin recently. The eminent economist and Senior Fellow John B. Taylor is is rumored to be an economic adviser.
I find this interesting since it seems to signal the venerable Hoover Institution, and it's politics, may be where she turns for intellectual firepower and advisers. It also indicates that powerful forces are beginning to coalesce behind her something necessary and desirable.
A number of Senior Fellows at the Hoover Institution have for some time been writing positive defenses of Palin. For instance:
"I think Palin can speak, and reason, and navigate with bureaucrats and lawyers as well as can Obama; but he surely cannot understand hunters, and mechanics and carpenters like she can. And a Putin or a Chavez or a Wall-Street speculator that runs a leverage brokerage house is more a hunter than a professor or community organizer. Harvard Law School is not as valuable a touchstone to human nature as raising five children in Alaska while going toe-to-toe with pretty tough, hard-nose Alaskan males." Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow.
"The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence." Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow
"the mainstream media and Democrats relentlessly have pushed the false narrative that Bush was not trying to find bin Laden."
Yeah. Weird. I wonder where they got that idea?
Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is — really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just — he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is — as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide — if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.
@Nameless Cynic – you'll have to do better than that. His point was that the direct threats at that time came from multiple sources. The hunt for bin Laden never ceased, as we now know, and the early information which ultimately led to him was the result of that pursuit during the Bush years.
@William: Yup. Absolutely right. That's why he shut down the CIA's bin Laden unit in 2005 – of course, that may just have been because he was cranky about having blown his chance to get bin Laden at Tora Bora.
Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan. The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines. Instead, the U.S. command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias…
Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, (Commanding Gen. Tommy) Franks refused to deviate from the plan. (2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report)
The report "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora," and that decisions made by Donald Rumsfeld, his deputies, and other top administration officials allowed Bin Laden to escape.
As LtCol Reid Sawyer, the director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, told NPR earlier this week, "if bin Laden had been killed in Afghanistan eight years ago in the caves of Tora Bora, al-Qaida might well have died with him. Now the organization is diversified enough it could weather bin Laden’s death — and hardly miss a beat."
There. Was that better?
@Nameless Cynic – no it's not, it's 20/20 hindsight. If we dropped 800 Army rangers into Tora Bora, as some now say we should have, we would have had no assurance of capturing him (if he was there), and we would have had stranded hundreds in an area where we had no logistical support (at that time). As to disbanding the bin Laden unit, that does not mean that we stopped looking for him. As we now know, that search never stopped. If you can show me that we had the same intel in 2005 or 2006 as to bin Laden's location that we did a month ago, then I'll agree. But we didn't.