Report says Obama lied about bin Laden raid.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
In a lengthy expose published Sunday at the London Review of Books, author Seymour M. Hersh accused President Obama of deceiving Americans with his narrative of the 2011 raid that took out terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, the Hill reported. According to The Hill, Hersh accused Obama of "rushing to take credit for the al Qaeda leader's death."
Hersh said Obama's actions forced the military and intelligence communities to scramble and then collaborate the president’s version of events, Mark Hensch reported. Hersh, The Hill added, based his entire report on a single anonymous source he said "is a “retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abottabad.”
Hersh's source said the Pakistani government played an active role in approving and implementing the raid on bin Laden’s compound. Additionally, the source said the Obama administration was set to announce that bin Laden was killed in a drone strike.
But Obama decided to announce the raid in a speech Hersh said "was put together in a rush.” Hersh's source reportedly said that Obama's "series of self-serving and inaccurate statements would create chaos in the weeks following.”
As we reported at the time, Vice President Joe Biden called the raid the "most audacious" military action ever conceived in 500 years. An ad put forward by a veterans group took Obama to task for repeatedly "spiking the football" over the raid. A Connecticut company even released an action figure comparing Obama to the movie character "John Rambo."
“This was not the fog of war,” the source reportedly told Hersh. “The fact that there was an agreement with the Pakistanis and no contingency analysis of what was to be disclosed if something went wrong – that wasn’t even discussed."
“And once it went wrong, they had to make up a new cover story on the fly,” the source added. The report also accused the administration of embellishing the details of the raid, presenting al-Qaeda as a bigger threat than it really was, Hensch said. "Obama today is not facing re-election as he was in the spring of 2011," he added, praising Obama's overtures to Iran as "principled." He also praised Obama's "decision to operate without the support of the conservative Republicans in Congress."
But that doesn't let the administration off the hook. "High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no," he said.
SUGGESTED LINKS
- Joe Biden: Raid to take out bin Laden 'most audacious' plan in 500 years
- Obama lies about healthcare lie at OFA gathering
- Obama caught in lie about White House salaries
- Connecticut company releases Obama SEAL action figure 'Rambama'
- Top general to Huckabee: Obama knew whereabouts of bin Laden in summer 2010
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