Never argue with an idiot.
One of the more enduring attacks on Bush by the Lefties of this world is over the fact that Bush indicated a strong desire to capture or kill Osoma Bin Ladin – OBL.
All Presidents are prone to making dramatic statements. FDR said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” And in pursuit of that tried his best to pack the Supreme Court.
Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Of course he didn’t follow that with an acknowledgement that there was no missile gap and that he had known so all during the campaign.
Nixon said, “Your President is not a crook.” But he didn’t tell us what he knew about the Watergate break in and when he knew it.
Reagan said, “……tear down that wall,” but didn’t mention that he had to do some things in Central America that the fellow travelers and the Left would try and impeach him over.
Then George HW Bush said, “Watch my lips. No new taxes.” And of course he did and of course that cost him his second term.
Clinton opined that “I have not had sex with that woman.” It took a blue dress and Congressional investigation and being impeached for the country to know that was a lie but the Left stoutly maintained that he had not, and besides, if he had it was between husband and wife and private. Of course an Arkansas judge stripped him of his license to practice law for lying…..that’s what perjury is… under oath.
Obamie still has a ways to go but he has already been called a liar in a most public way by a Congressman, and had that proven by his own staff. He has made numerous claims over taxes that are lies and we all know that. His other infamous “lies” concern his visits to 57 states, the self-identified terrorist William Ayers being “just a guy in the neighborhood,” and then he had his uncles serving all over Europe and liberating concentration camps. And lest we forget, he sat through 20 years of sermons by the Black Liberation preacher, Wright, and never heard enough to become angry about the cursing of America to get up and leave.
Simply put, whether or not it is a lie, promise or a misstatement, is largely in the mind of the reader.
As for George W Bush, it took the anti-war, anti-Israel, pro Palestinian Left only days to declare that “Bush lied and men died.” This started during 2002 during the first attacks on the Taliban who were harboring OBL and other al Qaeda members and came to full flower at the start of the invasion of Iraq. It became such a well known social phenomenon that the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” “BDS,” was born and became widely used to describe the out of control mouthing of the Left.
The problem for the Left is that when challenged they can’t prove Bush lied. And in fact the Senate passed the resolution to go to war with huge majorities in both Houses of Congress.
Iraq war resolution.
And many on the Left have even claimed that during his 2003 SOTU speech Bush claimed that Iraq had purchased yellow cake from Niger. This despite the fact that Bush had noted that the English had said that Iraq had TRIED, not purchased, to do so, a fact confirmed by Joe Wilson, retried State Department employee who went to Niger to investigate, in his debriefing by the CIA.
So basically the Left is left with the fact that OBL may, or may not be alive and that Bush is responsible.
Why did Bush do this? Well, according to the Left, because he rushed off to attack Iraq.
Of course the fact of the matter is that Bush pulled back on OBL because he had escaped into the high mountains on the Afghanistan – Pakistan border and the cost in military lives would not be worth the net gain of capturing and or killing him in an undeniable “he’s dead” manner.
Think about that. Here you had a President who had pledged to kill or capture OBL and who was facing a difficult election in a few years. OBL’s scalp on full display would have been a tremendous vote getter. The temptation to tell the military, “At all costs,” must have been unbelievably strong.
But again facts and history gets in the way.
One of the prime problems Clinton faced was the lack of cooperation by Pakistan. Clinton had not been able to solve that problem for two years. As Clarke, Clinton’s NSA said:
Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.
Clarke interview link
And while Bush was able to solve part of the Pakistan problem, it still remains today. To a d degree, Obama is as restrained as Bush was. He does have the advantage of better technology, the world has not stood still in the past 8 years, but he still doesn’t haven’t have carte blanche to go into the tribal region and do as he pleases.
So Bush was faced with the fact that OBL could slip back and forth across the borders. Plus, to kill or capture him we would have to chase him from village to village from cave to cave.
What that meant was that we would have to do it with ground forces with very limited air support. Why? Flying down high altitude valleys with mountains on both sides makes the helicopter an unwilling participant in a shooting gallery.
Ask the Soviets how well that worked out.
High altitude bombing, even with smart bombs, is not that effective against well concealed caves and other hardened targets.
So it goes back to ground troops fighting with essentially the same weapons as al Qaeda. Rifles, machine guns and rockets.
That’s a formula for disaster. Ask the Soviets.
So Bush decided that OBL was marginalized, on the run and not worth the cost in lives of our military.
Wise choice.
Too bad the Left either doesn’t care about the cost or doesn’t understand. Or in many cases, both.
On Twitter I am Lesabre1
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