2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[PanzerJaeger]

What elicits eye rolls from me about the ad is not the administration cynically using a nationally unifying event to score cheap political points or the selective editing of a Romney quote to make a completely baseless assertion about his willingness to OK such an operation. Obama & Co are just as sleazy and amoral as any other group of American politicos, and that's just American politics.

However, the claim that this was a 'tough decision' with 'a lot of downside' is insulting to my intelligence. I believe in their 'Mission Accomplished'-esce rollout last week, the administration even suggested that Obama bet his presidency on the raid.

As if. First of all, this was not - at all - a hard decision. As I said before, it was most likely the easiest decision the president has had to make during his 3.5 years - a decision any president of either party would have made without hesitation. It had a huge upside and practically no downside. Anyone familiar with our operations in the region knows that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these raids conducted by SOCOM each year, both inside and outside official combat theatres and especially in Pakistan. Many of those raids are unsuccessful. The American public never hears about them. Had OBL not been at the compound, we likely never would have known about the raid. Even a worst case scenario - the raid being stopped by Pakistani forces and the SEALS captured and/or killed - would have been an obscure international incident, a dust-up between two international frienemies that would have struggled to make it to the top of GoogleNews and would have been resolved with several trunks full of crisp $100 bills, as every problem with Pakistan is.

Besides which, according to the most detailed reporting that has surfaced, the decision to perform the raid was very much President 44's call.

I would be careful citing David Corn as a reliable, objective source on the president. Fred Barnes wrote a fun book on the Bush presidency, but I wouldn't call it a critical assessment.

[Lemur]

However, the claim that this was a 'tough decision' with 'a lot of downside' is insulting to my intelligence.

I seem to recall specials ops gone wrong having some impact in the past. Perhaps you're right and now would be different. But I shudder to think of the heyday Rushbo and the conservative media complex would have if Obama got a bunch of SEALS killed on a bum tip. Safe to say in that scenario the entire operation would have been a product of his fevered Alinskyite brain. But since it worked? Clearly he had nothing to do with it and/or it was so blindingly obvious a special needs child would have done the same. (Alternate: It could have been even better but OBOMBER screwed it up somehow, according ot our super-secret source. He deliberately allowed that stealth Blackhawk to crash so as to give the Chinese our tech, because he is a mulsin communist.)

I think most right wing people had the bin laden killing down as a positive for Obama without even thinking about it. If anything that ad will make them disinclined to give him any credit.

Because they were so on-the-fence before hand. These are largely the same people who believe that this administration's lack of movement on gun control is all part of a chilling Freemason scheme to take their guns away. Nah, I suspect those who turn purple with rage from this web ad are not the "persuadables."

Based on Obama's response to Team Romney's fit of apoplexy, I suspect this is a classic rope-a-dope. Obama's great political talent always has been inducing self-destruction in his opponents.

As for Corn, sorry for referencing, had no idea he was such a partisan hack. And SK, thanks for the gratuitous Tu Quoque of the screeching WMD-style article. Yay, two wrongs do make an omelet!

[PanzerJaeger]

I seem to recall specials ops gone wrong having some impact in the past. Perhaps you're right and now would be different.

It would be very different. The Carter Administration, being the Carter Administration, announced the failure of the mission to the world on the night that it happened and detailed pretty much the entire affair. The Iranians were not even sure what was going on until they read the administration's statement, which caused them to split the hostages up - making future rescue missions nearly impossible. These days, SOCOM raids on HVTs in the AfPak region are quite common and the military has developed a public relations architecture to deal with any eventuality, which is essentially silence followed by denial followed by outright lies. And maybe long after any potential story has died in the news cycle, some relevant half truths are dumped on a Friday afternoon before a holiday. This can be done because pretty much everyone in these missions is SOCOM or absorbed into SOCOM before they go, which did not exist in its current form in the '70's. Carter used lots of regular forces and there is, or was (the military keeps plenty of stuff they do hidden these days too), a perceived duty to be more transparent about their circumstances.

And my personal favorite, which appears to be addressed directly to Sasaki and Panzer: "So the Republican position on the operation that took out Osama bin Laden is that it was no big deal? Good luck with that one."

Bah. The backroom is searchable now. Go look at the thread I started about the killing of OBL. I made it clear that it was a big deal and gave the president plenty of credit for doing it - and I still do. I simply take issue with the notion that it was a particularly tough decision that only a president with Obama's resolve () could have made. Any president would have loved to get the man. As Romney said yesterday, 'even Jimmy Carter would have made that call.'

[Lemur]

I simply take issue with the notion that it was a particularly tough decision that only a president with Obama's resolve () could have made.

I guess I don't understand the outrage. Two thoughts: (1) Saying, "Hey, I did this thing and I'm uniquely cool for doing it" is pretty basic stuff, politically. It's not remarkable or abhorrent. (2) Sending in a team was riskier than bombing. Bigger risk for bigger reward, in terms of intel gained. I don't see how that's arguable.

[Papewaio]

Bombing is higher risk to all levels involved except to US special forces servicemen.

Bombs tend to kill civilians, destroy intel and like the cave bombings you are never certain that your target is now vapourised or living it up with his wives at another location.

The risk with going into Pakistan was invading a sovereign nation... well to be precise running a military operation against a wanted terrorist but not informing the local chain of command... Risk was to political and social whilst minimizing flight or fight combat risks. Mind you the Pakistan government may have know but they way it was spun gave them plausible deniability with their hardline elements. Bombing however would have created a larger backlash.

Intel could be confirmed that they got their man. Even if he shoulder camera did just happen to fail on entry to the room, and that capture and parading him in front of the world would have been the gold star... It is still much better from an intel point of view to shoot, tag and bag him rather then bomb and pray.

Bombs have a habit of missing targets. You don't want to start bombing military base towns in a spray and pray mission. Great way to not just burn an alliance but to start a war.

So bombing really wasn't the least risk option when doing he total tally. Whilst executing OBL was certainly not the highest return on risk, it was at least a return. The problems with getting OBL back would have been much harder than getting in.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Personally it just seems like the Republicans are crying foul because they don't have any sort of counter or spin. Usually when someone makes a claim, it's easy for the other to construct a spin and turn t around on the other guy. How can you spin this against Obama? Well, other than complaining about being unfair. But then again, Bush himself said that he honestly didn't care where OBL was after Tora Bora. Something along the lines of "He's not important."

Honestly, the Republican PR machine has been dropping the ball recently. They lost the War on Women, and now their defense with OBL is McCain saying, "Well, the thing about heros, is that they don't brag."

Uh huh, thanks John McCain, I'm sure you have followed that advice.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Personally it just seems like the Republicans are crying foul because they don't have any sort of counter or spin. Usually when someone makes a claim, it's easy for the other to construct a spin and turn t around on the other guy. How can you spin this against Obama? Well, other than complaining about being unfair. But then again, Bush himself said that he honestly didn't care where OBL was after Tora Bora. Something along the lines of "He's not important."

Honestly, the Republican PR machine has been dropping the ball recently. They lost the War on Women, and now their defense with OBL is McCain saying, "Well, the thing about heros, is that they don't brag."

Uh huh, thanks John McCain, I'm sure you have followed that advice.

Maybe you can explain it too me.

The ad overdramatizes the obama decision, and then dishonestly quotes romney out of context to claim that he wouldn't have made the call. It's obviously a bad ad, there's little to say about the ad. About obama, we could talk about how good he's been at anti-terror during his presidency, how willing to use the drone strikes. About romney, we could speculate about what his overall strategy would have been/will be. We could talk about many substantial things, so why would we ever talk about either parties PR machine? I thought generally how it went was "campaign ad gets posted, orgahs criticize whatever it is that the ad distorts, talk about something substantial".

eh, nevermind. It's not like I don't comprehend being partisan and "fighting the good fight" or whatever, so really I'm just complaining about it in overly-large posts. I'd be better off reading up on unions and the detroit bailout.

Its not like anyone votes on the issues anyway. Even on these hallowed forums, most of you have decided which side of the fence you want to be on and focus more on attempting to discredit the other side than build up any kind of meaningful platform. We should all be swing voters, but the truth is that most of you aren't and never will be. You've made your choice.

None of it is worth taking seriously until voters are willing to abandon both parties for alternatives that actually stick to their guns and support issues with conviction.

Its a joke. Just don't vote.

overly cynical

I read the other day that some of the wikileaks information could have let al quaida know that we were on to osama's hideout if it had been noticed. I also saw a bit of a speech by Paul where he called manning a patriot and a true american hero. He's not being marginalized unfairly, you guys just need a better libertarian candidate. Although I really think libertarianism is not a good stand alone political philosophy, it's too cut and dry which is the only reason libertarians tend to have such conviction.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

-meant to be an edit of the above-

[a completely inoffensive name]

Maybe you can explain it too me.

Sure!

Eh, nevermind.

...ok. :'(

[HopAlongBunny]

Its not like anyone votes on the issues anyway.

Mainly because issues are absent from political discourse at election time. Personal attacks and fear mongering seem to have become the norm for electioneering in North America.

[Lemur]

Personal attacks and fear mongering seem to have become the norm for electioneering in North America.

Don't forget the well-established trend of people voting against their own economic self-interest, as well. So even when policy issues are raised, the voters' reactions to them are unpredictable. That's why politics seems more art than science to this lemur.

[Major Robert Dump]

Of course there were a lot of downsides. He is a Democrat. GWB can take us into a retarded, pointless war in Iraq thatcosts vast amounts of lives and money, and it's all good now. Meanwhile, 30 years later, I get to hear about Jimmy Carter's failed Iranian rescue mission everytime a "democrats suck at military stuff" debate comes up. It even happens on this board quite regulalry.

So yeah, it was a tough decision, because if Iraq had been started by a Democrat he would have been crucified 10x over now, and Obama certainly didn't want to become the butt of Republican jokes for the next 30 years because he didn't bring an extra helicopter.

[Lemur]

Meanwhile, Team Romney continues to score goals on the wrong side of the field. Were all of you aware that the GM and Chrysler bailout were, in fact, exactly what Romney wanted? That President Obama was actually following Romney's advice?

One of Mitt Romney's top advisers said Saturday that President Obama's decision to bailout Chrysler and General Motors was actually Romney's idea.

"[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that," Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.

"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice."

The claim appears to be a shift from Mitt Romney's November 2008 op-ed in The New York Times, headlined, Let Detroit go bankrupt. [...]

But during the primary campaign, Romney repeatedly attacked Obama for lending billions of dollars in government money to the auto companies.

In a February op-ed in The Detroit News, Romney called Obama's auto bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale.”

“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse,” Romney wrote. “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

[Lemur]

Since I can't post it in the Game of Thrones thread (don't get the GWB reference, though—who is that character?):

[Tellos Athenaios]

(don't get the GWB reference, though—who is that character?)

Someone whose entire vocabulary consists of a single word "Hodor" which is also his name.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I seem to recall specials ops gone wrong having some impact in the past. Perhaps you're right and now would be different. But I shudder to think of the heyday Rushbo and the conservative media complex would have if Obama got a bunch of SEALS killed on a bum tip. Safe to say in that scenario the entire operation would have been a product of his fevered Alinskyite brain. But since it worked? Clearly he had nothing to do with it and/or it was so blindingly obvious a special needs child would have done the same. (Alternate: It could have been even better but OBOMBER screwed it up somehow, according ot our super-secret source. He deliberately allowed that stealth Blackhawk to crash so as to give the Chinese our tech, because he is a mulsin communist.)

It wasn't a tough decision with a lot of downside, especially compared to the downside for passing up on it. "perhaps panzer is right" yes I think so.

Because they were so on-the-fence before hand. These are largely the same people who believe that this administration's lack of movement on gun control is all part of a chilling Freemason scheme to take their guns away. Nah, I suspect those who turn purple with rage from this web ad are not the "persuadables."

Most people give him a big thumbs up for it, but people are naturally put off when politicians try to sell their accomplishments too much.

Based on Obama's response to Team Romney's fit of apoplexy, I suspect this is a classic rope-a-dope. Obama's great political talent always has been inducing self-destruction in his opponents.

"Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” Mr. Romney told reporters at a campaign stop here on Monday...“Over these last several days, we’ve seen our president go across the country and bring up all sorts of extraneous items, everything he can do to distract from the issue people care about,” Mr. Romney told the crowd. “I wish the president would start talking about the economy and stop trying to divert with all this silliness.”

Is this what you meant by fit of apoplexy or some other quote (I assume). Obama's ad dishonestly smears romney. I wouldn't praise that. Obama's follow up "I assume people mean what they say" was pretty bad too.

I see another quote now, something about "feckless foreign policy". Good word but it seems pretty standard.

As for Corn, sorry for referencing, had no idea he was such a partisan hack. And SK, thanks for the gratuitous Tu Quoque of the screeching WMD-style article. Yay, two wrongs do make an omelet!

I have a dailymail article somewhere too, it's pretty nice. I had a pretty good idea the guy was a hack from reading the article but man just don't praise stuff just because it's detailed.

Of course there were a lot of downsides. He is a Democrat. GWB can take us into a retarded, pointless war in Iraq thatcosts vast amounts of lives and money, and it's all good now. Meanwhile, 30 years later, I get to hear about Jimmy Carter's failed Iranian rescue mission everytime a "democrats suck at military stuff" debate comes up. It even happens on this board quite regulalry.

So yeah, it was a tough decision, because if Iraq had been started by a Democrat he would have been crucified 10x over now, and Obama certainly didn't want to become the butt of Republican jokes for the next 30 years because he didn't bring an extra helicopter.

I'm not so sure about this. I remember another story about a raid in somalia. Presumably this kind of thing is done frequently and we're better at it than we wore. Times have changed. Bush was pretty harshly criticized and was mocked endlessly for the "mission accomplished" stuff. I would also think carter was unpopular for other stuff but I don't know the history for that era really. Way before my time.

I think obama should go for a broader focus and talk about what he's done with the drone strikes etc in combating terrorism on the whole, he would look much better. Especially since the context of the romney quote was about taking the problem as a whole and that was part of romney's response to the ad. Although the drone strikes are unpopular with some people I guess.

Meanwhile, Team Romney continues to score goals on the wrong side of the field. Were all of you aware that the GM and Chrysler bailout were, in fact, exactly what Romney wanted? That President Obama was actually following Romney's advice?

One of Mitt Romney's top advisers said Saturday that President Obama's decision to bailout Chrysler and General Motors was actually Romney's idea.

"[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that," Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.

"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice."

The claim appears to be a shift from Mitt Romney's November 2008 op-ed in The New York Times, headlined, Let Detroit go bankrupt. [...]

But during the primary campaign, Romney repeatedly attacked Obama for lending billions of dollars in government money to the auto companies.

In a February op-ed in The Detroit News, Romney called Obama's auto bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale.”

“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse,” Romney wrote. “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

Huh, I went and read both the romney articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/op.../1x13HjVAzFRSg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ut-mitt-romney

And I don't really get the fuss. Perhaps the media is a little latched on to it's flip flopping romney story. Romney has serious criticisms of the way obama handled it, and there are significant similarities between his suggestion and what was actually done. I don't get economics but neither do political journalists as far as I can tell. If there's a problem it seems like it would have to do with romney being wrong about economics not some lightweight story about contradicting himself and claiming credit.

I tried to find the context for the Fehrnstrom quote but the video won't load, seems like it's from some press conference where they were talking about pranks and slow jamming the news and "the lighter side", so it seems silly to be so particular about the wording.

I dont follow your question.

Had the raid failed it would be a campaign sticking point of the right, much like what we still hear about Carter, despite there being a far worse military blunder started since Carters failure, that being Iraq, which we have already brushed under the rug because that campaign was not started by democrat

I remember bush getting hammered about that around the 2008 election and McCain working really hard to distance himself and obama working hard to connect him to it. I don't think it was brushed under the rug at all.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I remember bush getting hammered about that around the 2008 election and McCain working really hard to distance himself and obama working hard to connect him to it. I don't think it was brushed under the rug at all.

My recollection is that the 2008 distancing from Bush was nearly 100% economy driven. His 8 years of policies caused this bubble, yadda, yadda, yadda. Didn't hear to much about Iraq when everyone kept showing pictures of McCain with Bush along side that famous quote "The fundamentals of our economy are strong.".

[Lemur]

It wasn't a tough decision with a lot of downside, especially compared to the downside for passing up on it.

Ah, so you're dead certain that sending Navy SEALS into a sovereign nation with uncertain intel was "not a tough decision." I admire your certainty, if not your reasoning.

Bush was pretty harshly criticized and was mocked endlessly for the "mission accomplished" stuff.

False equivalence is false. GWB chest-thumped over an accomplishment which was epically unaccomplished. BHO is chest-thumping over an actual accomplishment. Small but crucial difference.

Perhaps the media is a little latched on to it's flip flopping romney story.

Ah, those evil, evil media people. Is there any wickedness they don't promote?

-edit-

Here's a useful and accurate bit of perspective (from the EVIL MEDIA, natch):

You know who this puts Obama on par with? Every fricking Republican who has run for office since 2001. Oh, yeah, and Hillary Clinton, whose infamous 3 a.m. phone-call ad from 2008 is being revisited in the wake of Obama’s new one.

Let us take a brief stroll down memory lane to the 2004 Republican Convention. The not-so-subtle theme: vote for John Kerry and al Qaeda will invade your homes and eat your children. This is only a slight exaggeration. Dick Cheney hasn’t uttered a word in the past decade that didn’t raise the specter of terrorists at the door. And Rudy Giuliani? Joe Biden said it best when he noted that for a long stretch, every sentence that came out of Hizzoner’s mouth consisted of “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.”

Going even further back, who can forget President Bush’s much-ridiculed, flight-suity “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln? But you know one of the main reasons that photo op was so widely ridiculed? It was bollocks. The “mission” in Iraq was anything but “accomplished.” Bush was touting an achievement he had not yet even achieved.

Osama bin Laden, by contrast, is very, very dead. [...]

Romney has been swinging at the president’s international cred of late. The governor has suggested he would be tougher than Obama on everyone from China to Iran, while his foreign-policy adviser Richard Williamson has flat out accused Obama of “naiveté and fecklessness.”

Those sound like fighting words to me. [...]

Is Team Obama’s ad a political punch to Romney’s magnificently chiseled jaw? Of course it is. It is harsh, exploitative, tacky even.

It is, in short, perfectly in keeping with today’s political climate.

A little more amusingness:

Republicans are — forgive the cliché — shocked, shocked to discover that a presidential contender is “politicizing” an important national event. In this sense, “politicizing” might be best translated as “beating us up and we don’t have anything much to say to stop it.” The ad itself raises intriguing, substantive, legitimate questions — and the ferocious, sputtering Republican reaction is proof positive that they know it, or at least suspect it.

And so on and so forth:

It couldn’t be more hilarious, watching these Republicans rend their garments over the Obama administration’s bin Laden video. Imaging the paroxysms we’d have been forced to endure if George W. Bush had iced the dreaded one is all we need to do to understand how hypocritical it all is. But what obviously gets under Republicans’ skin is not the fact of this video’s existence, but the fact that Barack Obama got him and they didn’t, which destroys their assumption of the past decade that they are “the 9/11 party."

And my personal favorite, which appears to be addressed directly to Sasaki and Panzer: "So the Republican position on the operation that took out Osama bin Laden is that it was no big deal? Good luck with that one."

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Ah, so you're dead certain that sending Navy SEALS into a sovereign nation with uncertain intel was "not a tough decision." I admire your certainty, if not your reasoning.

Why do you think it was a tough decision?

False equivalence is false. GWB chest-thumped over an accomplishment which was epically unaccomplished. BHO is chest-thumping over an actual accomplishment. Small but crucial difference.

MRD was saying republican war goofs were ignored and democrat war goofs repeated over and over. I was arguing against that kind of disparity.

Ah, those evil, evil media people. Is there any wickedness they don't promote?

Yes. But it's bad that they latch on to an easy narrative and churn out "here's more of so and so being X" stories. It leads to a simplified and false image of the presidential candidates being broadcast to the american people. My favorite Kimmel joke from the WHCD was a "non joke":

"Some people say journalism is on the decline, you've become too politicized, too focused on sensationalism. They say you no longer honor your duty to inform America, but instead actively try to divide us so that your corporate overlords can rake in the profits… I don't have a joke for this, I'm just letting you know what some people say…"

Here's a useful and accurate bit of perspective (from the EVIL MEDIA, natch):

You know who this puts Obama on par with? Every fricking Republican who has run for office since 2001. Oh, yeah, and Hillary Clinton, whose infamous 3 a.m. phone-call ad from 2008 is being revisited in the wake of Obama’s new one.

Let us take a brief stroll down memory lane to the 2004 Republican Convention. The not-so-subtle theme: vote for John Kerry and al Qaeda will invade your homes and eat your children. This is only a slight exaggeration. Dick Cheney hasn’t uttered a word in the past decade that didn’t raise the specter of terrorists at the door. And Rudy Giuliani? Joe Biden said it best when he noted that for a long stretch, every sentence that came out of Hizzoner’s mouth consisted of “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.”

Going even further back, who can forget President Bush’s much-ridiculed, flight-suity “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln? But you know one of the main reasons that photo op was so widely ridiculed? It was bollocks. The “mission” in Iraq was anything but “accomplished.” Bush was touting an achievement he had not yet even achieved.

Osama bin Laden, by contrast, is very, very dead. [...]

Romney has been swinging at the president’s international cred of late. The governor has suggested he would be tougher than Obama on everyone from China to Iran, while his foreign-policy adviser Richard Williamson has flat out accused Obama of “naiveté and fecklessness.”

Those sound like fighting words to me. [...]

Is Team Obama’s ad a political punch to Romney’s magnificently chiseled jaw? Of course it is. It is harsh, exploitative, tacky even.

It is, in short, perfectly in keeping with today’s political climate.

A little more amusingness:

Republicans are — forgive the cliché — shocked, shocked to discover that a presidential contender is “politicizing” an important national event. In this sense, “politicizing” might be best translated as “beating us up and we don’t have anything much to say to stop it.” The ad itself raises intriguing, substantive, legitimate questions — and the ferocious, sputtering Republican reaction is proof positive that they know it, or at least suspect it.

And so on and so forth:

It couldn’t be more hilarious, watching these Republicans rend their garments over the Obama administration’s bin Laden video. Imaging the paroxysms we’d have been forced to endure if George W. Bush had iced the dreaded one is all we need to do to understand how hypocritical it all is. But what obviously gets under Republicans’ skin is not the fact of this video’s existence, but the fact that Barack Obama got him and they didn’t, which destroys their assumption of the past decade that they are “the 9/11 party."

And my personal favorite, which appears to be addressed directly to Sasaki and Panzer: "So the Republican position on the operation that took out Osama bin Laden is that it was no big deal? Good luck with that one."

What "intriguing, substantive, and legitimate" questions does the ad raise? Why did you link and quote four people who are just saying the same things you've been saying?

I get it, to you any kind of dishonest smear job by obama is fine because as long as it shows he's a "clever politician" who's "taking it to the republicans". You often focus on the polls and how some political move might go over with the public rather than whether it's actually good or bad and you consistently have this wildly exaggerated impression of how "hard obama rocked" the republicans. They are rending their garments, getting beaten up, in apoplexy, ferocious sputtering, etc.

It's a weird situation where the rest of the people (not just me and panzer, the forum as a whole) are here talking about politics and events etc, metaphorically sitting around a fireplace, and you're here campaigning like we're in the political trenches, throwing out blog-grenades willy nilly, scrabbling around for ammunition to use against the "enemy", and ducking imaginary salvos.

[Lemur]

Why do you think it was a tough decision?

By most accounts there were two options put forward on the uncertain intel: Bomb or go in with a team. The safe option was to bomb. Do the math. (Of course, the far-right blog post you credulously repost entire probably says differently (I take it wingnut, unsourced conspiracy theories are part of your fireside chat ethos?). I'm going with mainstream accounts. And yes, a joint op with Pakistan was considered, and I hope laughed out of the room.)

I get it, to you any kind of dishonest smear job by obama is fine because as long as it shows he's a "clever politician" who's "taking it to the republicans".

Thank you for articulating my entire worldview! I can rest easy now, much less hard thinking to do.

You often focus on the polls and how some political move might go over with the public rather than whether it's actually good or bad

Needs citation, as the Wikipedia folks say.

It's a weird situation where the rest of the people (not just me and panzer, the forum as a whole) are here talking about politics and events etc, metaphorically sitting around a fireplace, and you're here campaigning like we're in the political trenches, throwing out blog-grenades willy nilly, scrabbling around for ammunition to use against the "enemy", and ducking imaginary salvos.

I'd suggest that speaking for the Org as a whole is a dicey bit of business, which you'll probably want to retract or "clarify," not to mention the unintentional comedy factor of telling me my own motives. You do, in fact, appear to be rending your garments.

-edit-

P.S.: Romney has updated his rhetoric, recognizing a losing fight for what is is. Might want to adjust yours as well.

Mitt Romney today praised President Obama for giving the order to kill Osama bin Laden, a day after saying "even Jimmy Carter" would have done so.

"I commend all those who planned and conducted the bin Laden raid, and I applaud President Obama for giving the go-ahead for the mission," Romney said in a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of bin Laden's death.

Going back to your response to Team Romney being the guiding light in the Detroit bailout:

Romney has serious criticisms of the way obama handled it, and there are significant similarities between his suggestion and what was actually done. I don't get economics but neither do political journalists as far as I can tell. If there's a problem it seems like it would have to do with romney being wrong about economics not some lightweight story about contradicting himself and claiming credit.

Everyone agreed that GM and Chrysler needed restructuring; the question was how. Obama believed that the feds needed to be involved, Romney did not, and writes about finding private investors. Economists then and now pointed out that private investors were running scared, and that delaying everything to find them would result in an unstructured bankruptcy for two of the big three American automakers. Details:

The major questions here are (1) whether it was feasible for the companies to find private financing to restructure and (2) whether the associated job loss and economic ripple effects would have been acceptable. While Romney is correct that the restructuring was what he suggested, his idea at the time was hardly unique; there was a consensus that the companies needed to be significantly reshaped. The question was how to do it, and he said the answer was without federal funds.

[Kralizec]

Of course there were a lot of downsides. He is a Democrat. GWB can take us into a retarded, pointless war in Iraq thatcosts vast amounts of lives and money, and it's all good now. Meanwhile, 30 years later, I get to hear about Jimmy Carter's failed Iranian rescue mission everytime a "democrats suck at military stuff" debate comes up. It even happens on this board quite regulalry.

So yeah, it was a tough decision, because if Iraq had been started by a Democrat he would have been crucified 10x over now, and Obama certainly didn't want to become the butt of Republican jokes for the next 30 years because he didn't bring an extra helicopter.

Only Bush could go to Iraq?

[Major Robert Dump]

I dont follow your question.

Had the raid failed it would be a campaign sticking point of the right, much like what we still hear about Carter, despite there being a far worse military blunder started since Carters failure, that being Iraq, which we have already brushed under the rug because that campaign was not started by democrat

[Kralizec]

Only Bush could go to Iraq?

I dont follow your question.




Had the raid failed it would be a campaign sticking point of the right, much like what we still hear about Carter, despite there being a far worse military blunder started since Carters failure, that being Iraq, which we have already brushed under the rug because that campaign was not started by #democrat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_goes_to_China

Only Bush could have mucked it up without losing all credibility