On the eve on the second presidential debate, the Associated Press is running a story that the U.S. is "considering" covert military operations against those involved in the deadly terror attack in Libya on September 11th. The article attributes the story to four anonymous officials within the Administration...including one "former" official and also an outside analyst.
Now there are a few issues with this "news."
The first is the timing. It's been over a month since the attacks occurred. Since that time, the Obama Administration has repeated the now known falsehood that it was not, in fact, an orchestrated terrorist attack and instead was all a result of a protest. For two weeks afterward, that was the story repeated by numerous officials, including President Obama himself. The reason for that was, I believe, an opportunistic response to instill the idea set forth in UN Resolution 16/18 which criminalizes all speech that denigrates a religion if that speech incites violence. (Basically if anything insults a religion and causes others to react violently, the thing said or done will be punished for inciting the violence. This resolution was helped pushed through the United Nations by our very own President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.) It only makes sense then, that they believe in such a law and would like to see one put in place in America. Of course, people won't give up their free speech easily so you have to prove to them that it's the right thing to do. This was the perfect opportunity to try it out. By insisting the violence was caused by a movie, the idea that we shouldn't do or say anything insulting to Islam could be propigated. This is why I believe they continued to stick to the story about the protest for so long after everyone else knew it was terrorism.
The other problem with the timing of this announcement is that it takes place one day before a presidential debate in which the question of Libya will inevitably come up. It doesn't answer all of the questions the president needs to answer about the attack, but it does give him an answer to the question about our response.
And that brings up the other problem about this announcement. 22 days before a presidential election this story is "leaked." Now that it's been leaked, the president has no need to keep it a secret. He may well say that he cannot respond about classified or covert missions...however, since it's no longer covert he could talk about it all he likes. It doesn't really matter whether he brings it up for political gain or not. It's already out there and so he can simply sit back and watch his media cronies spread the story. He may look better if he says that he can't talk about it on the grounds that it's covert...because it's not covert anymore and he knows people will hear about it anyway. Anyway you slice it, the timing of these "leaks" seems oddly suspicious.
Which brings me to the 3rd problem. Any such "covert" military action against terrorists doesn't work very well IF THE TERRORISTS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT! Covert action leaked becomes overt action...and overt action is decidedly more risky to the military forces engaging in such actions. Now, of course, there's no way these leaks can be traced back to the president himself. But there is no question that these leaks help the president politically. And it is also not the first time leaks have come from the White House. Earlier this year a group of retired special operations soldiers made a video criticizing President Obama and his Administration for leaks concerning the details of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and other "covert" military activity. I think I'll add that video at the end of this post.
There is no question that leaks can cost lives. And there is no doubt that many leaks have been good for Obama politically, including these leaks. So the question being raised is this: are these leaks intentionally made by the White House in an attempt to make Obama look better? There may be no way to get that answer, or no one brave enough to try, but the timing of these leaks raises enough suspicion to make me wonder.
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