Huffington Post

By Jason Linkens

On last night's edition of his eponymous Fox News show, Sean Hannity briefly took a trip to his smile-time fantasy world when he had this conversation with Frank Luntz:

HANNITY: I know the president will say, 'Well, we got bin Laden.' Putting that aside...

LUNTZ: And the public gives him credit for that.

HANNITY: They do. The public does give him credit for that. But it wouldn't have happened if he had his way, and I think that can be proved as well on tape.

Oh, really? That would sure be interesting. You see, if President Barack Obama really didn't want to take out bin Laden, he sure had an odd way of showing it. The easiest way to avoid going after bin Laden would be to say something like -- I don't know ... bin Laden is "one person" and that you "really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." Which isn't necessarily the height of awfulness, mind you, there's numerous ways to confront al Qaeda and the threat they represent.

But killing bin Laden, nevertheless, seems for all the world like something Obama was really into doing. As ABC News reported, the president "authorized the development of a plan for the United States to bomb bin Laden's compound with two B-2 stealth bombers dropping a few dozen 2,000-pound bombs" back in March. But when it became clear that this mission would preclude any possibility of obtaining physical evidence to attest to bin Laden's demise, the plan was scrapped in favor of what would become "Operation Geronimo" -- the riskier Navy Seals raid on the compound. And to that end, a replica of bin Laden's compound was erected at Bagram Air Force Base's "Camp Alpha." There, the Seals practiced the raid, making two dry runs in April ahead of the May mission.

This is all a very convoluted and, ultimately, ineffective way of demonstrating that you didn't really give a crap about killing bin Laden, let alone actively not wanting to kill him. Here's a hint: If you really don't want a terrorist mastermind to get killed, you should probably not assign the task to highly trained military professionals, and then give them a practice facility, two stealth helicopters and a hero dog to carry out the task. When you do that stuff, things tend to run, inexorably, in the "let's try to kill bin Laden" direction.

But Hannity says that some "tape" can prove otherwise. (And you know, it's an election year ... there's always some tape that's supposed to be floating around!) I'd be interested in seeing that tape, obviously. But I don't think that's going to happen. Meanwhile, here's a tape of Sean Hannity, a few days after Obama's inauguration, bitching about how Obama had "softened his stance" on killing bin Laden.

Interestingly enough, at one point, Hannity says of Obama's "softened" policy, "Isn't this precisely what President Bush has done? Marginalize bin Laden by chasing him into caves where he's been unable to harm us?" For starters, he wasn't in a cave (as it turns out)! But listening to Hannity praise Bush's approach to bin Laden, I can't help thinking that he sounds like a guy who wouldn't have killed bin Laden, if he had his way.

Conservative Refocus Retort:

Indeed, Jason, but perhaps you didn't seen the alternative game of inner-West Wing drama that sources say actually unfolded between Jarret, Obama and a number of other staff members:

In the insider explanation, Valerie Jarrett, the Mao loving adviser, tried to continually way-lay Obama into avoiding the Bin Laden decision altogether. Obama, being the leftwardly malleable POTUS, seemed to heed Jarrett's council at every turn. In fact, it was the military/intelligence officials who actually overruled Obama at ultimately taking out Bin Laden, as it turns out.

It was Panetta who executed a constant work-around when faced with the President's maddeningly persistent hesitation regarding Osama Bin Laden's demise. The debate to invade Bin Laden's compound had been in the works since August 2010 according to numerous accounts. Hillary Clinton, who had known of the President's hesitation, became livid when Obama never took a position on the intensifying argument to take out Bin Laden while the opportunity was still available. The insider states that Clinton's State Department actually began leaking small amounts of information in an effort to goad the President into acting.

Here again it was the tentative Jarrett who feared for her President's standing should the SEAL campaign fail, and she also feared that the Muslim world and the Mideast would destabilize as a result of any attack on Bin Laden. As the situation continued to unfold and more facts became known, it was Petraeus who had nearly locked down the President's decision to allow him to bomb Bin Laden with little collateral damage; however, Jarrett, once again, moved Obama into a position of neutrality, thereby angering Panetta and much of the staff. In fact, it was at this juncture that Gates made the decision to retire from his position as SecDef.

At this point, the insider states that Panetta began maneuvering the President masterfully into a position that assured that the mission would be tried. Panetta convinced Obama that the leaks were increasing to the point that eventually word would get out. If Obama failed to act before Bin Laden disappeared again, the President's re-election hopes would whither and die in a cloud of Presidential malpractice. At this point, Obama, knowing that an on the ground attack would both require more time and preparation, as well as allowing the President greater time to make a final decision, gave the go ahead for Panetta to plan for an on the ground take down by special forces, also intending that Panetta would be left with sole discretion as the fall-guy should the plan fail. But what Obama and the calculating Jarrett did not know was that Panetta had already planned for this possibility well in advance and had, in fact, been planning for it for months. The operation was ready to go within hours.....

So, the insider story has quite a different spin altogether.  Is it true? Only the players know for sure, but from everything I have seen, this far more keeps in character with the true Obama than the one which is constantly being parlayed, at least from his liberal worshipers. In order to read the rest of the story, click on the following link and scroll down to the header "The Missing Maoist" :

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