Even Mo Dowd in The New York Times is a bit surprised (really?) by the brazenish approach.
The White House clearly blessed the dramatic reconstruction of the mission by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker — so vividly descriptive of the SEALS' looks, quotes and thoughts that Schmidle had to clarify after the piece was published that he had not actually talked to any of them...
The White House is also counting on the ... big-screen version of the killing of bin Laden to counter Obama's growing reputation as ineffectual.
The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made "The Hurt Locker" will no doubt reflect the president's cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.
The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president's image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero SEALs.
Poor Ms. Dowd. She's all worried about her guy, Barack. He looks to be more concerned with his own re-election than that of the lives of his subjects. The woman is awakening to reality!
Barack Obama blazed like Luke Skywalker in 2008, but he never learned to channel the Force. And now the Tea Party has run off with his light saber.
The dissonance of his promise and his reality is jarring.
When he had power, he didn't use it. He wanted to be a "transformational" president like Ronald Reagan, but failed to understand that Reagan's strategic shows of strength allowed him to keep the whip hand without raising his voice.
And now, just when the high school principal in the Oval has been browbeating Congress to help create jobs, he is once more distracted from that task as he tries to save his own.
He goes to fundraisers to tell people to stick with him, but he seems to be trying to reassure himself.
Let's remember these are the same liberals that shouted from the rooftops that George W. Bush was using the tragedy of 9/11/01 for his political advantage.
Or, Rudy Guiliani.
Or, George Pataki.
That was then. This is now.
The fact is, our country grieves for the loss of military heroes this weekend. The President and his re-election team are counting on using the capture of bin Laden as proof that Obama can show decision making skills where there is no evidence otherwise. Now, members of the very team of SEALs that he hopes to exploit are dead.
In the single deadliest loss for U.S. troops since the Afghan war began in late 2001, 30 service members died early Saturday when a helicopter carrying them went down while they were reinforcing other troops, officials said.
Insurgents are believed to have shot down the CH-47 Chinook, a U.S. military official said. The Taliban claimed militants downed the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.
Among the 25 U.S. special operations forces killed in Wardak province were 22 Navy SEALS, considered to be the "best of the best." Seven Afghan troops also died.
The majority of the Navy SEALs who died belonged to the same covert unit that conducted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, though they were not the same men, the military official said.
They deserve so much better from their Commander-in-Chief.
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