Bin Laden: Mission Kill!
BY Herschel Smith
13 years, 6 months ago
As we discussed in Mission Kill or Mission Capture the administration just can’t get the narrative straight. The situation isn’t improving with time. One U.S. official said “Our Special Forces weren’t raiding a girl scout troop looking for overdue library books. They were on a kill mission for Osama bin Laden.” Very well. I’m okay with that. But the administration continues to botch the narrative with discussions about justification for the raid. He had access to guns, and “He was not compliant. He did not surrender.” So the rules for killing (between our previous discussion and this one) now include the possibility that he may be wearing an explosive vest, having access to weapons, and being noncompliant.
In addition to having to kill insurgents, my own son had to lay football style tackles down on people in Fallujah 2007 because they didn’t have weapons and yet needed to be detained or brought down for whatever reason. And every house he entered had weapons. And as for the possibility that someone may have explosives, that might have been a justification for shooting in almost any domicile they raided (and there is a difference between entering and raiding, and they did raid and perform room clearing operations).
There is more though. Senator Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, gives us more insight into just what happened.
”I hope they went in with the idea of killing him, not capturing him. We needed to take this guy out. And I know that’s what the executive order said.
“The other thing you have to remember is that this was pitch dark. When they got into the room with bin Laden, they already had to go through some other folks downstairs, two of which they killed. And they were having to use explosives to blow doors open. By the time they got to him, they didn’t know what they would find.”
Well, being pitch dark is irrelevant and doesn’t affect the rules of engagement. That’s just one more justification in an attempt to hide the apparent executive order to kill Bin Laden. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still have no problem with the order, if it was issued. It seems to comport with the other information that has been unearthed. I have a problem with Marines in the Helmand Province operating under different rules, rules that force them to arrest known Taliban IED emplacers, who have blown the legs off of fellow Marines, and then who are seen walking by waving and smiling while the Marines are on patrol a week later because the prison system is so corrupt in Afghanistan.
Try to convince the Marines in Helmand that Bin Laden was a higher value target than the Taliban who just made sure that their buddy would never walk again. Try to convince my friend John Bernard – who lost his only son Joshua Bernard in Dahaneh, Afghanistan on 8/14/09 and won’t see him again this side of heaven – that SEAL Team 6, however much we might appreciate their work in this raid, should be operating under rules that make them any more safe than the Marines in Helmand or U.S. Soldiers in the Pech River Valley.
It’ll be a mighty hard sell to me.
On May 7, 2011 at 1:56 am, DesertPete45 said:
Excellent point Hershel!! Why are there ROE for one operation different than another??? I remember well John Bernard and the incident surrounding his son Joshua. Even if Mr. Bernard had 10 sons it would not minimize the loss of Joshua. We are fighting an enemy who is laughing in their hooches at night as they sip their tea with sugar cubes between their teeth. My son, who is now on his second combat tour of A-stan, in 2009 saw Afghanis planting IEDs at night on their IR camera but were denied permission to take the damn bastards out. My son had friends killed and maimed by IEDs so what does our govt tell their parents, wifes, etc??? “”On behalf of a grateful nation, I present this flag as a token of our appreciation for the faithful and selfless service of your loved one for this country.” Bullshit!!! Who is the grateful nation? Certainly not the pleasure seeking teens in high schools across the nation taught by Marxist spouting teachers who know nothing about our military or the sacrifice and terror of battle and the real sacrifice of war and loved ones. Certainly not the Marxist/communist professors in the fever swamp of liberalism on our universities and colleges where we pay dearly to send our sons and daughters only to have them taught by America hating pigs. And certainly NOT by our communist president, not my president, whose life dream and that of his commie father is to destroy capitalism and our way of life and if the bastard gets another four years our once great nation will be gone forever!!! And certainly not the masses of fools who are ignorant of economics and history and who will vote for the charlaltan in chief obama no matter what. We must have the dumbest electorate in the world. The liberal commie swine have done a good job infiltrating journalism, law and education over the past several decades that generations of children have been brainwashed by the commies. There is a young man, about 50 miles from where I live who served proudly with the Marine Corp as did Mr. Bernard’s son, Joshua. He served in A-stan and stepped on an IED, now he is minus two legs and an arm!!!! What do we tell this hero when we finally decide we have been in A-stan long enough, ignore the hill bandit Karzai, and decide to fold our tents and come home as we did in Vietnam. All we have to show for Vietnam is 58+ thousand young American, many of them my friends dammit killed and multitudes wounded and maimed and for what. To leave Vietnam to become a commie hell hole as it would have been had we never been there. Is that the fate of A-stan????? I fear so. May God bless our servicemen and women in these hell holes that America has become too chicken and PC to win. I salute all of our brave young men and women having to serve under a commie, America hating president in these sewers that we could clean if we had real men in charge but our leaders including the military leaders have become limp wristed, spineless, panty-waste girlymen. May God bless the United States of America and our servicemen and women who faithfully serve.
On May 7, 2011 at 2:54 am, jj said:
Yeah, What Desert Pete said……..