It’s the birthers that are crazy! Pay no attention to these people:
Rhodes is lecturing the conservatives that she has the “facts” that George W. Bush and his administration knew that Osama bin Laden was cooling his heels in Abbotabad for years. She’s embraced the full-crazy Michael Moore theory that Bush really had no interest in justice for Osama
Yes, the BusHitler wanted to make sure that his successor would get credit for the capture. Riiiiigggghhht.
[Update a few minutes later]
The reluctant president?
It’s not just his postmodern worldview that suggests this reluctance. It is the discombobulated aftermath of the killing, the weirdly botched reportage featuring such events as cabinet members in the situation room supposedly watching a (we learned) non-existent streaming video of the action and the statement that bin Laden — who had been under surveillance for months from a CIA safe house — was living in a million dollar mansion.
That was dialed down within a day or two to $250,000 and then revealed, in videos, to be close to a slum. In fact, OBL’s squalid living conditions made the hated Guantanamo seem like the Four Seasons. If the SEALs had taken him alive, it would have been an upgrade.
Indeed, it was those SEALs that were the only ones who performed their part with professionalism. Everything else seemed ad hoc, as if thrown together at the last moment after, one guesses, various parties finally convinced, or even forced, the president to act. There was no preparation for the aftermath, no apparent plan of how to inform or not inform the public of this cataclysmic event when such a decision was in many ways as important as the action itself. What resulted was an embarrassing blabbermouth display of public contradiction. Some of this can be justified by the fog of war, but not to the extent we saw. Something more was at work and I think it was a reluctant president.
It looks like it to me, too. And as noted, the death of bin Laden isn’t the end of the war, or the beginning of the end. At best, as Churchill said in a different context, it is the end of the beginning.
Regarding a “reluctant president”, I’ve heard numerous folks say that authorizing the the bin Laden raid was Obama making the tough decisions or how he agonized over the decision. Tough decision? We’ve finally got a bead on the guy we’ve been tracking for 10 years? The only questions are whether the plan to get him is credible and then how to handle the aftermath. Giving the go-ahead should be a no-brainer.
I’d ask “what the hell is wrong with Rhodes? That doesn’t make any sense even from a completely cynical point of view!”, but then I’ve had the misfortune of being acquainted with her alleged thought process before, so I’m not surprised.
I’m more inclined to wonder what the hell is the matter with the radio station program managers who put her on their schedule.
Bin Laden was discovered last August and Obama didn’t do any “serious planning” until January. It took nearly five months for Obama to decide to go after Bin Laden. Certainly isn’t an example of decisive decision making. It fits in with other examples like the Afghan surge, cancelling constellation, the debt commission, BP spill, and others.
When Obama does make decisive decisions, we get Shirley Sherod being fired and comments that lead to beer summits.
Randi Rhodes has always struck me as being a paranoid old drunken bar hag — the epitome of the creature known as “My Second ‘Rebound’ Ex-Wife, the One I Had To Have A Restraining Order Put On.” Also see “Future Bag Lady.”