Inside the White House before the Abbottabad Raid

[revan1013]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...bama-go-on-bin-laden-mission/?intcmp=trending

Of course Biden is the one we hear this from. He sure likes to freely give information. Apparently he was trying to point out that the president was decisive once he made the decision to go forward. I thought this was interesting.

TLDR:
1. Panetta was the only member of the inner circle that urged the president to launch the Abbottabad Raid. Even his most pessimistic analyst felt it was very likely Osama was in the compound.

2. Biden voted no on the raid. Didn't think it was worth the risk.

3. ADM Mullen supported the raid. GEN Cartwright preferred an airstrike.

 

[shutout39]

The first thing I thought when I read this story a few days back was that I was impressed at the balls of President Obama. The next thing I thought was that's exactly the kind of thing the Obama 2012 campaign would want me to be thinking right about now. "backbone like a ramrod" give me a break!

 

[shutout39]

Then again, wouldn't someone in that room come out and call BS on Biden? I'm probably wrong who knows...

 

[revan1013]

Probably not publicly. It's not really smart to badmouth your boss, or senior leadership. Biden has a big mouth, for sure. Who knows if he's pissed anyone off enough to entice them to call him out.

 

[Fallonflyr]

It takes huge balls to trust your warriors and to green light a mission like this. Obama did and won. Kennedy did with the Bay of Pigs and lost. we will never know whether or not that would have hurt him in the long run. If Carter's raid in Iran had been a success, Reagan would have been remembered as a former Governor of California that used to make movies with a monkey.

 

[revan1013]

^^ And Reagan got a great January surprise after the hostages were released around his inauguration. Like the Iranians were just holding out to give Carter a great big middle-finger.

 

[Brett327]

^^ And Reagan got a great January surprise after the hostages were released around his inauguration. Like the Iranians were just holding out to give Carter a great big middle-finger.

Many suggest that the Iranian regime knew Reagan would have a much more hawkish policy toward Iran and gave him a gift to appease and de-escalate the situation. Iran also needed to pivot their focus toward their new war with Iraq. To give credit where credit is due, all the diplomacy and groundwork that led to the release was a product of a lot of hard work by the Carter Admin guys like Warren Christopher. Carter got us into that mess, but he also, eventually, got us out.

Brett

 

[Owen]

I must disagree with the Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
He withdrew the promised air support at the last minute and
that's why the invasion failed. Had U.S. forces been allowed
to establish and maintain air superiority history may have
turned out very differently.

 

[revan1013]

I must disagree with the Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
He withdrew the promised air support at the last minute and
that's why the invasion failed. Had U.S. forces been allowed
to establish and maintain air superiority history may have
turned out very differently.

True. A lot of the released documents about the Bay of Pigs shows the administration having last-minute cold feet. They were worried it was far too overt, too risky. But they went through with a half-assed operation and doomed it to failure. The 60s is rife with plenty of examples of unwillingness to go all-in on military operations because of geopolitical concerns. That is a big reason the Powell Doctrine of "Go Big or Go Home" (my words obviously) became so popular in the post-Vietnam military during the late Reagan/Bush buildup.

Many suggest that the Iranian regime knew Reagan would have a much more hawkish policy toward Iran and gave him a gift to appease and de-escalate the situation. Iran also needed to pivot their focus toward their new war with Iraq. To give credit where credit is due, all the diplomacy and groundwork that led to the release was a product of a lot of hard work by the Carter Admin guys like Warren Christopher. Carter got us into that mess, but he also, eventually, got us out.

Brett

Yes and that suggestion could be applied to the Russians as well. There was a sincere fear in Russian inner-circles that Reagan was insane and would start a nuclear war. Reagan eventually became one of the biggest opponents of nuclear proliferation. It was a major shift in doctrine to move towards funding a large conventional military versus a strategic nuclear force. I agree that Christopher, Brzezinski, and others in Carter's administration helped lay a framework for the release of the hostages, though I wouldn't give Carter himself nearly as much of that credit. Yes it was his show, but didn't handle bilateral aggressive negotiations as well as he handled peacemaking, such as the Camp David Accords. Very good moderator, peacemaker, but not so much one-on-one.

 

[Flash]

I must disagree with the Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He withdrew the promised air support at the last minute and that's why the invasion failed. Had U.S. forces been allowed to establish and maintain air superiority history may have turned out very differently.

True. A lot of the released documents about the Bay of Pigs shows the administration having last-minute cold feet. They were worried it was far too overt, too risky. But they went through with a half-assed operation and doomed it to failure. The 60s is rife with plenty of examples of unwillingness to go all-in on military operations because of geopolitical concerns. That is a big reason the Powell Doctrine of "Go Big or Go Home" (my words obviously) became so popular in the post-Vietnam military during the late Reagan/Bush buildup.

The invasion didn't fail because it was not backed up by air support, it was a poorly planned operation that was probably doomed to fail from the start as Revan says. The whole premise of the operation was to help spark a popular uprising against Castro but in fact he was popular with the majority of the people and the Cuban Army at that time. And how does one expect a military operation planned by folks who had never even been in the military to pan out? American air support only would have delayed the inevitable.