The Finish, The Killing of Osama bin Laden

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." - James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

I have just finished Mark Bowden’s book, “The Finish, The Killing of Osama bin Laden”. It was a tough read as in many cases Bowden repeated himself. About half of the book was devoted to Obama and his decision making process dating back to 2007 and his first impressions on 9/11. One-quarter of the book was devoted bin Laden and his writings to member al Qaeda and his philosophies on Islam and letters to his fighters and subordinates. One quarter of the book was devoted to the planning for the raid, the raid itself and an epilogue on the aftermath including the spin and Biden’s stupid statements. Bowden even took a shot at Mitt Romney over a comment the 2012 Republican candidate made say the “even Jimmy Carter would have authorized this raid as it was so well planned.” Bowden went on to say the he did not believe Romney would have pulled the trigger on the raid. This sounds very political to me.

Before ordering the e-book for my iPad I read the reviews. Some were 5 star while others were 1 star. One reviewer went so far as to state the book could have been written by Obama’s reelection committee. A great deal of the book focused on how Obama and his National Security staff decided on a raid rather than a drone strike. This part was interesting and informative as to how the air force wanted a drone strike while Admiral McRaven, the head of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) wanted the raid. JSOC believed that a drone strike, would cause too much collateral damage and the untried mini missile while targeting bin Laden, known as “The Pacer” was risky. It would also be difficult to prove that it was bin Laden who was killed. A raid, while risking US Special Forces would provide positive proof that they got bin Laden. This debate within the NSC was interesting. The CIA wanted the raid and were planning with their special ops people while the air force and secretary of defense were in favor of the drone strike. The CIA after conferring with McRaven acquiesced to JSOC. Obama did go with the raid.

The raid was planned and orchestrated by Admiral McRaven and he choose the red team from SEAL Team 6. The rehearsals for the raid on the house were carried out at Fort Bragg and the rehearsals for the helicopter pilots – the 160 Night Stalkers – were carried out in the Nevada desert where the heat and terrain altitude most resembled the conditions at Abbottabad, Pakistan. This is where the shinned.

Otherwise the book was too much about Obama and could have been many less pages. One reviewer on Amazon wrote:

“I wouldn't've been surprised to find Mr. Bowden asserting that Mr. Obama was with the DEVGRU boys in J'Bad, and that he personally loaded their magazines, dialed in their radios, pinned their lunch money to their web gear, and had barbecue and beer waiting for them when they returned. I actually found myself thinking that the author believed that, had Mr. Obama not taken matters in hand, OBL would never have been hit. This is a slap in the face to those analysts, operatives, operators and other professionals who, prior to and well after 9/11 and up to OBL being forcibly checked out of the net, never too THEIR eyes off the ball.

This book is nothing short of a love song to Mr. Obama. Credit where it is due, but leave us not exaggerate the man's importance.in this or any other instance.”

Another reviewer said:

“In the past I've read several of your works thus when I saw you had written on the subject of the killing of Bin Laden I got excited. Sadly as I clawed my way through each page I found myself wondering why was I re-reading the same data over again. Other reviews point out that you giving president Obama too much glory but I don't agree. I do think our president made this mission a priority and for that he enjoys honor. But once is enough to harp on this right?”

I agree with both reviewers. Too much Obama! Granted he had to make the final decision and risk a great deal of political capital, but enough is enough. Rob O’Neill’s interviews with Peter Doocy were much more informative than Bowden’s book when it came to the operational side of the raid. Bowden never talked with O’Neill or Mark Owen (the pseudonym for the author of the first book by a SEAL about the raid) – “No Easy Day: The Autobiography of a Navy Seal: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.” He talked with Owen’s contractor of the book.

This book is a far cry from Black Hawk Down or Killing Pablo. It appeared to me that Bowden wanted to write a book and without good interviews with the SEALS, the CIA analysts, or McRaven he spent his time interviewing Obama, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, and other White House staffers.

My advice, don’t waste you time or money.

Zero Dark Thirty — Some Truth, Some Fiction

“Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which beget in the mind a distrust of itself.” — James Madison

Last night my wife, daughter and I ventured out to see the movie Zero Dark Thirty. For those of you who live in a forest somewhere Zero Dark Thirty is the controversial movie about the hunt and rake down of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2011.

I had heard and read a myriad of opinions on this film — everything from it being a homage to Barack Obama to a glorification of torture. It was neither. It was a well-crafted film by the Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow and her writer Mark Boal. The film chronicles the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden (Referred to as Usama bin Laden in the film, which is correct) after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy SEAL Team 6 in May, 2011.

Critics on the left and right have lambasted this film due to their political agendas. First and foremost it is a theatrical movie not a documentary. If you want a documentary watch the numerous accounts of the hunt and take down of bin Laden on the History, Military, or National Geographic channels. I have seen most of those documentaries and even though crafted with care and with no obvious agenda they don’t always tell the entire story. In fact the entire story will not be known for years just as the full story of the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy are still evolving. So with that in mind here is my humble take on the film.

After seeing the movie, it becomes obvious that Americans might now understand what was needed to make sure the homeland remained safe. The crowds in the theatre are subdued during the movie and afterward. There is no hissing, no yelling, and no cheering. But at the end of the film there was a round of applause for the film. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I saw the film in a more conservative neighborhood in Riverside County. I doubt if there was any such applause in Westwood. As the audience exits, there is an eerie quiet, maybe because the movie brought home the fact to Americans that these were very dangerous times.

Jose Rodriguez, Jr., who headed the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and then became director of the National Clandestine Service, believes that the reaction of the audience was due to people realizing that what CIA officials have been saying for years is a reality: "it was necessary and needed to be done to keep Americans safe."

The film opens with scenes of “enhanced interrogation” of a captured al Qaeda terrorist at an undisclosed CIA black site in 2002. Maya (played by Jessica Chastain) is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is. You can read a full synopsis of the plot by clicking here.

As I stated above the film opens with scenes of enhanced interrogation of a captured al-Qaeda terrorist. The scenes of waterboarding and physical beatings are quite graphic. If you have a weak stomach come in about 15 minutes late to the 157—minute long film. This is no doubt the most controversial part of the film and where I take some umbrage with Bigelow and Boal.

As the author of Hard Measures: How the CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, Rodriguez details in the book the actual tactics of the Enhanced Interrogation Program. He does not agree with the movie depiction of the interrogation scenes since. Rodriguez stated in an easy published in the Washington Post about the film:

“The CIA did not torture anybody under the enhanced interrogation program. I know, because I actually supervised it myself from 2002 until 2007. The torture scenes in the movie did not happen. My biggest beef with this film is that millions of people around the world after seeing this movie will conclude that the CIA tortures, which is very unfair and not true."

Rodriguez went on to say:

“Indeed, as I watched the story unfold on the screen, I found myself alternating between repulsion and delight.

First, my reasons for repulsion. “Zero Dark Thirty,” which will open for Washington audiences Friday, inaccurately links torture with intelligence success and mischaracterizes how America’s enemies have been treated in the fight against terrorism. Many others object to the film, however, because they think that the depiction of torture by the CIA is accurate but that the movie is wrong to imply that our interrogation techniques worked.

“They are wrong on both counts. I was intimately involved in setting up and administering the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, and I left the agency in 2007 secure in the knowledge not only that our program worked — but that it was not torture.

One of the advantages of inhabiting the world of Hollywood is that you can have things both ways. In the publicity campaign for the movie, the director and the screenwriter have stressed that “Zero Dark Thirty” was carefully researched and is fact-based. When discussing the so-called torture scenes, director Kathryn Bigelow has said: “I wish it was not part of our history, but it was.” Yet when pressed about inaccuracies, screenwriter Mark Boal has been quick to remind everyone: “This is not a documentary.”

What I haven’t heard anyone acknowledge is that the interrogation scenes torture the truth. Despite popular fiction — and the fiction that often masquerades as unbiased reporting — the enhanced interrogation program was carefully monitored and conducted. It bore little resemblance to what is shown on the screen.

The film shows CIA officers brutalizing detainees — beating them mercilessly, suspending them from the ceiling with chains, leading them around in dog collars and, on the spur of the moment, throwing them on the floor, grabbing a large bucket and administering a vicious ad hoc waterboarding. The movie implies that such treatment went on for years.

The truth is that no one was bloodied or beaten in the enhanced interrogation program which I supervised from 2002 to 2007. Most detainees received no enhanced interrogation techniques, and the relative few who did faced harsh measures for only a few days or weeks at the start of their detention. To give a detainee a single open-fingered slap across the face, CIA officers had to receive written authorization from Washington. No one was hung from ceilings. The filmmakers stole the dog-collar scenes from the abuses committed by Army personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. No such thing was ever done at CIA “black sites.”

The CIA did waterboard three of the worst terrorists on the planet — Abu Zubaida, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — in an effort to get them to cooperate. Instead of a large bucket, small plastic water bottles were used on the three men, who were on medical gurneys. The procedure was totally unlike the one seen in the movie but was consistent with the same tactic used, without physical or psychological damage, on tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel as part of their training.”

Bill Harlow, the former CIA director of public affairs, believes that the movie confuses incidents such as Abu Ghraib with the CIA program. For example, there is a scene where a CIA officer puts a dog collar on a terrorist detainee and walks him like a dog. Harlow was offended by this untruth because it happened at Abu Ghraib, completely contrary to the situation shown in the movie. "So many people seem to accept this as a given. It is annoying to me that they don't ask. Did this really happen that way? The beating scenes did not happen and were put in the movie for dramatic content. We never beat the crap out of people. Had anyone done those things shown in the movie, they would have been prosecuted."

Harlow goes on to state:

“It would have been more accurate and still intense if the movie put in the actual enhanced interrogation techniques. Unlike in the movie's description, Zubaida was put in a box only once — but one large enough to allow him to sit up. As for waterboarding, it was done to only three terrorist detainees, and to none after 2003. Anyone waterboarded had his vital signs monitored, which was not portrayed in the movie. The technique in the film of asking a question, pouring large buckets of water, and then asking another question is not how it was done. In reality, small plastic water bottles were used, with only drops of water being poured over the subject. Once someone agreed to cooperate, the enhanced interrogation techniques stopped as was demonstrated in the film.”

Yet the movie implies, by using the clip of President Obama saying Americans do not torture, that enhanced interrogation is torture. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, for his part, feels that Jose Rodriguez's op-ed is the definitive piece on this issue. Rodriguez made it clear that those senators who are yelling and are threatening an investigation about the film's sources are trying to rewrite history because "they are denying that enhanced interrogation worked and call it torture." Hayden also was struck with the fact that these "senators wanted to investigate the Agency — not for the classification of what they told the filmmakers, but because they disagreed with the conclusions suggested by the film. The senators appear to be fixated on this issue."

The film correctly portrays that the hunt for bin Laden was a ten-year marathon, not a sprint. For a while people believed it was all Obama. It was the CIA's focus and hard work that eventually allowed us to find bin Laden. Many women deserve a chunk of the credit for their focus, tenacity, intensity, and being detailed-oriented, including Jennifer Matthews, chief of the Khost Afghanistan base at Camp Chapman. I have written a detailed account of how Ms. Matthews (called Jessica and played by Jennifer Ehle in the film) was killed by a Jordanian suicide bomber. For more information on this attack that killed 7 CIA agents, including Ms. Matthews and wounded 7 others click here. I think it will give you better understanding of the culture within the CIA at the time.)

According to Robert Baer, an ex CIA operative, writing in GQ Magazine Michael Scheuer, “her first boss in Alec Station, the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden, told me she had attended the operative's basic training course at the Farm, the agency's training facility, and that he considered her a good, smart officer. Another officer who knew her told me that despite her training at the Farm, she was always slotted to be a reports officer, someone who edits reports coming in from the field. She was never intended to meet and debrief informants.”

Baer continued:

“Matthews knew that there was a time when only seasoned field operatives were put in charge of places like Khost. Not only would an operative need to have distinguished himself at the Farm; he or she would've run informants in the field for five years or more before earning such a post. He probably would have done at least one previous tour in a war zone, too. And he would have known the local language, in this case Pashto. Matthews skipped all of this”.

According to all of the reports I have read on this incident Ms. Matthews was portrayed correctly in the film as was the entire incident at Khost. It is quite a shocker in the film.

Now to the main character in the film known as Maya and played by Jessica Chastain. Maya is not her real name and the CIA will not release her real name as there is a price on her head from al-Queda. The Navy SEAL who wrote the controversial book detailing the assassination of Osama bin Laden credits a 'feisty' female CIA analyst for leading them to their target, after spending five years hunting him.

Author Matt Bissonnette – whose identity was revealed even though he wrote the tell-all book No Easy Day under the pen name of Mark Owen – only refers to the woman using the pseudonym ‘Jen’ in his book. According to Bissonnette, as reported in The Guardian, Jen", was convinced Bin Laden was hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was found.

She travelled with the Seals to Afghanistan ahead of the raid and briefed them on what they were likely to find. "I can't give her enough credit. In my opinion she kind of teed up this whole thing," Owen told CBS's 60 Minutes in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

Owen described Jen as "wicked smart, kind of feisty". She was 100% sure that bin Laden was hiding in the Abbottabad compound, according to Owen. President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta and others had said they were only 70% sure Bin Laden would be found at the compound. Owen told 60 Minutes that all of her predictions proved to be exactly right. This is portrayed in the film where Maya is part of a group seated around a conference table and Director Panetta polls the operatives and analysts on their confidence that bin Laden is at the Abbottabad compound. The men’s responses range from 50 to 70 percent and when Maya is asked she responds with 100% positive, but downgrades to 95% saying nothing in the intelligence world is 100%.

In his book, Bissonnette writes that he sat next to the woman during one of the long-haul flights as they headed to Pakistan for the mission, and his brief description paints a picture of a young and extremely dedicated analyst.

'Recruited by the agency out of college, she'd been working on the Bin Laden task force for the last five years. Analysts rotated in and out of the task force, but she stayed and kept after it.

'After the al-Kuwaiti phone call, she'd worked to put all the pieces together. she had been our go-to analyst on all intelligence questions regarding the target,' he writes.

Jen is the real-life heroine of the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, a headstrong young operative whose work tracking the al-Qaida leader serves as the dramatic core of Zero Dark Thirty. It should also be pointed out that according to the Mail Online Jen is the person the character Carrie Mathison (played by Clare Danes) in the Golden Globe and Emmy award winning Showtime series Homeland is modeled after. Danes said that while researching her role as Mathison she met one of the men who led the raid on bin Laden.

Danes hinted at a connection during an interview about the research she did to prepare for her role as Carrie Mathison.

“There’s a woman Carrie is loosely modeled on and she’s a CIA officer and so I met with her and she took me to Langley and introduced me to some of her colleagues,” Danes told The Wall Street Journal.

The Homeland protagonist is described as being stubborn, headstrong, and outspoken. The same appears true for the female agent Jen.

“Jen wasn't afraid to share her opinion with even the highest officers,” Bissonnette wrote in the book. “This was her baby. Jen and her team spent five years tracking him to get us where we were now.”

Her CIA career has followed a more problematic script, however, since bin Laden was killed.

The operative, who remains undercover, was passed over for a promotion that many in the CIA thought would be impossible to withhold from someone who played such a key role in one of the most successful operations in agency history.

The real life Jen stirred up a bit of a firestorm when she blasted some of her fellow CIA compatriots with an e-mail. According to the Washington Post:

“The operative, who remains undercover, was passed over for a promotion that many in the CIA thought would be impossible to withhold from someone who played such a key role in one of the most successful operations in agency history.

She has sparred with CIA colleagues over credit for the bin Laden mission. After being given a prestigious award for her work, she sent an e-mail to dozens of other recipients saying they didn’t deserve to share her accolades, current and former officials said.

The woman has also come under scrutiny for her contacts with filmmakers and others about the bin Laden mission, part of a broader internal inquiry into the agency’s cooperation on the new movie and other projects, former officials said.

Her defenders say the operative has been treated unfairly, and even her critics acknowledge that her contributions to the bin Laden hunt were crucial. But the developments have cast a cloud over a career that is about to be bathed in the sort of cinematic glow ordinarily reserved for fictional Hollywood spies.”

Colleagues said the on-screen depiction captures the woman’s dedication and combative temperament.

“She’s not Miss Congeniality, but that’s not going to find Osama bin Laden,” said a former CIA associate, who added that the attention from filmmakers sent waves of envy through the agency’s ranks.

“The agency is a funny place, very insular,” the former official said. “It’s like middle-schoolers with clearances.”

This spring, she was among a handful of employees given the agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, its highest honor except for those recognizing people who have come under direct fire. But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out.

“She hit ‘reply all’ ” to an e-mail announcement of the awards, a second former CIA official said. The thrust of her message, the former official said, was: “You guys tried to obstruct me. You fought me. Only I deserve the award.”

Over the past year, she was denied a promotion that would have raised her civil service rank from GS-13 to GS-14, bringing an additional $16,000 in annual pay.

Officials said the woman was given a cash bonus for her work on the bin Laden mission and has since moved on to a new counterterrorism assignment. They declined to say why the promotion was blocked.

The move stunned the woman’s former associates, despite her reputation for clashing with colleagues.

This is just another example of how the CIA has mutated from its origins of the OSS and the Cold War into a massive bureaucratic government organization as has the Department of Defense. As a person who held a security clearance and worked with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency I can attest that there are many bureaucrats in the intelligence business who are more concerned with budgets and achieving their next GS ratings so they can retire with a larger pension. Decisions are had to come by from these bureaucrats. They don’t like to make waves or rock the boat. To them doing nothing is playing it safe and looking for someone else to point a finger at is standard operating procedure. That’s why 9/11 happened.

Overall, both Harlow and Rodriguez encourage Americans to see the film. They are hoping that what people will realize is that instead of supporting rights for terrorists, as some senators seem to be encouraging, those at the CIA chose to do what was right and legal to make sure terrorist plots were foiled. Although they wish the filmmakers consulted with them about the interrogation scenes, the movie realistically showed that here are those at the Agency who are patriotic, very disciplined, and smart, and that they are risk-takers when it comes to making sure Americans are kept safe.

Despite its flaws, inaccuracies and shortcuts, I do believe this film is well worth seeing. Theatergoers should understand, however, that “Zero Dark Thirty” is more than a movie and less than the literal truth. It is more about Maya and her 10-year hunt for bin Laden and all of the hurdles, both external and external, she had to jump. This is especially apparent in the final scene, with Maya in tears, drained, not sure where to go or what to do next.

And finally we come to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the folks who pass out the Oscars to their BFFs. David Clennon, an Emmy Award-winning actor and member of the AMPAS, announced in an op-ed for the leftist website Truthout that he would not be voting for “Zero Dark Thirty” in any Oscar categories because of its torture scenes.

“At the risk of being expelled for disclosing my intentions, I will not be voting for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ – in any Academy Awards category,” Clennon wrote. “Torture is an appalling crime under any circumstances. ‘Zero’ never acknowledges that torture is immoral and criminal. It does portray torture as getting results.”

Clennon, who is best known for his work on TV series' "Thirtysomething," "Almost Perfect" and "The Agency" won an Emmy for a guest spot for "Dream On" in 1993. A longtime political activist, his remarks caused something of a furor since Academy members are specifically encourage by AMPAS not to reveal who they are voting for (assuming they are even voting). It's unclear whether Clennon will be reprimanded for his revelation.

But Sony executive Amy Pascal pushed back against Clennon’s assertions, stating bluntly: “Zero Dark Thirty does not advocate torture. To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate.”

Pascal said the studio is “outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda.”

“This film should be judged free of partisanship. To punish an Artist’s right of expression is abhorrent. This community, more than any other, should know how reprehensible that is,” she said.

According to The Wrap Zero Dark Thirty” roared out of the gate in its nationwide expansion Friday, taking in $9 million. That puts Sony’s controversial drama on pace to easily win the weekend box office race with $25 million.

It was running safely ahead of the weekend’s two debuting movies, Warner Bros.’ star-studded “Gangster Squad” and the horror spoof “A Haunted House,” the two R-rated films in a battle for No. 2. The period mob drama opened to $6.6 million from 3,103 theaters and is looking at a roughly $19 million weekend, just under analysts' projections. Marlon Wayans' comedy brought in about $6.7 million from 2,160 theaters, which puts it on pace for $17 million, in line with expectations.

In conclusion the film is worth ten bucks and a couple hours of your time if you like action thrillers based on actual events and to see the outstanding performance of Jessica Chastain. Theatrical movies are not made for the study of history, but they can motivate the viewer to research the events portrayed in the film and learn for themselves.

The Irresponsibility of Hollywood and the MSM

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” — Samuel Adams

The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between June 4-7. 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese Navy attack against Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan has called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."

The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War.

The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway Atoll as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle Raid. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Samoa.

The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions. Most significantly, American code breakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser were sunk for a cost of one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. After Midway, and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas.

Admiral Yamamoto, the overall commander of Japanese naval forces, did not know that the U.S. had broken the main Japanese naval code (dubbed JN-25 by the Americans). Yamamoto's emphasis on dispersal also meant that none of his formations could support each other. For instance, the only significant warships larger than destroyers that screened Nagumo's fleet were two battleships and three cruisers, despite his carriers being expected to carry out the strikes and bear the brunt of American counterattacks. By contrast, the flotillas of Yamamoto and Kondo had between them two light carriers, five battleships, and six cruisers, none of which would see any action at Midway. Their distance from Nagumo's carriers would also have grave implications during the battle, because the larger warships in Yamamoto,s and Kondo's forces carried scout planes, an invaluable reconnaissance capability denied to Nagumo.

The Battle of Midway was decisive in turning the tide against Japan and securing the security of the Pacific Coast and Hawaiian Islands. It was a crushing defeat for Yamamoto.

Operation Vengeance was the name given by the Americans to the military operation to kill Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on April 18, 1943, during the Solomon Islands campaign in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was killed on Bougainville Island when his transport bomber aircraft was shot down by U.S. Army fighter aircraft operating from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

The mission of the U.S. aircraft was specifically to kill Yamamoto and was based on United States Navy intelligence on Yamamoto's travel plans in the Solomon Islands area. The death of Yamamoto reportedly damaged the morale of Japanese naval personnel (described by Samuel Eliot Morison as being considered the equivalent of a major defeat in battle), raised the morale of the Allied forces, and may have been intended as revenge by U.S. leaders who blamed Yamamoto for the Pearl Harbor attack which initiated the formal state of war between Imperial Japan and the U.S.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, scheduled an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He planned to inspect Japanese air units participating in the I-Go operation that had begun April 7, 1943, and to boost Japanese morale following the disastrous evacuation of Guadalcanal. On April 14, the U.S. naval intelligence effort code-named "Magic" intercepted and decrypted orders alerting affected Japanese units of the tour.

The original message, NTF131755, addressed to the commanders of Base Unit No. 1, the 11th Air Flotilla, and the 26th Air Flotilla, was encoded in the Japanese Naval Cipher JN-25D (Naval Operations Code Book of the third version of RO), and was picked up by three stations of the "Magic" apparatus, including Fleet Radio Unit Pacific Fleet. The message was then deciphered by Navy cryptographers (among them future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; it contained specific details regarding Yamamoto's arrival and departure times and locations, as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and accompany him on the journey.

In 1942 England was suffering from the effects of German U-Boats. Convoys were being decimated by Admiral Donitz’s “Wolf Packs.” Both of the two German electro-mechanical rotor machines whose signals were decrypted at Bletchley Park, Enigma and the Lorenz Cipher', were virtually unbreakable if properly used. It was poor operational procedures and sloppy operator behavior that allowed the British cryptanalysts to find ways to read them.

The intelligence produced from decrypts at Bletchley was code-named "Ultra". It contributed greatly to Allied success in defeating the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories in the Battle of Cape Matapan and the Battle of North Cape. In 1941, Ultra exerted a powerful effect on the North African desert campaign, against the German army, under General Erwin Rommel. General Sir Claude Auchinleck stated that, but for Ultra — "Rommel would have certainly got through to Cairo". Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of the 58 German divisions on the Western front. Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as "The geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled".

These three examples illustrate the importance of keeping secrets during war time. Suppose some enterprising reporter for the New York Times had found out that the Americans were breaking the JN25 code. The Japanese would have changed the code and Midway would have been a disaster for the U.S. Navy and left our west coast completely undefended. Or a reporter for the Washington Post spilled the beans on how we broke the code to ambush Admiral Yamamoto. Once again the Japanese would have changed their codes and would have had a much tougher time at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Many thousands of Marines, soldiers, and sailors would have died because some bone-headed newspaper editor belived he had the right to tell the secrets.

Ultra was kept a secret long after the war because we were using it to monitor the Soviet Union. There was an article in the New York Times telling the story of Ultra and fortunately Churchill had it squashed and the Soviets did not believe it.

Now move forward to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced on May 22 that it had obtained records from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker, and screenwriter Mark Boal. According to the records, the Obama Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a “planner, Operator and Commander of SEAL Team Six,” which was responsible for the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, to assist Bigelow prepare her upcoming feature film, Zero Dark Thirty.

The records, obtained pursuant to court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on January 21, 2012, include 153 pages of records from the DOD and 113 pages of records from the CIA (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:12-cv-00049). The documents were delivered to Judicial Watch late last Friday (May 18). The following are the highlights from the records, which include internal Defense Department email correspondence as well as a transcript from a key July 14, 2011, meeting between DOD officials, Bigelow and Boal:

• “A transcript of a July 14, 2011, meeting between DOD officials, including Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers, Bigelow and Boal indicates that Boal met directly with White House officials on at least two occasions regarding the film: “I took your guidance and spoke to the WH and had a good meeting with Brennan and McDonough and I plan to follow up with them; and they were forward leaning and interested in sharing their point of view; command and control; so that was great, thank you,” Boal said according to the transcript. Vickers asks if the meeting was a follow-up, to which Boal responds, “Yes correct; this was a follow-up.”  The documents seemingly reference John O. Brennan, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor to President Obama and Denis McDonough, who serves as President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor.

• The July 14, 2011, meeting transcript also reveals that the DOD provided the filmmakers with the identity of a “planner, SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander.”  (The name is blacked out in the document.)  In proposing the arrangement, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers said: “The only thing we ask is that you not reveal his name in any way as a consultant because . . . he shouldn’t be talking out of school.” Vickers went on to say during the meeting at the Pentagon: “This at least, this gives him one step removed and he knows what he can and can’t say, but this way at least he can be as open as he can with you and it ought to meet your needs.” Boal later responds, “You delivered.”

• A July 13, 2011, internal CIA email indicates that Bigelow and Boal were granted access to “the Vault,” which is described the CIA building where some of the tactical planning for the bin Laden raid took place:  “I was given your name as the POC in [redacted] who could determine the feasibility of having a potential walk-through of…the Vault in the [redacted] building that was used for some of the tactical planning in the Bin Laden Raid [sic]. In consultation with the Office of Public Affairs and as part of the larger chronicling of the Bin Laden raid, OPA will be hosting some visitors sanctioned by ODCIA this Friday afternoon.”  (The name of the sender is blacked out.)  “Of course this is doable,” an official responds.

• DOD Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Douglas Wilson told colleagues in a June 13, 2011, email to limit media access and that he would follow up with the White House: “I think this looks very good as a way forward, and agree particularly that we need to be careful here so we don’t open the media floodgates on this. I’m going to check with WH to update them on status, and will report back.” A day later, he wrote Department of Defense communications staffers, saying: “Ok to set up the second session with Vickers. I am getting additional guidance from WH.”

• Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers told Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Douglas Wilson and two other DOD communications staffers in a June 13, 2011, email that “[DOD] would like to shape the story to prevent any gross inaccuracies, but do not want to make it look like the commanders think it’s okay to talk to the media.” The email went on to say: “For the intelligence case, they are basically using the WH-approved talking points we used the night of the operation.” The talking points called the raid “a ‘Gutsy Decision’ by the POTUS,” adding that “WH involvement was critical.”

• A June 9, 2011, email from Commander Bob Mehal, Public Affairs Officer for Defense Press Operations, to Vickers and other DOD staff summarizes a meeting with Boal and notes the release date for the film: “Release date set for 4^th Qtr 2012…”

• A July 13, 2011, email to Commander Bob Mehal, Public Affairs Officer for Defense Press Operations, indicates that Sarah Zukowski, an associate for The Glover Park Group, arranged the July 14, 2011 visit by Bigelow and Boal to the DOD and the CIA. The Glover Park Group is described by Politico as a “Democratic-leaning advocacy firm.”

• A June 27, 2011, email to an official at the Office of the Secretary of Defense suggests that the request from Bigelow and Boal to meet with Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers came via the White House press office. A June 22, 2011, email to Commander Bob Mehal, Public Affairs Officer for Defense Press Operations notes, “The White House does want to engage with Mark but it probably won’t be for a few more weeks. We should provide them a read-out of the session you do with Vickers.”  The name of the White House official who forwarded the request is blacked out.

Judicial Watch launched its investigation of Bigelow’s meetings with the Obama administration following press reports suggesting that the Obama administration may have leaked classified information to the director as source material for Bigelow’s film.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that the information leak was designed to help the Obama 2012 presidential reelection campaign: “The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal 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.”

In addition to Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the bin Laden film records, the organization continues to fight in court for the release of the bin Laden post-mortem photos and video. The Obama administration continues to withhold these records citing national security concerns.

“These documents, which took nine months and a federal lawsuit to disgorge from the Obama administration, show that politically-connected film makers were giving extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a Seal Team Six leader,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is both ironic and hypocritical that the Obama administration stonewalled Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the bin Laden death photos, citing national security concerns, yet seemed willing to share intimate details regarding the raid to help Hollywood filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ to the Obama campaign.”

Sony Pictures has already decided not to release the film Zero Dark Thirty — also about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader — until December. Its release date of December 19 was set after the scheduled release date for October drew criticism of the Republican Party.

Another film be produced by Democrat Party bundler Harvey Weinstein titled Code Name: Geronimo. The dramatic film about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden could be controversially released before the U.S presidential elections in November.

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein - a supporter of the Democratic Party — is in negotiations to buy Code Name Geronimo at the Cannes Film Festival.

It is believed the film producer will release the film in late September or October — which is likely to infuriate President Obama's Republican opponents. The Daily Mail reports:

“Footage from the film was shown for the first time in Cannes on Wednesday. It is directed by John Stockwell.

The film tells the story of the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden and the efforts of the Navy Seals.

It is in the final stages of production and its asking price is rumoured to be $2million.

Sony has said it has no plans of moving its release date for Zero Dark Thirty, which is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who famously directed Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker.

Mr Weinstein previously released the anti-Bush documentary by Michael Moore 'Fahrenheit 9/11' shortly before the elections in 2004.

Osama Bin Laden was killed in May last year when U.S. Navy Seals raided the building in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that the terrorist mastermind had lived in for five years.

The raid was completed shortly after 1 am local time when bin Laden was shot once in the chest and once in the head by a U.S Navy Seal who announced 'For God and country Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo', because Geronimo was the code-name given to the Al Qaeda leader.”

While Hurt Locker, like Black Hawk Down were good films based on true events they did not pose a national security threat or a threat to any of the real people portrayed in the films. They gave away no secrets of how our special operations teams operate or the secrets we obtained during the operations.

Code Name: Geronimo and especially Zero Dark Thirty do pose a threat to our national security. There was a poster during WWII that was posted on every military base that said, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”

I have three major concerns with these films as to how they can affect our national security and pose a threat to our special operations community.

One: The mere fact that we succeeded is a problem. Dr. Teller, the father of the H-Bomb once replied when asked who was responsible for the Soviet Union getting the Atomic Bomb so quickly after WWII. He replied, “We were, we showed them it worked and gave them the incentive to make the investment in the technology.” By showing how our special operations teams plan and execute missions we are giving the enemy a great deal of intelligence — intelligence they will use to thwart future efforts.

Two: If in any way members of the special operations community can be identified their lives and the lives of their families will be at risk. Just think if Al Qaeda could hold the family of a special operations family hostage for the purpose of obtaining intelligence. The special operations unit soldier, sailor of Marine would be forced to choose between his country and his family.

A good friend of mine, a retired captain in the U.S. Navy once had the job of overseeing the drug interdiction program in the Caribbean. He was based in the Florida Keys. He told me that every day he was videotaped on his way to and from work and the leaders of the drug cartel knew where he and his family lived. He was under constant surveillance by the drug runners and Navel Intelligence. Due to the constant stress he lasted less than a year at this duty station.

Three: How politicians can force agencies like the DOD and CIA to give sensitive intelligence information to civilians for the purpose of making a for-profit movie. I am sure if Wild Bill Donovan or Alan Dulles was running the CIA they would have kicked Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal from Langley all the way to Maryland. This is what happens when big Hollywood “A” list contributors and bundlers pass on millions of dollars to the Obama administration. His payback is granting them access to information they should not have — for the purpose of making a film that will glorify his one accomplishment — issuing the order to kill bin Laden.

It is too close in time to the actual events of killing bin Laden to be making a film with this much information. Even the History and Military Channels are careful as to what the put out and have never had this type of access. They normally work using interviews with real people who were involved or know what was happening. They just can’t walk into the CIA and DOD and open the files marked secret.

Today, in Pakistan, the doctor who assisted the CIA in identifying Osama bin Laden, Shakil Afridi, who ran a fake vaccination program in an attempt to collect Bin Laden's DNA in order to verify he was living in the Abbottabad compound where he was eventually killed a year ago is languishing in a prison for 33 years convicted of treason. The Guardian reports:

“A US senate committee has voted to cut Pakistan's aid by $1m for each of the 33 years of a prison sentence given to a doctor for helping the CIA to track down Osama bin Laden.

The appropriations committee unanimously approved the $33m reduction as outrage grows in Washington over the conviction of Shakil Afridi for treason . The physician ran a fake vaccination programme in an attempt to collect Bin Laden's DNA in order to verify he was living in the Abbottabad compound where he was eventually killed a year ago.

The aid cut will not be immediately implemented as it comes out of next year's budget, but it will increase the pressure on the Pakistan government as Washington seeks to have Afridi's conviction quashed or his sentence substantially reduced.

The appropriations committee debate reflected the frustration at what many in Washington see as Pakistan's duplicity that has bubbled away for many years over the links between its intelligence service and the Taliban, and was accentuated when it was revealed that Bin Laden was living untouched in a garrison town.

"We need Pakistan. Pakistan needs us," said Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped write the legislation cutting aid. "But we don't need a Pakistan that is just double dealing."

Senator Dianne Feinstein voiced a repeatedly-heard sentiment on Capitol Hill since Afridi's conviction that it was outrageous to convict him of treason when he was helping not harming Pakistan by contributing to Bin Laden's demise.”

How will this film help Dr. Afridi? Or will it heap more misery on a person who assisted the U.S. Government in bringing bin Laden down. after Afridi's role was made public, US officials openly acknowledged it including the defense secretary, Leon Panetta – who was CIA director when Bin Laden was killed– who described the doctor as having been "very helpful" in gathering intelligence on the al-Qaida leader. In their rush to “spike the football” for Obama CIA and DOD officials along with other White House spokespersons began releasing information on how they were able to identify bin Laden and the great job they did. They paid little mind to the information they were giving to Pakistan, Al Qaida, and other terrorist groups. This information should have been restricted and released over the ensuing years like the breaking on the JN25 code and Ultra.

If you have ever worked with government employees or had any experience in Washington, D.C. you know you will always find people who in a wish to feather their own nests will inevitable begin to whisper information for the purpose of showing how connected they are. This is a common occurrence in Washington, D.C. It’s how you make points with your peers and demonstrate how you are a part of the inner circle. No administration has acted as irresponsible in this national security matter as the Obama administration. I am sure remarks like this will not encourage the recruiting of other foreign assets to help the CIA.

Now we have the CIA and DOD personnel giving access to confidential documents for the purpose of making films that will make them appear as brilliant masterminds with no thought to the damage that will accrue to some of participants like Dr. Afridi. I recall the hubbub over the leaking of Valarie Plame’s name as a CIA employee to Robert Novak. As it turned out the leaker (Richard Armitage) was never prosecuted, but an aide to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby was.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King. (R-N.Y)., first raised questions about the bin Laden movie last summer, but said newly released documents confirm his suspicions.

King referred to documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request. He said the filmmakers received "extremely close, unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration" from the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch said the documents show that the Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a "planner, operator and commander of SEAL Team 6" — the unit that killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

Judicial Watch says it obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, which is often used to force agencies to release some classified information.

“These documents, which took nine months and a federal lawsuit to disgorge from the Obama administration, show that politically-connected filmmakers were given extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a Seal Team Six leader,” Judicial Watch’s statement reads.

Most of the names and locations in the released batch were redacted, but the contents of the transcripts indicate that the filmmakers were allowed to visit several highly classified facilities, including “The Vault” at CIA headquarters, where some of the planning for the bin Laden raid took place.

Bigelow and Boal have also met with one of the planners of the operation. The documents show that Pentagon intelligence chief Michael Vickers stressed to the crew that the identity of the SEAL team leader and the fact that he worked as a consultant should not be revealed, because he should not be “talking out of school.” It should also be noted that the person who arranged the meeting with the filmmakers and CIA

CBS News reported:

“The documents, obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act suit, also show the filmmakers coordinated with the White House and a left-leaning lobbying firm in order to gain access to the information they sought for their upcoming movie on the bin Laden raid. The Defense Department tells CBS News that no classified information was released to the filmmakers, but at least one Republican congressman, House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King of New York, expressed concerns today about the possibility.

One of the documents released, a transcript from a July 14, 2011 meeting, indicates that Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers helped arrange special meetings for the filmmakers, Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal.

"The basic idea is they'll make a guy available who was involved from the beginning as a planner; a SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander," Vickers said in the meeting. Some of the names Vicker mentions are redacted in the transcript. "A guy named [redacted] ... he basically can probably give you everything you would want or would get from Adm Olson or Adm McRaven," the transcript says, referring to former United States Special Operations Command Commander Admiral Eric Olson and Naval Special Operations Commander Admiral Bill McRaven.

Boal responds, "That's dynamite."

In the transcript released, Boal also suggests that he met with John Brennan, President Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, and Denis McDonough, Mr. Obama's deputy national security adviser. "I took your guidance and spoke to the WH and had a good meeting with Brennan and McDonough," he said, according to the transcript.

Additionally, internal CIA emails from that month suggest Bigelow and Boal were granted access to "the Vault," a CIA building where some of the planning for the raid took place. In a series of emails asking for access to the Vault, an official says, "Of course this is doable." The people corresponding then arrange a time for a tour of the facility.

Released emails also suggest that Vicker's meeting with Bigelow and Boal was in part facilitated by the White House and that the left-leaning lobbying firm The Glover Park Group also helped the filmmakers meet with officials.”

It is obvious to me that the White House and Sony Pictures are working hand in glove with Bigelow and Boal to create a film that will put the Obama administration in the best possible light. Even though Sony Pictures changed the release date to after the November elections in order to save some face I am sure you will begin to see trailers for the film long before the November 6^th. I am also certain that these trailers seen in theaters and on TV will show scenes of Obama in the situation room at the White House. As the old Chinese philosopher Confucius said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

These Hollywood elites in their urge to support a leftist progressive politician and make money in doing so will claim free speech and the public right to know as their defense against any criticism.

Saul Alinsky’s remarks in Rules for Radicals are certainly applicable to the folks in Hollywood when it comes to national security; “I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.”

Afghanistan: A Lost Cause

“There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.” — Sun Tzu

As Memorial Day approaches the deaths in Afghanistan continue to mount with no end in sight. The latest U.S. Combat causality was Chief Warrant Officer Christopher R. Thibodeau, 28, of Chesterland, Ohio, who died May 26 in Paktika province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when his helicopter crashed during combat operations. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas. Thibodeau’s death brings the total U.S. deaths to 1,595 (967 under Obama’s watch) and the total for the coalition to 2,487.

Where is the outrage in the media? Where are the images of flag-draped coffins arriving at Andrews AFB? Where are the critics of Obama’s policies? Where is Code Pink protesting Obama as they did George W. Bush over Iraq? Of course you know where they are — they are silent. After all this is the anointed one’s war as is the escalation in Libya and the left-wing press will not criticize him on his failed Afghanistan policies.

“Afghanization. Vietnamization. Surge. Gradual escalation. Corrupt dictators. Internal dissension. The war follows a familiar script.” POLITICO

Despite proclamations of victory by the Administration of President Barack Obama, the death of Osama bin Laden is not like the fall of Berlin in 1945. In itself, killing bin Laden brings no peace. It does ask many unsettling questions about America’s No. 1 ally in the War on Terror, Pakistan. It also puts into question America’s ability to even win the war in Afghanistan.

When Obama took office, he got this advice from Vice President Joe Biden: “If you don’t get Pakistan right, you can’t win.”

The reason was and remains simple. The enemy, the Taliban, is using Pakistan as a base to operate hit-and-run missions against American troops the way North Vietnam used Cambodia to strike GIs four decades ago. The key difference is former President Richard Nixon launched attacks into Cambodia. Obama’s Cambodia is Pakistan, a Muslim nation with 100 nuclear weapons in its inventory.

If you think the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan has a lot of similarities with Vietnam, you are not alone. The New York Times reports the recently deceased Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had to shut up regarding how badly the war in Afghanistan was going.

“There are structural similarities between Afghanistan and Vietnam,” Holbrooke noted, in ruminations now in the hands of his widow, Kati Marton.

“He thought that this could become Obama’s Vietnam,” Marton recalled. “Some of the conversations in the Situation Room reminded him of conversations in the (Lyndon B.) Johnson White House. When he raised that, Obama didn’t want to hear it.”

The Times indicated if Holbrooke were still alive, he would be shuttling frantically between Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to take advantage of bin Laden’s killing to lay the groundwork for a peace process.

Johnson was a guns-and-butter Democrat who sat in the Oval Office during the Vietnam War. The undoing of the nation was not solely over his vision of the Great Society, but rather America’s defeat in Vietnam.

Even LBJ finally understood that Vietnam was a lost cause, but not before tens of thousands of Americans died.

Johnson drawled: “Light at the end of the tunnel? We don’t even have a tunnel; we don’t even know where the tunnel is.”

This truth applies to Obama, who still won’t admit it. Without Pakistan as a reliable partner, the United States cannot win peace in Afghanistan. And Pakistan is moving away from the U.S. faster than a bootlegger from the cops.

Last week, the Toronto Sun wrote: “The Pakistani government is embarrassed that bin Laden was found living in relative comfort, but there’s little in their reaction that indicates shame. Rather, they are miffed that the American SEAL team went in without telling them. Parliamentarians even cheered Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani when he warned of dire consequences if the U.S. ever again sent troops into Pakistan without permission.”

Gilani declared that Pakistani intelligence services were neither complicit nor incompetent and that the discovery of bin Laden living in plain sight of Pakistan’s military academy was not Pakistan’s fault. He insisted China is Pakistan’s “all-weather friend” and implied the U.S. is an unfaithful ally.

Can you imagine Winston Churchill warning America about coming on British soil to hunt Nazis during World War II? Of course not, but Pakistan is not a real ally. It is a Muslim nation in which key members of the government and its intelligence service (Inter-Services Intelligence) covertly plan American deaths in Afghanistan while cheering on a war that is exhausting both America’s financial resources and the nation’s psyche.

But there are no Churchills in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The President of Pakistan is Asif Ali Zardari. His own people call him “Mr. 10 Percent” because of all the kickbacks he took during the premiership of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated when she again ran for office in 2007. Not only is Zardari corrupt, but he is weak against the Muslim mob which grows angrier each month.

The other key ally in America’s war on terror is Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who is also corrupt, perhaps delusional and, most likely, a drug addict. The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan even questioned the “mental stability” of Karzai and suggested the Afghan president may be using drugs.

In an interview on MSNBC, Peter Galbraith described Karzai as “off-balance” and “emotional.” Galbraith went so far as to call for Obama to limit Karzai’s power to appoint officials within Afghanistan until he proves himself a reliable partner.

“He’s prone to tirades. He can be very emotional, act impulsively. In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan’s most profitable exports,” said Galbraith, in reference to heroin.

When asked straight out if Karzai is a drug addict, Galbraith responded: “There are reports to that effect. But whatever the cause is, he can be very emotional.”

You can see where this is going. In World War II America had Churchill and Charles de Gaulle on our side. In this war we have Zardari and Karzai, two leaders that make South Vietnam’s dictator Ngô Đình Diệm look like Thomas Jefferson.

There is a lot of money being made in these Arab wars, at least for U.S. military contractors. Fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has cost more than$1 trillion. Yet some neoconservatives just can’t get enough, as was evident earlier this year when Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wanted to put boots on the ground in Libya. McCain declared the Libyan “rebels” are true heroes and represent American democracy. Either the Senator has seen Star Wars one too many times, or he has forgotten that Americans are still dying because Washington armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It is true that Presidents and generals never get credit for battles they never fought. In this way President George H.W. Bush never got credit for not invading Iraq in 1991 and for letting the Communist bloc determine their destiny without American interference.

Furthermore, the success in killing bin Laden shows that surgical operations, whether lead by SEAL teams or pinpoint bombing, can knock out America’s enemies and not at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

But I don’t expect Obama to declare victory and bring the troops home anytime soon. There is still an election to win, so I expect the President to give his “Peace with Honor” speech just before Americans go to the polls.

The Strategic Wisdom of Barak Obama

“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

The killing of Osama bin Laden has been characterized by two distinct phases. In Phase I the White House simply could not tell us what happened during the raid and eventually just decided to stop talking about it. Phase II has been a demeaning and unseemly grubbing for credit on the part of the administration under the guise of Obama having made a “gutsy call.” Not only has the administration actively promoted this notion in press conferences but they are actively planting these stories in the tame and housebroken media that has become a hallmark of this administration.

The latest in the series of “Obama is as hard as woodpecker lips” stories comes from the New York Times.

“WASHINGTON - President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.”

“Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.”

“Such a fight would have set off an even larger breach with the Pakistanis than has taken place since officials in Islamabad learned that helicopters filled with members of a Navy Seals team had flown undetected into one of their cities, and burst into a compound where Bin Laden was hiding.”

“One senior Obama administration official, pressed on the rules of engagement for one of the riskiest clandestine operations attempted by the C.I.A. and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command in many years, said: “Their instructions were to avoid any confrontation if at all possible. But if they had to return fire to get out, they were authorized to do it.”

“….Under the original plan, two assault helicopters were going to stay on the Afghanistan side of the border waiting for a call if they were needed. But the aircraft would have been about 90 minutes away from the Bin Laden compound.”

“About 10 days before the raid, Mr. Obama reviewed the plans and pressed his commanders as to whether they were taking along enough forces to fight their way out if the Pakistanis arrived on the scene and tried to interfere with the operation.”

“That resulted in the decision to send two more helicopters carrying additional troops. These followed the two lead Black Hawk helicopters that carried the actual assault team. While there was no confrontation with the Pakistanis, one of those backup helicopters was ultimately brought in to the scene of the raid when a Black Hawk was damaged while making a hard landing.”

“Some people may have assumed we could talk our way out of a jam, but given our difficult relationship with Pakistan right now, the president did not want to leave anything to chance,” said one senior administration official, who like others would not be quoted by name describing details of the secret mission. “He wanted extra forces if they were necessary.”

“With tensions between the United States and Pakistan escalating since the raid, American officials on Monday sought to tamp down the divisions and pointed to some encouraging developments.”

“A United States official said that American investigators would soon be allowed to interview Bin Laden’s three widows, now being held by Pakistani authorities, a demand that Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, made on television talk shows on Sunday.”

“American officials say the widows, as well as a review of the trove of documents and other data the Seals team collected from the raid, could reveal important details, not only about Bin Laden’s life and activities since he fled into Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2001, but also information about Qaeda plots, personnel and planning.”

I’d be among the first to acknowledge that the SEALs are tough but, let’s be honest, they aren’t tough enough to fight their way out of Pakistan. Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was over a hundred miles from the Afghan border. The city itself garrisons four infantry battalions and is located in a highly militarized area as it borders on Kashmir. So some latter day reenactment of Xenophon’s Anabasis is pretty much out of the question. Extracting yourself by helicopter while under enemy fire is not something to be attempted lightly.

Nothing that we know about the raid indicates that, in fact, there was any contemplation of going at the Pakistani police or army hammer and tongs. The raiding force consisted of four helicopters. They were hardly jam-packed with shooters as they lost one helicopter on the insertion and had enough spare seats for the passengers and crew from that helicopter to extract. As a contingency they probably had seats available for several prisoners to be extracted. In short, there is no way enough troops could have been inserted on four helicopters to allow the force to “fight its way out of Pakistan.” Such an operation would have required significant tactical air support and would have resulted in sufficient casualties and property damage that Pakistan simply could not have ignored it with really bad effects for our army in Afghanistan that depends upon Pakistani roads to bring in their supplies.

What is actually scary, though, are the prospects that someone actually thought that a handful of US troops, no matter how skilled, could lock horns with a large number of trained troops and prevail. Pakistan’s Army, though hardly world class, is not to be dismissed lightly. As we used to say in regards to the Red Army, “quantity has a quality all its own.”

While there is absolutely nothing in the story that backs up the rather extraordinary claim made in the Times the three reporters involved, Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, aren’t rookies and the odds of them having come up with this formulation without some prompting are pretty slim. The way this claim is used to bolster the idea that at some level Obama was spoiling to kick a little Pakistani butt is also troubling.

There is no doubt that Obama is looking at a the killing of bin Laden as a boon to his reelection chances and, recognizing his own basic gutlessness is a millstone in this endeavor, is using “gutsy call” as shorthand for what he hopes we remember of his grossly deficient leadership. It is a sad state of affairs when you find yourself hoping that your president is simply bloviating and did not seriously contemplate sending young men into a situation that would actually have required them to do something as profoundly stupid as “fight their way out of Pakistan.”

Fox News reports, Bin Laden Files Largest Terror Intelligence Find Ever, Security Adviser Says.

“The files obtained from Osama bin Laden's compound amount to the largest intelligence find ever from a terror leader and show bin Laden was playing an active role in Al Qaeda from his Pakistan hideaway, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Sunday.”

“In an interview with "Fox News Sunday," Donilon said the trove of files seized last week after bin Laden was killed is "the size of a small college library."

"The size is quite notable. It's the largest cache of intelligence information from a senior terrorist that we know of," he said.

“Though he would not say whether it's yielded any hard leads, Donilon and others said the evidence challenges the notion that bin Laden was a mere figurehead before he was killed last week.”

"Osama bin Laden was not just a symbolic leader of Al Qaeda. In fact, he had operational and strategic roles that he was playing," he said.

These are just two examples of the brilliance of the strategic genius we have in the White House and his staff of sycophants.

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist Kevin McCullough tackles the thorny issue of why the audacity of hope is not found in the current path that President Barack Obama has laid.

As the first pundit in the world to predict that President Barack Obama would become president of the United States Kevin McCullough was not surprised when Mr. Obama was elected to that office.

Yet even McCullough admits he's surprised by President Obama's actions since the election. Surprised by the overt falsehoods already carried out by this administration. Surprised by our country's sudden deficit of clarity and common sense. Surprised by a blatant lack of accountability. In "No He Can't," McCullough stands as the loyal but outraged loyal opposition to the current state of affairs. Click here to read the introduction to McCullough’s book.

No he can’t is an understatement. The real title should be “He Never Could.”

The Administration That Talks Too Much

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” — Winston Churchill

On April 18, 1943 a flight of 18 P-38s intercepted and shot down the plane carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who ordered Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to "get Yamamoto." Knox instructed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of Roosevelt's wishes. Nimitz first consulted Adm. William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander, South Pacific, and then authorized the mission code named “Vengeance” on April 17.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, scheduled an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He planned to inspect Japanese air units participating in the I-Go operation that had begun April 7, 1943, and to boost Japanese morale following the disastrous evacuation of Guadalcanal. On April 14, the U.S. naval intelligence effort code-named "Magic" intercepted and decrypted orders alerting affected Japanese units of the tour.

The original message, NTF131755, addressed to the commanders of Base Unit No. 1, the 11th Air Flotilla, and the 26th Air Flotilla, was encoded in the Japanese Naval Cipher JN-25D (Naval Operations Code Book of the third version of RO), and was picked up by three stations of the "Magic" apparatus, including Fleet Radio Unit Pacific Fleet. The message was then deciphered by Navy cryptographers (amongst them future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens); it contained specific details regarding Yamamoto's arrival and departure times and locations, as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and accompany him on the journey.

Yamamoto, the itinerary revealed, would be flying from Rabaul to Ballale Airfield, on an island near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, on April 18. He and his staff would be flying in two medium bombers (Mitsubishi G4M Bettys of the 205th Kokutai Naval Air Unit), escorted by six navy fighters (Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters of the 204th Kokutai NAU), to depart Rabaul at 06:00 and arrive at Ballale at 08:00, Tokyo time.

Eighteen P-38s were tasked for the mission. One flight of four was designated as the "killer" flight while the remainder, which included two spares, would climb to 18,000 feet (5,500 m) to act as "top cover" for the expected reaction by Japanese fighters based at Kahili. A flight plan was prepared by the Command Operations Officer, Marine Major John Condon but was discarded for one prepared by Mitchell. He calculated an intercept time of 09:35, based on the itinerary, to catch the bombers descending over Bougainville, ten minutes before landing at Ballale airfield. He worked backwards from that time and drew four precisely-calculated legs, with a fifth leg added if Yamamoto did not take the most direct route. In addition to heading out over the Coral Sea, the 339th would "wave-hop" all the way to Bougainville at altitudes no greater than 50 feet, maintaining radio silence en route.

Although the 339th Fighter Squadron officially flew the mission, ten of the eighteen pilots were drawn from the other two squadrons of the 347th Group. A thorough, detailed briefing included a cover story for the source of the intelligence stating that a Coastwatcher had spotted an important high-ranking officer boarding an aircraft at Rabaul, but the pilots were not specifically briefed that their target was Admiral Yamamoto.

The specially-fitted P-38s took off from Guadalcanal's Fighter Two airstrip beginning at 07:25. The date, April 18, had the significance of being the first anniversary of the Doolittle Raid as well as Palm Sunday. Two of the Lightnings assigned to the killer flight dropped out of the mission at the start, one with a tire flattened during takeoff and the second when its drop tanks would not feed fuel to the engines.

In Rabaul, despite urgings by local commanders to cancel the trip for fear of ambush, Yamamoto's planes took off as scheduled for the 315 miles trip. They climbed to 6,500 feet, with their fighter escort at their 4 o'clock position and 1,500 feet higher, split into two V-formations of three planes.

Mitchell's flight of four led the squadron "on the deck" with the killer flight, consisting of Captain Thomas G. Lanphier, Jr., First Lieutenant Rex T. Barber, and the spares, Lieutenants Besby F. Holmes and Raymond K. Hine, immediately behind, fighting off drowsiness, navigating by flight plan and dead reckoning. This proved to be the longest fighter-intercept mission of the war and was so skillfully executed by Mitchell that his force arrived at the intercept point one minute early, at 09:34, just as Yamamoto's aircraft descended into view in a light haze. Mitchell ordered his planes to drop tanks, turn to the right to parallel the bombers, and began a full power climb to intercept them.

Barber spotted the second bomber low over the water off Moila Point just as Holmes (whose wing tanks had finally come off) and Hine attacked it. Holmes damaged the right engine of the Betty, which began emitting a white vapor trail, then he and Hine flew over the damaged bomber. Unknown to them, this bomber carried Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki and part of Yamamoto's staff. Barber was the next airman to attack the stricken bomber—his hits caused the bomber to shed metal debris which collided with and damaged his own aircraft. The bomber descended and crash-landed in the water. Ugaki and two others survived the crash and they were later rescued. Barber, Holmes and Hine were attacked by Zeros, Barber's P-38 receiving 140 hits. Holmes and Barber each claimed a Zero shot down during this melee. The top cover briefly engaged reacting Zeros without making any kills and Mitchell observed the column of smoke from Yamamoto's crashed bomber. Hine's P-38 had disappeared by this point, presumably crashed into the water. Running close to point-of-no-return fuel levels, the P-38s broke off contact and returned to base, with Holmes so short of fuel that he was forced to land in the Russell Islands. Hine was the only one who did not return. Warrant Officer Kenji Yanagiya, one of the six Japanese escort pilots, reported pursuing and downing a P-38 over Kolombangara. Lieutenant Holmes was unable to drop his tanks and turned back to sea, followed by his wingman, Lieutenant Hine. Mitchell radioed Lanphier and Barber to engage, and they turned to climb toward the eight aircraft. The closest escort fighters dropped their own tanks and began to dive toward the pair of P-38s. Lanphier, in a sound tactical move, immediately turned head-on and climbed towards the escorts while Barber chased the diving bomber transports. Barber banked steeply to turn in behind the bombers and momentarily lost sight of them, but when he regained contact, he was immediately behind one and began firing into its right engine, rear fuselage, and empennage. Then Barber hit its left engine and it began to trail heavy black smoke. The Betty rolled violently to the left—Barber narrowly avoided a collision. Looking back, he saw a column of black smoke and assumed the Betty had crashed into the jungle. Barber headed towards the coast at treetop level, searching for the second bomber, not knowing which one carried the targeted high-ranking officer.

The crash site and body of Admiral Yamamoto were found the next day in the jungle north of the coastal site of the former Australian patrol post and Catholic mission of Buin (which was re-established, after the war, several kilometers inland) by a Japanese search and rescue party, led by Army engineer Lieutenant Hamasuna. According to Hamasuna, Yamamoto had been thrown clear of the plane's wreckage, his white-gloved hand grasping the hilt of his katana, still upright in his seat under a tree. Hamasuna said Yamamoto was instantly recognizable, head dipped down as if deep in thought. A post-mortem of the body disclosed that Yamamoto received two wounds, one to the back of his left shoulder and one to his left lower jaw that exited above his right eye. Whether the admiral initially survived the crash has been a matter of controversy in Japan.

In Japan this became known as the "Navy kō incident. It raised morale in the United States and shocked the Japanese who were officially told about the incident only on May 21, 1943. To cover up the fact that the Allies were reading Japanese code, American news agencies were told the cover story originally created for briefing the 339th, that civilian Coastwatchers in the Solomons saw Yamamoto boarding a bomber in the area and then relayed the information by radio to American naval forces in the immediate area.

This was a presidential ordered assassination in many ways similar to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Roosevelt wanted Yamamoto dead in retaliation for his planning and directing the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. President Obama wanted bin Laden dead in retaliation for his planning and financing the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and the failed attack of the U.S. Capitol on September 11, 2001.

Both assassinations were successful due to major feats of intelligence gathering. In Yamamoto’s case it was our Navy’s ability break a succession of Japanese naval codes. In bin Laden’s case it was due years of work by our CIA to located his hide-away in Pakistan.

The major difference, however, was Roosevelt’s ability to use a cover story and keep his mouth shut as to all operational details of the mission. In bin Laden’s case members of the Obama administration have been falling over themselves to get on TV and in the newspapers with not only operation details, but spilling out how much vital intelligence we gained from bin Laden’s compound. They just can’t seem to stop babbling in order to show how important they were in bin Laden’s demise. This includes Obama himself. Of course all of this babbling is to garner political favor with the American public — political capital at the expense of future operations against al Qaeda.

So far we have proclaimed to the world that bin Laden was killed by a US military raid — by Seal Team 6 -- using stealth helicopters based in Pakistan, relying on information obtained from detainees who were subjected to "harsh interrogation." Further that we recovered computers, DVDs, and thumb drives loaded with information. And that bin Laden's body was cleaned, given a Muslim funeral, and buried at sea. Now we are viewing videos of bin Laden's home life. What is next?

As spectators, we have held victory rallies in the streets, written thousands of congratulatory letters to the editor, and otherwise acted as though our team won the World Series. In fact, we are not yet even in the playoffs.

What more can we do to aid our enemy in telling them how we fight, what resources we have, what we will not do to kill them, and what we know about them? What more can we do to incite even more hatred against us?

What if there were no Sunday night announcement and the official White House response on Monday about a raid in Pakistan was simply "No Comment"? Same from the Pentagon; same from the CIA — absolutely no comment from anywhere in government?

What if, instead of our Commander in Chief acting as our Cheerleader in Chief parading around the country like the USC Trojan's Horse used to do around the LA Coliseum after a touchdown, the United States had admitted to nothing?

By Monday night or perhaps Tuesday the word would be out that bin Laden was dead, believed by most, denied by some.

The enemy would know far less about how he was killed, the resources we used, and what we have learned from his death. The enemy would be left not knowing how to adjust their communications, who was next, who had betrayed them, how they would be treated if captured, and so much more. There is fear in not knowing.

The lives of the Americans (and others) who participated over a long period of time in this operation would be at far less risk than they now are given the extent to which they have been identified. The same goes for their families.

We did not ask for it, but we are at war. Each and every American is not a spectator soaking up every tease of the latest discovery proclaimed by our media. Rather we are participants, even if our participation is limited to not knowing who is on first, who is on deck, what pitchers are in the bullpen, and what tricks the manager has up his sleeve. Because what we know the enemy will also know, it is imperative that we know very little.

The enemy should have no umpires to rule in their favor. The rules should not be published in advance. Rather the only rule should be "Enemy: declare war on us and you die." A rule the enemy should learn from personal observations and experience.

During WWII there were many intelligence coups by the allies. Probably the greatest occurred at Bletchley Park where British code breakers cracked the German Ultra codes. The Ultra advantage changed the lives of millions who fought and unknown others affected by its global reach. By knowing the names of enemy units, their strength, exact location, order of battle, ammunition and fuel status, entire divisions were neutralized with minimal manpower effect. The breaking of the German Enigma naval code disclosed the specific grid locations of U-boat wolf packs and their refueling "milk cows." Convoys were diverted as North Atlantic ship losses dropped 75%. Even the operational depth of U boats was learned — a crucial detail for attacking destroyers. Submarine losses reached unacceptable levels forcing redeployment to safer waters. Crucial cargo from North America safely reached diverse ports from Southampton to Murmansk. Ultra became the silent partner in sinking the Bismarck, in victory at El Alamein, and decisively defeated the wolf-packs in the Battle of the Atlantic. In planning Operation Overlord, strategists knew from ULTRA intercepts that Germany expected invasion at the Pas de Calais. Operation Fortitude was a ruse of a fictitious army commanded (FUSAG) by a very real General George Patton, nineteen German divisions were thus removed from the battle.

When Patton’s U.S. Third Army began the race from Normandy across France, it was guided by daily and often hourly briefings from Ultra intelligence. Almost all of the decrypts were hand delivered by specially trained soldiers. And resulting from its understanding of the German high command's intentions and strategy, Ultra eliminated the crucial element of surprise.

Postponement or failure of the 1944 Normandy invasion was a real possibility for Allied planners. Without the Ultra edge, the European war and even more horrific casualties on both sides would have continued until at least 1946. Scores of high speed U boats under construction and new jet fighters already in the skies could easily have continued the fighting into 1947.

With the war over Churchill ordered the destruction of all the code breaking machines into "pieces no larger than a man's hand." The Bletchley mansion was shuttered, the staff discharged and the huts emptied and boarded up. The Ultra secret became decades of “ultra-silence”, destined to expire with its high priests and practitioners. Today it is a museum open to the public.

There have always been those in politics and the media wiling to jeopardize the lives of our military for their own gain. These people a no better than jackals picking at carcasses. They argue “the public right to know” while not giving a damn about the security of those fighting a war of the nation as a whole. Yes, the public has a right to know about the follies of politicians and failures of military operations, but not the successes or how we achieved them. This is giving the enemy information that would allow him to change his tactics and foil future operations. This is what the Obama administration is doing in their narcissistic and self-absorbing personalities. Obama is a man who loves to shoot missiles at people, but cringes at the thought of enhanced interrogation.

A perfect example of the arrogance of the media was in June 1942 when the Chicago Tribune, run by isolationist Col. Robert L McCormick, published an article that implied that the United States had broken the Japanese codes. This is often written about in terms of being a serious breach of national security. The government at first wanted to prosecute the Tribune under the Espionage Act of 1917. For various reasons, including the desire not to bring more attention to the article, the charges were dropped. Roosevelt did not want to give credence to McCormick’s claims.

So what we have is a gang of glory seeking armatures led by a narcissistic community organizer managing our foreign operations and the War on Terror. They are a bunch of political operatives who just can’t wait to get their face on your TV screen and tell you how wonderful they are. I am sure if Obama had been president in 1944 he would have leaked the secrets of the Manhattan Project to the world in order to win election.

Wars must be fought to win. Winning means using every resource we have, capitalizing on every advantage we have, and conceding absolutely nothing to the enemy.

The lesson of the events of the last week is that our current head coach is so far consumed in his self-glorification that he cannot lead. He and his entire staff must be replaced with those who know how to win by focusing all their resources on the battle while claiming no glory for themselves.