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.
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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. ..
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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. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/world/asia/10intel.html?_r=1^^ I'm really glad that President Obama insisted that they send two more Helicopters with Additional troops. If he had not done so, the Troops in the first copter that crashed would not have been able to get out..and would have had to wait there for nearly 2(or more) hours till Further assistance was sent from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.Who knows what would have happened by then. Some "rouge"(tongue in cheek) elements of the Pakistani military would have taken upon themselves to get rid of both the evidence and the SEALS in those intervening hours...as they would have walked scot free in that event.President Obama's foresight is amazing indeed!
Read the entire article, this is a clear lap in the face to the ones who questioned Obama's "decision making" abilities and "military know-how" on the run up to the election. The fact that he even foresaw the possibility that there would have been a firefight between the SEALS and the Pakistani forces underscores the giant risk he was taking, while at the same time highlighting the extreme lengths he went to safeguard the military personnel (eventually ended up sending 72 seals..instead of the original 20-30)
This is what a former SEAL(and a republican), who took part in the Ill fated Somali(black hawk down) event had to say about Obama's mission.(from NPR)
CONAN: And we have learned things from operations that did not go well. After the disaster at Desert One in 1980, in Iran, well, that led to the formation of Delta Force, as I understand it. What have we learned - you were involved in Somalia, in the disaster that came to be known as Blackhawk Down, by the name of that famous book. What do we think - what did we learn from that?
Mr. WASDIN: Well, hopefully what we learned from Somalia in particular, which by the way was my career ender. That was the raid that I got shot three times and eventually ended up getting out of the teams. What I hope - hopefully we learned from that was two things.
And listen, I'm a die-hard Republican, but I'm giving the president all the credit here. He did exactly what needed to be done by not alerting Pakistan. So our operational security was good. So the guys didn't have somebody waiting on them, you know, the bad guys waiting on them when they got there, or - just totally gone. So the op sec, the president did a great job there.
And the other thing I'd want to say while I'm bragging(ph) on the president - I can't believe I would have ever done that with this president, but he's kind of changed my mind the past week or so - is him not releasing the pictures.I think he's doing a great job by not doing that because - why? Don't give our enemies anything to fire them up. http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136144256/seal-team-six-and-other-elite-squads-expandingI just love the part where he concludes that "he(Obama)'s kind of changed my mind the past week or so". Lol, I guess apart from the usual politicking Republicans, the ones who were actually on the ground on similar situations can and will see past the political divisions and accept that the decisions of Obama were the right ones. Maybe one govener from Alaska ought to listen to this former SEAL about why he thinks releasing the pictures are not a good idea.
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