SEAL helmet cams recorded the entire bin Laden raid
As we suspected, when we first heard about the 20-25 minute blackout, the helmet cams on the SEALs who raided bin Laden’s compound recorded the entire raid. So we do have video of OBL’s last moments alive, from which (at least in theory) still frames could be pulled as proof of life/death.
A new picture emerged Thursday of what really happened the night the Navy SEALs swooped in on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the 40 minutes it took to kill bin Laden and scoop his archives into garbage bags were all recorded by tiny helmet cameras worn by each of the 25 SEALs.
The video gives us yet another version of the raid timeline, leading me to wonder why the administration’s top folks kept winging it when they described the raid in the week that followed.
The SEALs first saw bin Laden when he came out on the third floor landing. They fired, but missed. He retreated to his bedroom, and the first SEAL through the door grabbed bin Laden’s daughters and pulled them aside.
When the second SEAL entered, bin Laden’s wife rushed forward at him — or perhaps was pushed by bin Laden. The SEAL shoved her aside and shot bin Laden in the chest. A third seal shot him in the head.
Since we got that speculation right, let’s put ourselves out on another limb. Why was the video feed lost during the raid? It’s possible that the link actually broke down, but there is another possibility too. Given the fact that this administration has been so gung ho to prosecute CIA officers over interrogating captured terrorists, and given the fact that Obama ran as an anti-war candidate and staffed the WH with likeminded lawyers etc such as AG Eric Holder, the SEALs may have cut the feed to give themselves a little room to operate without the leftist lawyers back in Washington second-guessing every move they made.
It’s classified. No DC lawyer will get his hands on it for the next 50 years.
The reason the story changes is because they are trying to navigate the various fine lines between the needs of having positive public opinion, protecting military secrets, covering their asses and being truthful for moral reasons.
It’s classified. No DC lawyer will get his hands on it for the next 50 years.
Or until wikileaks finds some treasonous punk to bribe.
JL’s post is sensible. The parent Tatler post is content-free, ideology-first fluff … do we really need more of this?
For details of the raid, accompanied by thoughtful, professional, non-partisan analysis, a reliable source is the Small Wars Journal link to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, which has just come out with a special issue on the death of Bin Laden.
URL: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/05/ctc-sentinel-on-the-death-of-u/
Cutting off live feed also give folks back in Situation Room plausible deniability if something goes down they don’t want sticking to them.
“Hey…we didn’t say they could do that!”
Smart SEALS: SOSDI
(Some Other SEAL Did It)
It’s classified. No DC lawyer will get his hands on it for the next 50 years.
It will leak, just as uncontrollably as everything else has about the SEAL team, to the Soros media – maybe even in the next 50 days. The SEALs are feeling screwed and scared and Gates promises to look into it. Heckuva job Herobama. Gutsy lack of OpSec.
On the other hand, these cameras could have been just recording and not broadcasting at the time. I wouldn’t expect 25 or so cameras to be broadcasting live on a feed to HQ or anywhere else, as the satellite channels would be busy with command to operation communications and not with handling live feeds from 25 cameras, or even one camera.
People are jumping to conclusions that the cameras were sending live feeds to Washington or even to the commanders back at base.