White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that Joe Biden didn’t misspeak when the vice president called the operation to get Osama bin Laden the most “audacious” military plan in 500 years.
“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan,” Biden said at a Monday fundraiser in New Jersey. “Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48% probability that he was there.”
After reporters laughed upon a repeat of Biden’s comment, Carney was asked what the second-in-command meant by the remark.
“I think he meant that the decision the President made, as you all know and are aware of, was a very difficult one; that, as has been reported, that the information that we had, which was obviously of high quality, was not conclusive; that the advice the president was getting from his senior-most national security advisoers was mixed on what to do — mixed at best; and that in the end, he had to make a very fateful decision,” Carney said.
“And as he said, one of the reasons why he felt so confident in making that decision was that he knew that the forces he would send in on the bin Laden mission were the absolute best that have ever existed, and that they would fulfill their mission with great professionalism and success,” the press secretary continued. “Obviously, it would have been a different story if bin Laden had not been in that compound. But the President — that’s why you’re president — you have to make those tough calls. And I think that’s what Vice President Biden was referring to.”
“More audacious than D-Day?” a reporter asked.
“Well, the historical assessments I’ll leave to him and others, but there’s no question that this was a very, very difficult decision that only commanders-in-chief have to make,” Carney responded.
“So he didn’t misspeak?”
“No,” Carney said.
So let me see if I understand, Carney is saying Obama rides the short limousine to the Oval Office.
Let’s all welcome Obama to adulthood where the information is seldom conclusive and advice is often mixed. Where you must make decisions using incomplete information that alter lives using judgement to sort through the muddle of choices.
So, Obama, as Sara Palin said, a mayor is like a community organizer but with actual responsibilities. How are you finding that responsibility? Many carry it every day, governors and mayors, generals to corporals, small business owners to CEOs, all those responsible to get things done, not just shake a stick at it.
We were thinking on the same wavelength.
The Roman empire died because once the barbarians beat the regular armies no one else knew how to do anything. So our we becoming–a nation of people who could do not do the hard work of this world if called upon. I say this because this quote “Well, the historical assessments I’ll leave to him and others, but there’s no question that this was a very, very difficult decision that only commanders-in-chief have to make,” Carney responded.” shows that everything in this nation is getting skewed throught the prism of letting Democrats maintain hold on power. I mean, heck, even Tapper finally succumbed, on the Fluke affair.
So, as a primer–the bloody fact is that command decisions–which is what Carney is talking about–are made by anyone in command, whether it be by a President, a corporal in charge of a three man detachment guarding a bridge in Afghanistan and unable to contact HQ, or a CEO having to figure out an uncertain path forward. You don’t know with absolute certainty that the way you are proposing to act can suceed, and you know with absoute certainty how it can fail. Then you have to make the call–and not acting is a call also. And the only person that can make the call is you, and you don’t usually have the luxury of a study group to fall back on.
I see why Jefferson loved farmers as a bulwark of the Republic. They had to make command decisions on a yearly and daily basis about the farm, and always were faced with the prospect of total ruin if the decsions or harvest was bad.
Obama finally made a good command decison on the Osama raid. It was not uniquely more special or difficult than other decisions that others have made. Because each one is often difficult in its own way.
Gee, this will break the hearts of some Hollywood types who thought that stealing the German encryption code by the British in WWII was movie worthy (U-571), or maybe that movie with Benjamin Bratt about saving a bunch of American prisoners from the Japanese in WWII was pretty nifty. Those much more familiar than I with military movies, books, and accounts will absolutely, completely, fully, and to the hilt agree with Biden that taking out bin Laden was THE MOST courageous military plan, EVAH. I’m sure nothing in George Washington’s actions, other revolutionaries, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc. or other countries wars could ever, ever, throughout the Universe, compare to His Greatness, Obama as The Military Mind. Why did Biden stop at merely 500 years?
…because everyone and their sister knows that the 100 Years War featured the most audacious plans evah!
I suspect Biden thinks there wasn’t such a thing as “military strategy” prior to 500 years ago. He probably thinks that up until 500 years ago people were still living in caves and using stone weapons to hunt dinosaurs.
Biden may have pulled the 500 years number out of thin air, but it could also be the case that someone calculated the distance of the raid from the staging bases and/or the number of Pakistani forces who *theoretcially* could have intervened (esp. in the air) and said “aha, most audacious since X”, ignoring the fact that we did not have to fight our way in and out aerially (I’m sure there was enough top cover to take care of any Pakistani Air Force activity if the PAF had chosen to get involved). The level of risk goes down tremendously for the ingress if we use already existing air corridors.
Osiris is still more audacious. As will any action Israel takes on Iran, esp. as the administration very well could leak any knowledge it has of such a raid, even if only that gained by radar tracking while it is occurring but before it enters Iranian air space (as an effort to show the Iranians we will “work with them” to end their program).
“White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that Joe Biden didn’t misspeak when the vice president called the operation to get Osama bin Laden the most “audacious” military plan in 500 years.”
So Carney puts himself at an equal intelligence level of Biden.
Apparently, neither has heard of Vince’s Bridge or San Jacinto. Or Sam Houston. Audacious indeed.
When you’re as ignorant of history as Obama seems to be (or just as completely ignorant as Biden is), the statement makes sense. They’re too dumb to know any better.
Just off the top of my head, I’d argue the following count as more “audacious” than the no-brainer decision to KILL OSAMA BIN LADEN:
- Washington crossing the Delaware
- The Normandy Invasion
- The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, out of ammunition and affixing bayonets for their “swinging door” maneuver down the side of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg
- The evacuation of Dunkirk
- Operation Mincemeat
- The Battle of Inchon
- The Battle of Cowpens
And that’s just a teeny, tiny snippet of audacious military plans from the past three hundred years, let alone five hundred, and primarily from American and British military actions. Expand that to include the rest of the world in that time period and… well… There you go.
Biden is an idiot of the highest order, but this is iron-clad, gold-plated idiocy at an unprecedented scale.
Yeah, so I guess by White House standards, Washington crossing the Delaware to attack Trenton, and shift the balance of the Revolutionary War, was probably just a pretty night time boat ride.
I’d like to know if at that point Bin Landen’s life was worth providing China with access to the wreckage of a stealth helicopter? It was politically audacious. Militarily, I’m not so sure, the Pakistanis were so intimidated by threats and aircraft carriers that during the raid they set up a cordon to keep Pakistanis away.
Anybody mention the action off Samar during the Bettle of Leyte Gulf, aka “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors?” That was audacious.
Staying with the Navy theme, how about Midway? Six months after Pearl Harbor, risking everything you’ve got to stop the Japanese Navy from sailing straight into any harbor on the US West Coast.
Or going a little further back – John Paul Jones declaring “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Since Biden is such a celebrated plagiarist, sort of amusing he didn’t remember that one.
As the saying goes: “You keep using that word but I don’t think it means what you think it does.”
How about the raid on the Branch Davidians? That was pretty audacious. Maybe not in the way Biden is using it but still attacking a compound where women and children are known to be when the leader could have been arrested without incident as he jogged the perimeter of the property is pretty audacious. Shooting the wife of Randy Weaver while she was holding a baby was pretty audacious too.
There is so much wrong with this administration that Biden’s latest idiotic remarks don’t rate very high on my outrage scale, maybe I’m just getting numb.
Ahh, Biden, the premier example of the audacity of dopes.
– why don’t you go for a drive?