Barack Obama Was Against Politicizing National Security, Until He Was For It

So the Obama campaign is out with a second ad that crows about killing Osama bin Laden. That the actionable intelligence leading to bin Laden’s whereabouts began to be gathered in the Bush years is left unsaid. That’s an inconvenient truth. The second ad at least gives the military some credit for Commando Barack’s daring one-man raid on Abbottobad.The first ad, narrated by the Democratic president who had a shot at bin Laden before 9-11 and whiffed on it, made the absurd claim that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have ordered the “gutsy call.” The truth is the only official that we know for sure would not have ordered it is Vice President Joe Biden. The guy who’s one heartbeat away from the presidency. Well, besides Bill Clinton, who actually had the chance to get Osama and passed on it.

Over at BuzzFeed, Andrew Kaczynski fishes around a bit and finds some inconvenient old clips of Obama talking. They must have all passed their expiration dates or something, because in all of them, Barack Obama denounces the use of national security to “divide” us. Clips like this one.

It was convenient for a man with no national security experience whatsoever to try to take national security off the table, but less convenient for a sitting president to not be able to talk about national security. So he morphs. Obama talks good and says many of the right things when he has to. But if the bin Laden raid had gone poorly, he was prepping to toss the US military into the crowded space under his bus.

Gutsy.