Esme's Blog: Explaining The Bin Laden Raid
In the days since the daring raid that took out OsamaBin Laden, the administration and the nation has much to be proud of. The daring, surgical raid was a triumph -- a national victory -- that happened 40 years after Jimmy Carter's bungled attempt to rescue the Iran hostages with helicopters full of U.S. commandos not only failed, but resulted in the death of eight U.S. troops.
But the brilliance and daring of the raid has been marred by the bungled accounts the U.S. has given. How could such a disciplined, secret mission ended with gushing false accounts of Bin Laden firing at U.S. troops, using his wife as a human shield?
The lack of discipline in explaining what happened will only give our enemies fuel to misrepresent the attack that was justified by the death toll of 9/11.
The bungled and changing accounts only help Pakistan in their efforts to claim they knew nothing about Bin Laden's hiding spot and that the U.S. was wrong in engaging such a mission on their soil.
Pakistan has received more than $10 billion in U.S. aide since 9/11 -- a figure that has to come under scrutiny now.
It is inconceivable that someone in the powerful Pakistani military or intelligence community did not know Bin Laden was hiding in the out-sized compound just yards from a Pakistani military academy.
After nearly 10 years, the administration got public enemy number one -- a mission that eluded his predecessor. It's a pity that the easy part, explaining this triumph, was so poorly handled.
