osama bin laden

Mitt Romney was looking for a reason to attack Barack Obama on the grounds of foreign policy. He knew that after the killing of Osama bin Laden and the ending of the war in Iraq that he needed a silver bullet, and he now got it.

It turns out that Mitt Romney was behind the anti-Islam movie that has sparked the uprising in the Middle East. He played his cards and did so with great prestige. The film sparked the outrage that Romney was looking for and the results couldn't be better. He even showed that during his press conference yesterday:

That was Mitt smirking yesterday after blaming Obama for the problems in the Middle East.

So how credible is this information?

Well it isn't. See I have decided to play the conspiracy theory game that the right loves engaging in. Take Republican leader, Rush Limbaugh, yesterday, when he said this:

What if Ayman al-Zawahiri gave up Osama bin Laden for the express purpose of making Obama look good? Giving Obama stature, political capital?”

The justification would be so that Obama can help further the cause of al Qaeda. Media Matters has the audio available to hear for yourself.

But I'm just a little blog. I don't get much traffic or have much influence, unlike Limbaugh. Limbaugh has a cult like following that would take this conspiracy and turn it into fact. Within days we can expect to see those pictures on Facebook making this claim as fact. The minions on the right will repeat it as gospel, believing it is fact. The problem is that it isn't, just like the story I posted above.

The Republicans are having a hard time grabbing the national security stage. I mean when they have to look at facing President Obama next year, the man who got Osama Bin Laden, they really don't have much to go on.

So what is a poor Republican candidate to do? Make shit up!

Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the Obama administration is cleansing government files of references to radical Islam, an assertion so juicy that politicians keep repeating it — even though it's a wild exaggeration.

The latest to run with the story is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who told a crowd in Des Moines that the president "actually ordered all references to Islam and Muslim sanitized out of our national security documents."

And over the weekend, Newt Gingrich told a veterans' forum in Des Moines that the administration has "issued instructions, for example, that in developing training papers on terrorism that no mention should be made of radical Islam."

Rep. Michele Bachmann paved the way on Oct. 28, when she told 75 Republican faithful in Iowa that "Obama is allowing terror suspect groups to write the FBI's terror training manual."

It turns out that all this came from an incident in 2009 when someone from the FBI gave a speech that drew a lot of criticism from the Muslim community. An order to review training material was given and some is being rewritten, but not by "terrorist" groups as Bachmann claimed. Instead it's being taken care of by a couple FBI agents and three outside experts from terrorist organizations such as Yale University and Johns Hopkins.

Of course facts are pesky things, as another famous Republican once said (**cough** Ronald Reagan) and Bachmann still believes that Barack Obama started the Iraq War.

Al Qaeda has vowed revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden and it looks like they are making good on it:

Pakistan's Taliban on Friday claimed their first major attack to avenge Osama bin Laden's death as 80 people were killed in a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary police training centre.

Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them fighting for their lives, in the deadliest attack this year in the nuclear-armed country where the government is deep in crisis over the killing of the Al-Qaeda chief by US forces on May 2.

In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with wary ally Washington, an official said Pakistan's senior military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the United States.

We knew this was coming and if anything the death of Osama could spark a lot bigger and more vengeful attacks than we have scene before. This is the reason that the Afghanistan war is far from over.

Yesterday Republican Senators Scott Brown, Kelly Ayotte and Saxby Chambliss were talking about the photo they saw of a dead Osama bin Laden. The only problem? It was the fake photo that has been making the rounds on the internet.

There is so much spin and rewriting of history this morning that my head is ready to explode. I think it’s time for a quick refresher on what lead us up to this victorious point today, including how the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 went after then candidate Obama when it came of Osama bin Laden.

The following is from the transcript of the October 7, 2008 debate between John McCain and Barack Obama in Nashville.

QUESTION: Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?

OBAMA: [snip]

But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants.

What I've said is we're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our nonmilitary aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

The response John McCain gave to this was:

MCCAIN: You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt used to say walk softly -- talk softly, but carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.

In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable.

When you ignore Afghanistan for 7 years then you never get stories like this:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

This is a great accomplishment for the military and administration, but for some reason I feel Dick Cheney will consider it a major failure.

Oh and they are. They hate this press conference. Let’s look at the wingnut queen Michelle Malkin:

Update 8:05pm Eastern. President Obama. “It is only government that can break the vicious cycle.”

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Investment, investment, investment.

Gag. President Obama claims to be acting on behalf of my children and grandchildren.

So talking stimulus shouldn’t mean jobs and investment? Really? This bitch is whack. We are losing jobs left and right, but how dare the President talk about trying to create jobs!.

Then she goes into this little tirade:

Update 8:13pm Eastern. Obama dissing those who have criticized FDR’s growth-stifling interventions. Attempts to shut down and whitewash the economic dissenters. It’s the Obama way.

Hmmm did I miss him calling them terrorists lovers or unpatriotic? Oh no – that’s what Republicans did every time someone disagreed with Bush.

Like I said the other day, if people like Malkin don’t like the country now they can get the hell out. They told us that for the past eight years, so now it’s time to return the favor. Osama bin Laden loves seeing the American economy fail, along with Malkin. Why does she support the terrorists so much?

Watch this clip from last night:

McCain: "We were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters
drive the Russians out of Afghanistan we washed our hands of the the region."

Those so called 'freedom fighters" were the Mujahideen, who were Muslim extremists recruited and trained by the U.S. to fight push Russia out of Afghanistan, but McCain is now calling them simply "freedom fighters". Yup - to John McCain Osama bin Laden is a "freedom fighter".