There is an old saying that lawyers are only good for three things: delaying decision you do not want to make, providing a reasonable explanation for a questionable action, and shifting the embarrassment of a failure. They are not impartial arbiters, but advocates for those who pay them -- hence the ability to switch sides at a moment’s notice.
In the case of federal lawyers, they are not responsible to their nation, “we the people,” but to their political overlords, making their findings and decisions suspect.
And, in the case of combat, any decision that needs to be considered and vetted by an attorney, means that someone has screwed the pooch and forgotten that war is about killing people and breaking things until you have achieved a decisive victory over your enemy. One that makes them incapable of further aggression, terrorism, or stealth political action.
Only a feckless and incompetent pussy like President Barack Obama would need to consult a lawyer to set the stage to kill or capture the man most responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack – an act of war against the United States.
Creating four targets for al Qaeda … [my comments in bracketed blue italics]
How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden
Weeks before President Obama ordered the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011, four administration lawyers developed rationales intended to overcome any legal obstacles — and made it all but inevitable that Navy SEALs would kill the fugitive Qaeda leader, not capture him.
Stretching sparse precedents, the lawyers worked in intense secrecy. Fearing leaks, the White House would not let them consult aides or even the administration’s top lawyer, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. They did their own research, wrote memos on highly secure laptops and traded drafts hand-delivered by trusted couriers.
[Does anyone else note the absolute stupidity of the New York Times in naming the lawyers involved – pictures included -- thus putting their lives at risk from retaliation for their part in sanctioning the killing of the al Qaeda leader?]
Just days before the raid, the lawyers drafted five secret memos so that if pressed later, they could prove they were not inventing after-the-fact reasons for having blessed it. “We should memorialize our rationales because we may be called upon to explain our legal conclusions, particularly if the operation goes terribly badly,” said Stephen W. Preston, the C.I.A.’s general counsel, according to officials familiar with the internal deliberations.
[Perfect, like any other corporate villain, President Obama wanted to cover his ass should things go bad and interfere with his domestic political agenda of getting re-elected and fundamentally transforming America. The same reason generally given by those who reported that Valerie Jarrett scrubbed previous missions to kill or capture bin Laden.]
While the Bin Laden operation has been much scrutinized, the story of how a tiny team of government lawyers helped shape and justify Mr. Obama’s high-stakes decision has not been previously told. The group worked as military and intelligence officials conducted a parallel effort to explore options and prepare members of SEAL Team 6 for the possible mission.
[In retrospect, it is apparent that the high-stakes mentioned do not refer to the loss of American lives in a failed mission, but the reputational damage that would be suffered by Obama and his cadre of military-hating progressives should the mission fail and the men and materiel be captured and displayed on the world stage.
There is absolutely no justification for revealing the details of the mission, the combatants involved, and the people who provided mission support. But, then again, there was the Obama Administration leaking details to Hollywood for the sole purpose of glorifying Barack Obama’s”heroic” decision to kill bin Laden – something that would have given little or no pause to former presidents like John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, or the Bushes. Making the decision was not heroic and the use of lawyers to justify the action proves just how cowardly Obama really is when called to action.]
The legal analysis offered the administration wide flexibility to send ground forces onto Pakistani soil without the country’s consent, to explicitly authorize a lethal mission, to delay telling Congress until afterward, and to bury a wartime enemy at sea. By the end, one official said, the lawyers concluded that there was “clear and ample authority for the use of lethal force under U.S. and international law.”
[Pakistan was harboring a high-level war criminal and should have been sanctioned for their duplicity. Unfortunately, their sole strategic importance is that they are a Muslim nation with nuclear weapons. One owing their existence to the fact that their sworn enemy is India and not Israel. And, by definition, any action against our enemies should be a lethal one.
As for burying a wartime enemy at sea, the fact that bin Laden was given a respectful religious military funeral is abhorrent to me when there are American citizens that were vaporized and no funerals possible. Then there is the question of why the details were not released that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was bin Laden that was killed. Personally, he should have been buried wrapped in such a manner as to deny him any heavenly reward and as a message to our enemies.]
Some legal scholars later raised objections, but criticism was muted after the successful operation. The administration lawyers, however, did not know at the time how events would play out, and they faced the “unenviable task” of “resolving a cluster of sensitive legal issues without any consultation with colleagues,” said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who worked on a Justice Department detainee policy task force in 2009.
[Lawyers have already been responsible for the deaths of numerous Americans who were hobbled by restrictive rules of engagement that favored our enemies and disadvantaged American combat personnel. All to insure that the optics of war were not creating a public relations nightmare for the pussified Obama Administration. The old soldier’s saying: “kill ‘em all and let God sort them out,” seems to work well with the Islamic enemy we face. Because those who do not directly want to kill us, openly fete those that do, or pray that all infidels are expunged from the Earth.]
“The proposed raid required answers to many hard legal questions, some of which were entirely novel despite a decade’s worth of conflict with Al Qaeda,” Mr. Chesney said.
[There is nothing new and novel about war, the need to kill our enemies and break their infrastructure. What is novel appears to be the cowards in the White House who refused to go to Congress as required and to cover their sorry collective asses if the mission failed.]
The officials described the secret legal deliberations and memos for a forthcoming book on national security legal policy under Mr. Obama. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
[The truth emerges … either the administration is seeking cover prior to the publication of this book or they are seeking to glorify the lawyers – including the so-called “constitutional scholar” President Barack Obama.]
Read the rest of the story at: How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden - The New York Times
Bottom line …
Like most things coming from the progressive New York Times and the White House, one must ask, it this the truth or another example of the smoke and mirrors used to conceal the fact that President Obama is perhaps the worst President of modern times – even worse than former President Jimmy Carter, the father of Islamo-fascism – and that this White House is the least transparent and most corrupt administrating in history.
You cannot trust the progressive socialist democrats to protect America or ALL Americans. The fact that the democrats would run a corrupt, lying, military-hating wench like Hillary Clinton is proof positive that they have become the neo-communist party of the United States of America.
Remember the safety and security of yourself, your family, your community, and your nation when you vote. And, the fact that the progressive socialist democrats want to disarm you and create an even bigger pool of potential victims for the enemies we are directly importing from the battlefield.
We are so screwed.
-- steve