In a story by the Daily Caller, former Navy Seal Chuck Pfarrer details how his new book disputes the story of the mission which resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden which was popularized by an article in the New Yorker. However, that isn't the interesting part of the interview. When speaking about the announcement from the White House, Pfarrer notes:
'"'There was a choice that night,' Pfarrer told the DC. 'There was a choice to keep the mission secret.' America, Pfarrer explained, could have left things alone for 'weeks or months...even though there was evidence left on the ground there...and use the intelligence and finish off al-Qaida.'
But Obama's announcement, he said, 'rendered moot all of the intelligence that was gathered from the nexus of al-Qaida. The computer drives, the hard drives, the videocassettes, the CDs, the thumb drives, everything. Before that could even be looked through, the political decision was made to take credit for the operation.'"
President Obama may have destroyed incredible operational intelligence that would have allowed the military to effectively destroy and unearth the al-Qaida network. On the other hand, maybe there wasn't any real actionable intelligence to utilize. We'll never know. I can only hope that a President with flagging popularity didn't jump to exploit a military success without thinking first about the consequences, or that his advisors failed to counsel him in that area. But I imagine the temptation is there.
Hell, President Obama has talked (i.e. bragged) so much about Bin Laden's killing, if we still had the body he'd be doing his own version of "Weekend at Bernie's" toting him around to campaign stops.
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