Is the Obungle Administration Putting SEALs At Risk By Claiming It Was a Kill-Only Mission?

A couple of posts down I noted it was wrong to give troops ambiguous, conflicting orders, and that if you want a kill, you should Man Up and order a kill instead of playing games to appease the left and Eric Holder.

But, having said that -- it could be that you give an unambiguous kill order but don't admit that publicly.

Now, if the SEALs get branded as assassins, then one of these bastard countries could claim they don't fall under the Geneva Accords if captured.

Froggy from BlackFive says they never do kill-only missions.

Meanwhile, between NSC staffers, the WH Press Secretary, Homeland Security, CIA and a multitude of “Senior Administration Officials” on background, the story has morphed into various versions of events. While the political side of me sees this correctly as another manifestation of the incompetence of this Administration, this vacillation is causing real harm to the significance of our victory here and to the reputation of the SEAL Teams. Let me assure you right now that there is no such thing as a “Kill only “ mission. If that SEAL operator came through the door to find UBL with his hands up, compliant, and unarmed (including no evidence of a suicide vest) he would have taken a muzzle strike to the face, but not any rounds. He would have swallowed some teeth, been flex cuffed, and dragged roughly out to a marshalling area and then onto the helo. To start out with the story that UBL had used his wife as a shield while shooting at the assaulters and to devolve that into to a woman was wounded and UBL was unarmed and shot in the face is quite a large spectrum of “truth”. Add to that the false notion of the “Kill only” mission, and now you have the entire SEAL community being thrown under the bus as wonton killers of women and unarmed civilians.

...

This is also curious from the standpoint of Islamic sensitivity, which is clearly foremost in the mind of this White House. Only Obama could go out of his way to emphasize the respect for the Islamic burial process only to tee up perfectly the conditions under which conspiracy theories are born.

Now, maybe that's true and maybe that's... not completely true but very helpful. If so, any prudent administration which gives a shit about the guys who had just given the country a triumph (and given their weak C-i-C a boost in the polls) would not contradict that official SEAL policy.

Maybe that is the official SEAL policy. Maybe it's only the official SEAL policy, if you get me.

But if that's the case, we are very definitely in a The First Rule of Fight Club Is You Don't Talk About Fight Club situation here. If the SEALs may or may not always adhere to their official policy, there's a reason we're maintaining that official policy.

To protect them.

And you don't have your jackass political operators and jock-sniffers to out to the press and contradict and undermine that official story, showing off how badass they are by giving away the secrets of the real badasses.

Here's Froggy's follow-up:

This story regarding whether or not the SEALs were specifically instructed to kill UBL has now officially gotten out of control. Obama is trying to have his cake and eat it too, and in so doing, he has completely buddy fucked the SEAL Teams. Already stories are being written by Obama syncophants and AQ sympathizers implicating the SEALs as essentially murdering an unarmed man. Meanwhile, on background, more "Senior Administration Officials" are saying that POTUS ordered the SEALs to assassinate bin Laden...

I don't know what the truth is. We get nothing but conflicting spin. Obama does indeed want it all ways -- he wants credit for being the sort of tough-guy who'd order a kill-only mission, and he wants credit from the left for not being that kind of tough-guy.

Meanwhile his Administration is out there outing what, if true, seems to be a rather huge secret of the SEALs, and for very good reason.

If it's a secret that SEALs aren't always there to capture, then let's keep that secret, huh?

Bah. Amateurs and camera-posers and jock-sniffers and grandstanders who don't give a damn about the men they nominally "lead."

GutsyCall.com? Someone register "CutesyGall.com."

Thanks to DrewM.

BTW: This isn't about Obama so much (he hasn't contradicted the capture or kill story that I know of, at least not publicly); but who are these "senior administration officials" showing off to their liberal buddies? And I note "senior administration official" can, in fact, include Obama.

Or that horse-toothed jackass Joe Biden.

posted by Ace at 03:45 PM

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