Oops.

Looks like someone didn’t want to smoke ‘em out, dead or alive, after all…

From the NYT

July 8, 2007
U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.

Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network.
In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified.
…

What’s wrong here?

Everything.

Here, every aspect of the cynicism and hypocrisy that has characterized the Bush Administration as the armed and dangerous extension of the their wingnut base is on lavish display with all of its ugly pockets turned out.

In the long term, was aborting this mission the strategically correct thing to do? Perhaps…but not in an Administration that has dismissed all consideration of the “long term” implications of…anything…as nuanced and faggy.

In the short term, was aborting this mission the tactically correct thing to do? Perhaps…but not in an Administration that has made its bones sneering at the Clinton Administration for being too caution.

Is it wrong to consider what disruptive effects and blowback the insertion of US troops into a country might have? No, but not by an Administration that insists on willfully and murderously ignoring exactly that consideration every fucking day in Iraq.

Is wrong doing teh maths about the number of troops needed to accomplish the mission and then say "No” when the price is too high. Of course not, but not by an Administration that still touts their wildly undermanned and over-touted Excellent Iraqi Adventure as the most important event in the history of civilization and damn the cost.

And having this all happen at Donald Rumsfeld’s behest? The man who Bush and Cheney both insisted was the Greatest Secretary of Defense evah! right up until they tossed him unceremoniously under the bus? Hell, there are wingnuts still walking around with neck braces from the whiplash of being forced to reverse their Passionately and Loudly Shouted opinions so often, so completely and in such rapid succession just so that they never for a moment contradicted one of the Dear Leader’s pronouncements.

Because of course for six years there has been a strict Zero Tolerance policy for head-on criticism of this Administration from the Right because, on the Right, speaking ill of the Dear Leader is worse than Hitler.

Hitler…throwing a baby through a stained glass window.

Hitler…throwing a baby through a stained glass window…celebrating the Life and Works of Saint Ronald Reagan.

Hitler…throwing sweet baby Jebus through a stained glass window…celebrating the Life and Works of Saint Ronald Reagan.

Yeah. Bad, bad, bad.

So a story about the United States refusing to enter some brown-peopled country and letting a buncha bad guys get away was, in Wingnuttlyvania, like unto lobbing a 300 lb. brick of chocolate over the wall at Fat Camp.

Torn apart by the cognitive dissonance of trying to reconcile their deep belief in the infallibility of the Dear Leader (and that nuking everything that makes their asses itch is “reasonable”), and the now-plain fact that the President “Bring ‘Em On” backed off killing some very, very serious bad guys because of – gasp! – practical considerations and a desire to mollify – gasp! – a country full of brown Muslim-type people, the Base has gone predictably monkeyshit.

And so they’re doing what wingnut do when they someone rubs their nose in the fact the world ain’t flat (Comments copied from another fine Pajamas Media affiliate -- “Hot Air”. No link, because this site does not link to potty-mouths).

1. Blame the New York Times...

"…
Not one named source?!?! My toilet paper has more use than that article. How often is the media going to continue making up articles out of whole cloth and how long are we going to let them?"

"…
While you can insult us and call us childish names we’ll remain vigilant when it comes to swallowing everything that liberal rag has to say."

(Of course the article cited lots of people who remained anonymous for security reasons. And while I’m not sure that “fascist fucknozzle” is “childish”, on these matters I’m willing to accept your sober judgment.)


2. Relentless widen the question until it has no limits or meaning…

"We must stop looking at Iraq and Afghanistan as “wars” and look at them as mere battles in a broader war."

(We must stop looking at cancer as "bad" and start looking at it as an exciting, cell-growth opportunity!)

3. Blame the politicians for not letting the army win the war...

"It is way past the time to take off the gloves. Let the military do what they were trained to do."

(Fight Soviet tank formations on the Polish steppes?)

"The fact that we (meaning the American leadership) would even consider that as a deciding factor shows what pussies we (again meaning the American leadership) have become. We will never win this war until we take the gloves off like we did in WW2."

(Yeah, well we took Berlin four years ago and the Fuehrer and the rest of his leaders are dead or in jail. And we’re still losing. What Junior means here is “Kill everything that moves.”)

"…this administration is trying to fight a PC, feel good, group hug propaganda war with an enemy who’s much more accomplished at propaganda. They’ve forced the military to fight with little toy guns and cookie breaks. …"

(Several hundred thousand dead Iraqi civilians disagree.)


4. Kill more people. Bomb more cities flat.

"Eventually we will return to the true rules of a noble nation fighting a just war against a barbarous enemy - which were laid down by the Allies in WWII. I just hope that it doesn’t take another 9/11 here until Americans pick up some history books and learn about how real wars are fought. Cities are bombed. Civilians are killed. Ruthlessness reigns until the unconditional surrender, and not a moment before."

(Ah the cry of every trailer park Hitler and La-Z-Boy Mussolini “If a million, 10 million, 100 million brown furriners have to die for me and my fat wife and idiot whelplings to feel marginally safer here in Bumfuzzle, Arkansas, then so be it!!” Except who exactly is going to surrender to us in Iraq? It’s their fucking country, the guy we went in to depose has already been hanged and his kids are long since blown to worm Lunchables.)
…

5. Just. Kill. Everybody.

"Whether they are 200 or 200,000 in number, Islamists will keep going and going and going until they’re dead or we are (or we are converted), in spite of the assassinations of those who step forward to call themselves leaders in the Jihad.

I fear that we will have to kill them all…"

And, in response to a question about going to war with Pakistan over this…

"For myself, the answer is and emphatic yes.

"We went to war with Afghanistan because they wouldn’t hand over Al Qaeda, why should be allow Pakistan get away with the same? Besides, Pakistan wouldn’t have been dumb enough to start a war with us. They may have protested, but more likely they would have tried to keep it secret or downplayed its significance."

Wow. Well, nothing says “My mommy sipped too much gas-o-line when she was carrying me” that a willingness to play nuclear chicken in the Middle East on the theory that no one would dare strike back against the omnipotent United States just because we invaded their country.

Shit, I’m sure they’d greet us as liberators, and the Pakistani Good-n-Plenty factories would run 24/7 just to be sure that they had enough candy with which to greet us.

"If Musharref would have disapproved, then they neede to tell him he would be the first target, and see if he changed his mind.
I remember something about “You are either with us or with the terrorists.”
…
Doesn’t anyone at the top want to win this battle for our Civilization’s survival?"

6. Blame the Democrats or liberals or somebody…sorta...

"…If this story is untrue (not that it really matters, since we are pussy-footing around this war, anyway, while the Dems want to just ignore it and pretend that there is no war)"

And
…

"Save a SEAL, club a liberal!"

And

"…
The liberal culture in America is too ignorant, they will elect Dems to their own demise."

And

"…
I blame Bush for reacting to the political climate the yellow, traitorous democraps had already created…"

And finally, this, which perfectly captures the primal jackbooted genocidal cancer that the Right has where other human beings keep their souls…

"Rumsfield, Bush, Clinton, Lott, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, Graham, McCain, Gates, Obmama, Edwards, Richardson, Biden, Deminci, Vonichvich,Schumer these people are the problem.

They are not America, they are the scum, the floatsam, the debris that America has birthed from its flirtation with liberalism.

We must throw off those shackles and unlease our power. We must flex our muscle and make the world tremble. We must DECLARE OUR MIGHT TO THE WORLD AND LET NO MAN OR WOMAN FROM MEXICO TO INDIA QUESTION OUR WILL.

We must DESTROY our enemies to the last. We must salt the earth and rain fire upon their heads and make their great great great grandkids tremble to hear our name.

Said the angry little man with the tiniest penis in the whole wide world...