This just in...Osama Bin Laden is still dead

I expect The admin spin doctors to incessantly loop a riff from the old Chevy Chase SNL Weekend Update: "This just in: Osama Bin Laden is still dead."

The anniversary of the attack on bin Laden has gotten more air time from the administration and its propaganda arm than Pearl Harbor Day, D-Day, V-E Day, V-J Day, the 150th anniversary of the Civil War or the 100th anniversary of the War of 1812.

The funny thing is that the only reason there is so much made of the president's decision to attack bin Laden is that it was such a surprise. If Bush had done it, it would have been no more than any one would expect from him. But for the prez to risk a reprise of Desert 1 seems completely out of character for him.

One line of comment I heard on VRWC radio was about a leaked memorandum of record from then CIA chief Panetta. Mark Levin parsed it. Pointing out that it was a classic CYA. If the operation had gone south, the admiral had full operational control yada yada. I also noticed there is some sort of disconnect. Biden is quoted as describing the prez going around the room getting the opinion of his advisors. But Panetta's memo says Donilon, the Nat Sec advisor called him to tell him the prez had made a decision. I suppose there will be a Woodward panegyric with imagined interviews with the key players explaining in breathless detail what they were thinking and what they had for lunch.  - I'll pass.

Meanwhile, the admin - I mean the Committee to Re-Elect the President - I mean the campaign has trotted out the silly notion that Romney wouldn't have done it. A half-sentence taken out of context to reverse the meaning of Romney's statement is the basis for this particular untruth. Pretty ham-handed but pink slime for the true believers none the less. It's just possible that the Romney WOULD have made a different decision in the situation. But that doesn't necessarily mean he couldn't have made a better decision.

I heard Graham Allison, David Ignatius and John Miller on the Sunday talkies basically saying that the deputy CJCS, Sec Gates and others on the National Security team all advised "another option". They didn't say what the other option was. So, it may be that using SEALs to do the job wasn't the only or best option from a military point of view. Apparently it was the most politically advantageous. One of them also described bin Laden as 'retired' at  Abbottabad, living in isolation - probably more solitarily confined than KSM is in Gitmo. I expect if I were the CJCS, I'd recommend a cruise missile or drone strike rather than risking 20 or so of the most capable Soldiers in the Military to achieve the same operational end to kill a semi-retired recluse.

So, maybe the risk profile mentioned in Panetta's memo scored the op as no down side, since the SpecOps commander would take the fall for failure and huge upside since success would enable the prez to posture for 18 months as a decisive military leader - despite all the other evidence to the contrary.

In any case, we can be comfortably confident that between now and Nov 4, we will be constantly reminded that "this just in - Osama Bin Laden is still dead"