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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Copies of Bin Laden Book Emerge, Lies Exposed

 UPDATE  Now NYT's Eric Schmitt gets his copy and here's his lead: "A new firsthand account of the Navy SEALS raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last year contradicts the Obama administration’s previous descriptions of the mission, raising questions about whether the leader of Al Qaeda posed a clear threat to the commandos who fired on him."

Earlier: Last year I was among the relatively few who questioned the official story on the raid to kill bin Laden from the start.  The U.S. media seems to swallow the official story whole, and then when cracks appeared, still swallowed it, at least half-whole.  Now that book, No Easy Day, about the raid by the ex-Navy Seal, writing under a pseudonym, is about to come out and the AP and  Huff Post managed to scoop others today after buying the book in a bookstore where it had been placed on sale a week before it was supposed to (this inevitably happens).  The book apparently shows that bin Laden was unarmed, and was shot dead before the Seals even entered his bedroom.

As I noted at the time, the raid was clearly an assassination attempt, beyond what the White House said (though media did not care).  And, from Huff Post:
The book calls out inaccurate accounts of the assault. "The raid was being reported like a bad action movie," Owen writes. "At first, it was funny because it was so wrong." Contrary to earlier accounts, Owen says SEALs weren't fired upon while they were outside the gate of the compound. There was no 40-minute firefight. And it wasn't true that bin Laden had "time to look into our eyes."
From AP:
In another possibly uncomfortable revelation for U.S. officials who say bin Laden's body was treated with dignity before being given a full Muslim burial at sea, the author reveals that in the cramped helicopter flight out of the compound, one of the SEALs called "Walt" — one of the pseudonyms the author used for his fellow SEALs — was sitting on bin Laden's chest as the body lay at the author's feet in the middle of the cabin, for the short flight to a refueling stop inside Pakistan where a third helicopter was waiting. 
It appears the book may help GOPers in their claims that the Seals believe Obama took too much credit for the action, though this is much disputed. 

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