| Big Daily Mail story. Corroborates some of what we've heard from other sources. Barack can't seem to get away from the wimmins in his life, can he... |
The explosive allegation is contained in an expose by journalist Rich Miniter, who argues that the White House's carefully-crafted narrative of Obama as a decisive leader who dispatched the al-Qaeda leader despite the doubts of advisers is a myth.
Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him will be published on Tuesday. Excerpts have been viewed by Mail Online.
Miniter, a former Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and Sunday Times of London journalist, cites an unnamed source within Joint Special Operations Command as revealing that three 'kill' missions were cancelled by Obama in January, February and March 2011. Bin Laden was eventually killed by US Navy SEALs inside his compound in Abbotobad, Pakistan in May 2011.
The killing of bin Laden is at the centre of Obama's re-election campaign and is likely to be highlighted yet again by his aides on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks next month. Obama has already come under fire from former SEALs for trumpeting his role in the raid.
Until now, no one has claimed that he was reluctant even to launch it.
| Not quite, we heard a bit about this not long after the raid. |
Miniter writes that Clinton's alliances with Leon Panetta, then CIA director and now Pentagon chief, and David Petraeus, then head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and now at the helm at the CIA, were critical in bringing bin Laden to justice.
At the start of his presidency, Miniter writes, Obama was 'studiously undecided' about whether to kill the mastermind of 9/11.
'He refused to weigh in or commit himself on even small matters related to a possible strike on bin Laden.'
He continues: 'Obama was often disengaged as the bin Laden operation took shape; he left critical decisions to the then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, then-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
'Obama feared taking responsibility for a risky raid that might go tragically wrong.'
Initially, Miniter writes, Obama deferred to Jarrett over whether to go after bin Laden.
'Jarrett opposed the idea. She worried about a backlash against the president if the operation failed, or even if it succeeded. Clinton privately fumed about Jarrett's relentless presence and her injection of political considerations at every turn.
| When Hillary says you're injecting politics into policy too much, you've got a problem... |
'There was no need, she said, to hand our political rivals a set of intelligence failures of our own.
| Thus demonstrating their fear of the unknown. Bush had no qualms about doing right with the information he had, which meant that occasionally he got one wrong. Champ was unwilling to be wrong, even once, so he threw away all the opportunities he had to do right. |
Despite their rivalry during the battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Clinton had gradually won over Obama and established her influence during weekly meetings in the Oval Office.
'Clinton used her weekly meeting to begin lobbying for a decisive blow against bin Laden.
'She knew her husband had paid a political price for failing to stop bin Laden before the September 11 attacks. She knew Obama's presidency could be mortally wounded if he had bin Laden in his gun sights and didn't fire.'
| Besides, it was the right thing to do. Assuming you couldn't just snatch him, fly him to the safe house at Ice Station Zebra and spend a year picking his head apart. |
'He knew Clinton was right. So he agreed to keep making minor decisions, but remained uneasy about the big one at the end--deciding to kill bin Laden, and to risk losing American and Pakistani lives in the process.'
Even the day before bin Laden's demise, Miniter writes, Obama was seized by a 'fourth moment of indecision'.
The White House later said that poor weather conditions prompted this final delay but Miniter writes that he obtained the US Air Force Combat Meteorological Centre's weather report for that day and established that it showed 'ideal conditions' for the SEAL raid.