The Patriot Post® · McRaven Goes Left, Again

By Mark Alexander ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/59617-mcraven-goes-left-again-2018-11-21

Recall that in August, ahead of the midterm elections, Adm. William McRaven (USN Ret.) chose to enter the political fray, publicly criticizing President Donald Trump for his criticism of McRaven’s friend and Barack Obama’s former CIA Director John Brennan, a deep-state hack.

McRaven was recently at it again, asserting that Trump’s attacks on the Leftmedia constitute “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.” When asked about that, Trump dismissed the criticisms of a “Hillary fan” and “Obama backer.” But he went further, saying, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner?”

Later, Trump added more accurately, “Of course we should have captured Osama bin Laden long before we did. … President Clinton famously missed his shot.”

While McRaven ran the operation that took out bin Laden, he was not involved in finding him. Still, Trump had a point.

Between 1997 and 2001, prior to the 9/11 Islamist attack, then-President Bill Clinton refused to give our special forces operators a green light to kill bin Laden when they literally had him in their sights.

George W. Bush unleashed a fury of attacks on Islamist strongholds, launching Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, successfully capturing Saddam Hussein, who was executed. But Osama was deep down a rat hole and not to be found.

In 2011, despite Obama’s constricted rules of engagement, the CIA discovered Osama in Pakistan, where U.S. Navy SEALs killed him.

A few months later, the vacuum left by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when ordering their 2011 retreat from Iraq created an Islamic resurgence of a far more dangerous incarnation of global Muslim terrorism — the Islamic State.

That notwithstanding, Obama based his 2012 reelection bid on the false narrative that al-Qa'ida was “on the run,” which necessitated the Obama/Clinton coverup of the 9/11 Benghazi attack.

Perhaps nothing better exemplified Obama’s Middle East policy failures than his 2014 Rose Garden reception announcing that he exchanged five of the most dangerous Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay for the return of an America-hating Army deserter, “Sergeant” Bowe Bergdahl. The deserter once again walked free last November.