via Newsmax
A new book says President Barack Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on
trial, showing the U.S. commitment to due process under law, if the
al-Qaida leader had surrendered during a U.S. raid in Pakistan last
year.
In ‘‘The Finish,’’ journalist Mark Bowden quotes the president as saying
he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor
of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin
Laden went on trial for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Bowden, who also wrote ‘‘Black Hawk Down’’ about the 1993 battle in
Somalia where two helicopters were downed, killing 18 U.S. soldiers,
says Obama expected bin Laden to go down fighting. A team of Navy SEALs
raided bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011 and
killed bin Laden.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of ‘‘The Finish,’’ which is due to
come out Oct. 16, a few weeks before the presidential election. The
revelation that Obama hoped to capture bin Laden may provide political
fodder for Republicans who have criticized the Obama administration for
trying to bring terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and overseas to
trials in U.S. courts.
‘‘Frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a
pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due
process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaida, in
preventing him from appearing as a martyr,’’ Obama is quoted saying in
an interview with Bowden.
Obama believed that affording terrorists ‘‘the full rights of criminal
defendants would showcase America’s commitment to justice for even the
worst of the worst,’’ Bowden writes.
Obama had expressed similar views as a presidential candidate.
U.S. officials have said the Navy team was ordered to capture bin Laden
if he surrendered or kill him if he threatened them. Bowden asserts that
the SEALs could have taken bin Laden alive, but had no intention of
doing so.
In a separate account of the raid that was published last month, one
member of the Navy team, Matt Bissonnette, wrote that the SEALS climbed a
stairway inside the compound and opened fire when bin Laden poked his
head around a doorway. Bissonnette wrote that bin Laden’s hands were
concealed and the SEALS presumed he was armed so they shot him.
Bowden’s extensive access to top figures, from the president to the
raid’s operational commander, Adm. Bill McRaven, may revive criticism
from Republicans that the White House allegedly leaks about the raid to
burnish its foreign policy record during an election year,
Bowden details how the White House planned the mission and explains that
the specific American team was chosen because it had ‘‘already
successfully conducted about a dozen secret missions inside Pakistan.’’
The recounting of the raid matches most previous versions. But Bowden
also offers new insights from the first-person perspective of the
officer who commanded it on the ground.
McRaven was able to monitor all Pakistani communications during the raid
from his command post at a base in Afghanistan, according to Bowden.
The account shows that Pakistani authorities were unaware of the raid as
it happened, giving the Americans breathing room to fly in a backup
helicopter to replace the one that had crashed while depositing the
first batch of SEALs in the compound.
After McRaven told then-CIA director Leon Panetta he had a ‘‘Geronimo’’
call — the radio code that meant the SEALs had found bin Laden — the
admiral realized he had not asked whether bin Laden was dead or had been
captured.
McRaven checked again with the SEALs on the ground before relaying that
bin Laden had likely been killed. But McRaven cautioned Panetta to
‘‘manage his expectations’’ until they had more definitive proof, by
comparing his photographs with the dead man.
Later, McRaven told the president that he was ‘‘pretty damn sure’’ that
they killed bin Laden, but said the military needed to complete DNA
analysis to be sure, Bowden writes.
The book’s publication may complicate the Pentagon’s attempts to punish
Bissonnette for his book. Writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen,
Bissonnette published ‘‘No Easy Day’’ without submitting it for a
security review by the Pentagon. Bowden was under no such requirement to
have the book vetted because he was not a government or military
employee.
The Finish’’ is published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.’s Atlantic Monthly Press imprint.
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