Comfortable Armchairs

The partisan spinning has begun! (It only took an afternoon.)

By Justin of Right Side Redux (and via Citizen Smash, who I hope reconsiders):

Political correctness and timidness was all the rage during the Clinton administration when considering how to respond to Bin Laden according to “Mike” (an infiltrated CIA agent):

On December 20, intelligence indicated Bin Ladin would be spending the night at the Haji Habash house, part of the governor’s residence in Kandahar.The chief of the Bin Ladin unit, “Mike,” told us that he promptly briefed Tenet and his deputy, John Gordon. From the field, the CIA’s Gary Schroen advised: “Hit him tonight—we may not get another chance.” An urgent teleconference of principals was arranged.

The principals considered a cruise missile strike to try to kill Bin Ladin. One issue they discussed was the potential collateral damage—the number of innocent bystanders who would be killed or wounded. General Zinni predicted a number well over 200 and was concerned about damage to a nearby mosque…By the end of the meeting, the principals decided against recommending to the President that he order a strike…

Some lower-level officials were angry. “Mike” reported to Schroen that he had been unable to sleep after this decision. “I’m sure we’ll regret not acting last night,” he wrote, criticizing the principals for “worrying that some stray shrapnel might hit the Habash mosque and offend Muslims.”

The principals, he said, were “obsessed” with trying to get others—Saudis, Pakistanis, Afghan tribals-to “do what we won’t do.” Schroen was disappointed too. “We should have done it last night,” he wrote. “We may well come to regret the decision not to go ahead.” (9-11 Report, page 147-148)

Notice those ellipses in Justin’s retelling? Think they conceal anything important? From the same pages (but omitted from Justin’s version):

A few weeks later, in January 1999, Clarke wrote that the principals [Zinni and others] had thought the intelligence only half reliable and had worried about killing or injuring perhaps 300 people. Tenet said he remembered doubts about the reliability of the source and concern about hitting the nearby mosque. “Mike” remembered Tenet telling him that the military was concerned that a few hours had passed since the last sighting of Bin Ladin and that this persuaded everyone that the chance of failure was too great. . . .

The Joint Staff’s deputy director for operations agreed [that the strike should have gone forward], even though he told us that later intelligence appeared to show that Bin Ladin had left his quarters before the strike would have occurred. Missing Bin Ladin, he said, ‘would have caused us a hell of a problem, but it was a shot we should have taken, and we would have had to pay the price.”

General Zinni was not merely “timid” or solely concerned with the loss of innocent life (though the loss of innocent life was, rightly, a concern). He also had serious doubts about the quality of the intelligence. It turned out that those doubts appear to have been correct. The world was pre-9/11. The risk that innocents would die was great.

Some advice: When sitting in your 9-11 armchair, don’t be so cavalier about second guessing the decisions of Generals and experts. If you do second guess, however, at least second guess based on the facts — not your fondest partisan hopes. Partisan hackery — 1. Credibility — 0.

Update: Instructions apply to Democrats as well.

Update 2: Gary Farber expresses a similar sentiment.