Missing in action...

Reggie Love (President Barack Obama's "body man"/
personal assistant), said he and the president played cards during the Osama bin Laden raid, and that the president told him, "I can't watch this entire thing." 

"Most people were like down in the Situation Room and [President Obama] was like, 'I'm not going to be down there, I can't watch this entire thing,' We must have played 15 games of spades," said Love at a public event.

Apologies in advance if this site's template/layout cuts off Love at the right side of the frame. If so, The Bliss Index recommends clicking on the YouTube link and going to its player. (Thank you for your understanding.)




Just remember: Barack Obama is the Commander in Chief...

On the next episode of "The Al Qaeda Office"

Chock full of nuts (and petty politics)...

"Worldwide terror network Al Qaeda is riddled with petty office politics, files taken from Osama Bin Laden's Pakistan compound reveal," according to an article in The Daily Mail. "A trove of material recovered from the terror lair shows senior Al Qaeda figures were caught up in back stabbing and one-upmanship akin to the erratic behaviour seen in an average episode of 'The Office.'"

Al Qaeda's cast of characters...

Just great -- all this time we were worried about an attack hatched by Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute...

An honest mistake

Happens all the time...

Of all the stories surrounding the kill-bin Laden operation, this is emerging as one of the funnier ones...

In a story posted at GeekoSystem, we learn that the following humorous mix-up occurred on German TV as a newscaster attempted to report on the special forces who killed the terror leader.

There are perils associated with apparently using Google Image Search to get material for your official news broadcast. When a German television news channel, N24, was reporting a story on Navy SEAL Team Six, the unit which spearheaded the operation which ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, the channel accidentally used a fan-made logo for the Maquis, an anti-Cardassian rebel group which originally appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in place of the SEAL Team Six emblem.

As TrekMovie points out, there are a few differences between the logos:“[The newscaster] didn’t seem to notice (or care) that the skull in question was from a Klingon and included a bolted-on eyepatch. He and N24 also appear undeterred by the emblem’s inclusion of a phaser, 3 Klingon bat’leth swords and the word ‘Maquis.’” They also made on-air comments that acknowledged the Maquis logo and seemed to treat it as the real thing: “And they also have the ‘Team Six,’ that carried out the mission. They don’t have the skull in their emblem for nothing.”

Honest mistake.

(h/t: GeekoSystem, TrekMovie via io9 via Neatorama)

Passing notes?

Thanks for a job well done?

Was this a note (below) that had something to do with Osama bin Laden's demise?

The Italian television broadcast purports this "note passing" to be part of the Obama Administration's "Operation Geronimo."

A person commenting on the video, however, wrote, "They are exchanging their 'Challenge Coins.' Challenge Coins are a military tradition where commanders will 'unofficially' award a subordinate by passing his/her commanders coin in the clasp of the hand typically passed during a handshake for a job well done."

Which/what is it? Like most of the questions surrounding the get-bin Laden operation, we'll likely never know the real answer...

Note: The authenticity (narration and date stamp) of this video could not be independently verified.

The vital but relatively obscure part of the OBL-kill team...

The view from above...

One of America's most obscure intelligence agencies helped make the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound (top photo) the success that it was...

Here's a great story from the National Journal that's just part of the rich OBL-kill tapestry:

President Obama’s first brush with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was ignominious. Out for lunch in May 2009, at a Five Guys burger franchise in Washington, the new president started to shake the hands of other customers, TV cameras in tow. Then he turned to men with government ID badges. (See video below.)

“So, what do you?” Obama asked. “I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” one said.

“Outstanding. How long have you been doing that?” the president wondered. “Six years.” Obama then asked: “So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial--” His voice trailed off. “Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery.” Obama: “Sounds like good work.” The response is obscured by the audio.

Suffice it to say: Obama knows what the NGA does today.

(Read the rest here...)

What's great about this story is that it shows how complex/multi-faceted an operation like this truly is. Not only do you have the brave special forces operators low-roping into an enemy position and overwhelming opposition with precise force (not to mention killing the target), but you've also got a host of people working behind the scenes who make these operations possible.

Special "Kill OBL" bonus: The NGA is the only U.S. intel-related agency headed by a female. (Ya gotta love that a misogynistic bastard like OBL owes at least part of his demise to a smart American woman.)

Where was he?

Over there!

Apparently, the Janitor on "Scrubs" wasn't the only one who knew Osama bin Laden was kicking back in Pakistan.

In an excerpt from the HBO show, "Real Time With Bill Maher," aired Oct. 3rd, 2008, ABC's Christiane Amanpour revealed that at least one person in US intelligence suspected Osama Bin Laden was residing in a comfortable villa inside Pakistan -- not a cave.

Somehow, the Pakistan government's story that they didn't know bin Laden was in town is getting easier to pick at...

The numbers game...

What Osama bin Laden cost us...

I don't usually run such large chunks from other sources, but this piece (below) deserves to be republished as completely as possible.

It was created by Dave Gilson for Mother Jones.

And while it's a pretty comprehensive set of statistics, it fails to measure the most important things -- those things than can only be measured by those who experience them (grief, sorrow, anger, loss, worry, etc.).

Sources:

Most Wanted List: FBI

Reward: State Department

Cost of 9/11 attacks: 9/11 Commission (PDF)

9/11 death toll: The New York Times. Does not include hijackers.

Economic impact of 9/11: New York City Comptroller (PDF)

Costs of military operations: Congressional Research Service (PDF)

US casualties: Department of Defense

Civilian casualties: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (PDF)

Drone attacks: "The Year of the Drone," by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, New America Foundation

Al Qaeda members: "The Almanac of Al Qaeda," by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, New America Foundation

Aid to Pakistan: Congressional Research Service (PDF)

Bin Laden compound: Christian Science Monitor, Google Maps

Helicopter cost: Department of Defense

Commandos and dogs: New York Times

(h/t: Dave Gilson @ Mother Jones)

Liar, Liar?

The version being offered by Pakistan continues to lose credibility...

The congenitally corrupt former leader of Pakistan, Pervez Musharaff, repeatedly insisted Osama bin Laden wasn't in Pakistan...

From NDTV, India’s network station, a curious finding from Musharraf’s autobiography where he mentions a house in Abbottabad (clip below). Did Musharraf kneow of Abbottabad safe house?

Ya think?

(h/t: PBS NewsHour)

As it happened...

From the White House Situation Room...

Watching the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in real-time...

(h/t: Salena Zito)

You can find wisdom in the strangest places...

Our greatest intelligence asset?

"The Janitor" (aka: Neil Flynn)...

How was it that "The Janitor" on the Scrubs television sitcom knew where OBL was...yet the Pakistanis didn't have a clue?

I'd like to ask The Janitor if we should continue to chum-up to Pakistan...?

(h/t: Cali T.)

Says it all...

The Pledge of Allegiance at Ground Zero after the announcement that terror leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces...

'A republic…if you can keep it'

Sometime later this week, it’s likely Congress will vote on one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in the history of the United States: the health insurance reform bill (aka: “ObamaCare”).

The GOP is doing everything it can to stop the 2,400-plus page law from being approved, but the Dems are trying anything and everything to get the bill over the hump…including a host of parliamentary tricks and unconstitutional measures.

When asked why it’s OK to circumvent our nation’s legal foundation and tradition, the answers are myriad. From the noted blog, Red State: “Lefties (Daily Kos, TPMDC, and Huffington Post) are defending against allegations that the ‘Slaughter Rule’ proposed strategy to pass ObamaCare without a vote is unprecedented and unconstitutional. The Slaughter Rule has the support of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and is the Democrats preferred strategy to pass ObamaCare. Liberals are peddling a talking point that self-executing rules like the Slaughter Rule have been done before and it was the Republicans that used this tool in the past. The fact of the matter is that there is no precedent for the House to pass a bill without a direct vote by using a budget reconciliation measure as a trigger and a means to pass ObamaCare. Nancy Pelosi’s potentially unconstitutional strategy to pass unconstitutional ObamaCare is without precedent or justification.”


The leaders of the pack...

So the question arises: why does the Constitution only seem to matter with the pro-ObamaCare forces when it applies to granting rights to terrorists, unlawful combatants, terror detainees and their abettors? Why doesn’t the Constitution matter now?

Two reasons:

• First, this is about an agenda. The Rule of Law be damned.
• Second, this is about cowardice. Even Speaker Pelosi admits as much.

From a Washington Post story by staffers Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane – “After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

"It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."

Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi's plan would be unconstitutional.

"It's very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics through which they are going to avoid accountability," Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the senior Republican on the House Rules Committee, told reporters. "And I hope very much that, at the end of the day, that if we are going to have a vote, we will have a clean up-or-down vote that will allow the American people to see who is supporting this Senate bill and who is not supporting this Senate bill."

In closing, a bit of history: At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was buttonholed as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, “Well, doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin replied, “A republic…if you can keep it.”

After all is said and done, what will we have?


The Constitutional Convention...

Surprise! PLUS BREAKING NEWS...

We're not even through the first week of 2010 and the new year is already full of surprises...

Like this surprise! - BREAKING NEWS - LATE ADDITION TO THE BLISS INDEX: It appears that U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) will retire. This story will continue to develop...

Pop quiz: Which media organization is asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Alcatraz) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Casinos) to open Congress’ planned non-televised behind the scenes "health care reform" talks? Is it, a.) the New York Times; b.) NBC; c.) NPR; or d. ) SURPRISE! the Congressionally created C-SPAN?!?! (If you picked “d,” you win.)


I am surprised Madame Speaker turned on the president…

“In a huge surprise, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) has just announced he will not seek reelection.” In a totally unrelated surprise, news organizations will soon have something special to tell us about Sen. Dorgan.


Say goodnight, Mr. Senator...

Add Democrats: to some, it's a surprise that they’re “dropping like flies.”

In a decision that totally surprised the Kennedy Royal Family, the Obama Administration “signaled a sudden urgency yesterday to resolve the nine-year dispute over building a wind farm off Cape Cod.” Teddy Kennedy (yes, that guy who helped bring President Barack Obama along) and his family – not to mention Native Americans in the area – fought tooth and nail to make sure the giant windmills didn’t sully the rich folks’ view from Cape Cahd. Note to the rest of you poor suckers across the fruited plains: wind farms are coming to a vista near you, like it or not.


With scenery like that, it's no wonder Teddy and the rest of the Cape Cod Sopranos fought to keep the coast clear of unsightly structures...

Senator John McCain (R-AARP) might very well be on his way to his long-deserved retirement. Considering the manner in which he ran against an empty suit – and lost – is it any surprise?


Stop thinking about the Senate dining room and start thinking about the early bird special at Hometown Buffet...

I don’t think anyone should be surprised that Iran doesn’t want Sen. John Kerry (D-Gigolo) to visit…whether he comes on a swift boat or jet.


Senator John Kerry being swiftboarded...

Frankly, I’m surprised that theBrits – considering the short shrift they’ve been given by the current administration – tried to help when it came to the Christmas Crotch Bomber. I’m sure they were warmly thanked…not.

George W. Bush is going to be so surprised when he finds out he’s up against the Democrats again in the coming elections. (Then again, maybe not.)

Add Democrats and the next election: Why are they taking that approach? According the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, “How worried are Democrats about the mid-term voting only 10 months away? "If the election were held today, we'd lose the House," Democratic campaign consultant Tom King told the Huffington Post this week, expressing a view that HuffPo says is echoed by a number of Democratic strategists in off-the-record conversations.” Considering what's come out of Washington, D.C., this past year (and what hasn't), no one should be surprised.

How much would you fork over to see the look of surprise when one of these flies up the robes of a bin Laden buddy? This is one of those projects that makes me feel extra good about being a taxpayer.


Hey, OBL...how about a surprise party?

Don't you just love surprises?

Why Afghanistan?

Because it’s there…well, because of what's near there.

Pakistan, a corrupt, poverty-stricken, failed state that always seems to be at odds with the world’s largest democracy, India – also a nuclear power. Not countries with nuclear power but, instead, nations with nuclear weapons. Pakistan is a nation barely propped up by the United States which has taken Osama bin Laden and his comrades-in-arms at their word: get Pakistan to get nukes.

To be sure, bugging out of Afghanistan would only invite problems in that nation that eventually would be visited upon us again. The vacuum that nature – and unstable nations – abhors would be filled…quickly. And lest we forget, it was the vacuum left behind by the former invading/occupying Soviet Union that served as an incubator for the Taliban and its virulent cousin, al Qaeda.



Landlocked and not of any particularly great value when it comes to resources, the Central Asia nation shares borders with Pakistan, the friendly Iranians, China and the “stans” of the former USSR (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). While we prop-up the Pakistanis and provide “aid” to some of the “stans,” it’s generally considered a neighborhood where you don’t want to go at night. Or in the day, for that matter.

Since we all know by now that the vast collection of tribal areas drawn into a fairly meaningless map, beginning with its founding in 1747, has become known as the “graveyard of empires” (namely the Russians and British), we won’t delve into its history too deeply. Of course, besides any interest Americans have held since “Charlie Wilson’s War” hit the big screen has been primarily limited to thinking that since 9/11, bin Laden is living there near its outer boundaries.



But things have changed.

With the war in Iraq essentially won (or at least turned tepid) with the Petreus Surge, our attentions – and soon another surge – focus on this dusty outpost of mankind too many time zones (and several eons of human development) away. Seemingly, each week is filled with reports of new American boys coming home from Afghanistan in American body bags. As President Barack Obama said, Afghanistan is “a war of necessity.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean our military there are bulletproof or that the job is an easier one than Iraq was.

Logistically, it will be tougher. Yes, we do have NATO on our side in this conflict, but the roles of our “allies” in the effort are often under-resourced and limited in such a way that it actually helps the terrorists, insurgents and Talibani more than it does us in many instances.

We should, if at all possible, find a way to restore Afghanistan to some semblance of what it once was. What it thought it could be. And we should not rest until the opposition is ruthlessly and finally crushed. Let us finish them – and the job –while we are in-country. But we’ve got to find ways to move the terrorists away from the Pakistani frontier and preserve what shreds of order and stability might exist in Pakistan.




Back to the original point of all this: Pakistan.

Since 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and India and Pakistan became independent of Great Britain, the two have not been the best of friends. The worst clash between the two nations came in 1947–48, 1965, and 1971. At the root of the ongoing tension have primarily been attributed to hostilities between Hindus and Muslims and – as well as the “disposition of self-governing princely states.” (India, by the way, also is a nuclear power and isn’t afraid to protect itself just as it did in the previous wars.)

So Pakistan - a country always seeming to be justthisclose to dissolving into utter anarchy and then becoming another militant extremist Muslim state – has the bomb. And there’s the rub. You see, Pakistan having nukes by itself is bad enough – given all the bad blood it’s had with India all these years. But throw in the definite possibility that some nut job group of mullahs or Taliban/al Qaeda types with fingers on the trigger (or even giving away fissile material to other terrorists), and you can see why the Afghanistan problem can’t be allowed to spread.



Of course, Pakistan continues to be rocked on an almost daily basis by terror attacks that are designed to upset already tenuous circumstances there: inflict fear in/on the populace, demoralize military and police, encourage other low-lifers, and sow the seeds for a future conflict and/or takeover. That can’t be allowed to happen.

The good news is that the president has approved a significant increase in troops being sent to the area. "This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," Obama said in a written statement. "The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border."

Let me say this: bravo, Mr. President. This is not a time to dither and play politics. The stakes of the game we're in are too large to wager on elections, special interests or even misplaced pressures from allies (and, possibly, the Nobel Prize Prize committee).

As bloody, tragic and horrible as the conflict there already is – and it will get worse – we do need to dedicate ourselves to finishing this effort…the right way. This isn’t about WMDs that “might” be there. This isn’t about anything having to do with oil. This isn’t about a proxy war with competing nations. This is about making sure a group of people who have promised to use nuclear weapons and who are capable of wanton, mass killings are stopped dead in their tracks before they get a chance to even think about their plans again.

Dead in their tracks.