THE OBAMA OSAMA BOTCH

The White House has botched the rollout of the greatest success of Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency.

The screwups began last Sunday (5/01) when we learned U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden in his million dollar "hideout" in the resort town of Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The White House asked the networks for time at 10:30 p.m. EDT.  But it was more than an hour later before Mr. Obama spoke.  By then the news had leaked out, and many people had gone to bed.

We’re told the delay was because the president was still working on his remarks.  If so, it wasn’t worth it.

"The first part of the announcement, evoking 9/11, was vulgarly overwritten," said Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter.  "The adjective-bloated compote was unworthy of the subject, banal and self indulgent."

The awkwardness of the delivery of the news was little noticed in our euphoria over the substance of it.  But subsequent White House screwups are fraught with consequences.

The president’s counterterrorism adviser told reporters Monday (5/02) bin Laden, gun in hand, was killed while trying to use his wife as a human shield.  On Tuesday (5/03), the White House backtracked on everything John Brennan had said the day before.  Bin Laden wasn’t armed.  He didn’t try to use his wife as a human shield.

Mr. Brennan may merely have been confused about the details.  But shouldn’t the counterterrorism advisor know those details?

Bin Laden was buried at sea within 24 hours as Moslem tradition requires.  Some conservatives have groused about this.  Their sniping is misplaced.  Feeding bin Laden to the fishes keeps his grave site from becoming a shrine.  And there was no point in gratuitously offending some Moslems by delaying his burial.

But the quick disposal of the body made it imperative for the administration to promptly make public proof bin Laden is dead. 

But the White House is refusing to release photos of bin Laden’s corpse, allegedly because they’re "gruesome."  Most Americans would enjoy seeing a body recognizable as bin Laden with half his head blown off.  And such a photo would send a message to our enemies.

The dithering and confusion in the White House this week is reminiscent more of the dithering and confusion over Libya than of the bold, decisive president who ordered the risky hit on Osama bin Laden.  And that president succeeded only by ignoring the views of candidate Obama in 2008.

President Obama sent SEAL Team Six rather than the FBI, opting for a military solution.  Candidate Obama said terrorism was primarily a law enforcement problem.

The SEALs, apparently, had orders to kill bin Laden.  Candidate Obama opposed targeted assassinations.

The U.S. acted unilaterally.  Putative ally Pakistan wasn’t informed. Candidate Obama condemned unilateral military actions.

Vital clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts came from al Qaeda bigwigs interrogated in secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay.  Two didn’t divulge their secrets until they were waterboarded.

Waterboarding is torture, candidate Obama said.  He promised to close Gitmo.

The bold risk taker is so different from the passive, tentative, risk averse president we’d seen before that some doubt Mr. Obama played as substantive a role in the bin Laden hit as the White House is claiming.

"I believe that President Obama’s hand was forced in this," said "Gregg," a retired Navy SEAL, in a call Tuesday to the Rush Limbaugh program.

Reports he kept the SEALs waiting for 16 hours before giving the green light sound more like the Barack Obama we’re familiar with.  In the end he said "go," and for that he deserves our praise and thanks.  But if and when all the details come out, they’re unlikely to be as flattering as the White House claims.

Liberals praise Mr. Obama for doing what they condemned George W. Bush for doing.  The motive for their hypocrisy seems nakedly partisan.  "I would hate now to be a Republican candidate thinking of running," said ABC’s Barbara Walters.

After the liberation of Kuwait, George H.W. Bush’s popularity soared to a then record high of 89 percent.  Liberal smugness would vanish if they remembered the elder Mr. Bush got just 37 percent of the vote 19 months later, because voters were unhappy with an economy that was in better shape than ours is today.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.