Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:16 pm
So…remember when former Bush White House Press Secretary told Sean Hannity, “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term”?
Well, apparently we never got Osama bin Laden in President Obama’s term. No, that was Bush. At least, that’s what Fox News’ Eric Bolling said Thursday on Fox News’ The Five.
Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
JUAN WILLIAMS (CO-HOST): I don’t think most people, I don’t think most Americans, even Trump supporters think Donald Trump really knows a lot about how to combat terrorism.
ERIC BOLLING (CO-HOST): I’ll tell you about who doesn’t know a whole lot about terrorism, is President Obama. And he’s proven that over the last eight years. Remember when he said “I want to lead from behind,” he said —
WILLIAMS: He never said “I want to lead from behind.”
BOLLING: — “Let’s pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq.”
KIMBERLY GUILFOLYE (CO-HOST): The “jay vee team.”
BOLLING: — “Jay vee team.” He’s failed on every level as far as counter-terror all the way through.
WILLIAMS: Oh, I see.
BOLLING: And if you point to Bin Laden, that wasn’t Obama’s administration that got Bin Laden.
WILLIAMS: It wasn’t?
BOLLING: That was the Bush administration that set up the kill shot, and Obama took the kill shot.
WILLIAMS: Up to then, I was listening to you. But goodness gracious, you went overboard.
Yes. There are people as catastrophically stupid and as blatantly dishonest as Sean Hannity (and no, we’re not going to forget Bill O’Reilly).
Set up the kill shot? Set up the kill shot?? When and how did President Bush set up the kill shot? Back when we invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime, he had a chance to get bin Laden and he let him go. He had no interest at all in killing bin Laden then or at any time thereafter.
At Tora Bora, just a couple months after 9/11, Bush could have had bin Laden if he wanted him “dead or alive,” as he claimed after 9/11. But Bush didn’t apparently want him dead or alive.
We don’t have to believe, as some have claimed, that Bush needed him alive to have an excuse to invade Iraq to conclude that Bush was monumentally incompetent.
So disinterested was Bush that The New York Times reported in 2006 that the bin Laden unit had been shut down. How can you set up a kill shot on a guy you’re not even looking for? And hadn’t been looking for for two years when you left office?
It’s bad enough to see President Obama blamed for Bush’s greatest failure, 9/11, and for his second, the response to Hurricane Katrina, but now to claim somehow that Bush not only did not make those terrible blunders but actually got Osama bin Laden, is just obscene.
Bush did not only not set up a kill shot, Bush had no interest in setting up a kill shot because in the seven remaining years of his presidency after 9/11, he made no attempt to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. He just didn’t care.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
