horse of george

Apropos my concerns regarding MSM agenda to shamelessly aid in the burnishing of Obama's 'strong leader' image as much as possible in wake of Osama kill CNN today reports that an anonymous Obama official tells how the administration had plans for the SEAL team to 'fight' its way out of Pakistan if it had to - and no where in the report is there any indication of how absolutely bad that would have been, extremely bad, disastrous - no, just carrying water for the administration since it's obvious this leak's intention is to polish that strong leader image just a wee bit more. The short term tactical advantage of keeping the Pakistanis in the dark is easy to understand - but that short term advantage risks putting much more important long term strategic goals in jeopardy - a significant military confrontation that resulted in Pakistani deaths and Pakistani military hardware being vaporized by stealth fighters and precision munitions would have turned those risks into a dire reality [hell, there remains a reasonable chance that those risks could materialize even without the military confrontation] - but the press is dutifully keeping from the public such inappropriate ruminations. Burnish that image, boys. Again, I'm not saying the op was wrong or ill conceived - I'm saying there's another side to it that is possibly much less flattering to Obama and is not being reported on for that very reason  - yes, there are abstruse foreign policy and strategy sites that have touched on the subject - but for the average voter, and, more importantly from Obama's POV, independent voters the only story being sold them is 'courageous, gutsy Obama killed the bad guy' - sure, this is sour grapes on my part - I've disliked and distrusted Obama since his keynote address in 2004, predicted then he'd be president and a bad one, worse than Bush, and he's on his way to proving me right - so, yes, that the benefit he reaps from the death of OBL is grossly out of whack viz the benefit he deserves certainly annoys - but sour grapes aside the story that's being sown here is a politically biased misrepresentation guaranteed to bring forth an unfortunate harvest. It's one thing for a politician to be busy with the business of manufacturing an image - one could argue that's all politicians ever do - but when the press is so willingly co-opted into the effort, you got yourself a serious problem.