JOE Biden has backtracked about advising Barack Obama to wait on raiding Osama bin Laden’s compound because he was worried about possibly failing. According to Obama’s book, Biden “weighed in against the raid” in May 2011, in which Navy Seals were sent from Afghanistan to Pakistan to carry out the mission. Obama said that his […]
JOE Biden has backtracked about advising Barack Obama to wait on raiding Osama bin Laden’s compound because he was worried about possibly failing.
According to Obama’s book, Biden “weighed in against the raid” in May 2011, in which Navy Seals were sent from Afghanistan to Pakistan to carry out the mission.
Obama said that his then-vice president said he suggested that Obama take more time to make a decision on the “Operation Neptune” raid, telling him, “Don’t go”.
But the President-elect appeared to recall a different version of events in a private conversation with Obama where he urged him to “trust your instincts”.
Speaking in CNN‘s new documentary, “President in Waiting,” that aired last night, Biden recalled how top advisers to Obama were debating whether their intelligence was strong enough to attack — which would violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The question was whether the Navy Seals’ helicopter completed one more pass over bin Laden’s compound to ensure they had the right target.
He said: “When it came time to go or not go, the President went around the room. I think there were 17 people around the table … and [he] said, ‘what do you think we should do?’
“I said, ‘President, I think you should wait and pass again’ — knowing that if you make a lower pass, they might observe it and he would run away.”
I said to him, ‘President, follow your instincts about this’
Joe Biden, President-elect
But later Biden claimed to have taken the President aside later.
He said: “There is a private discussion. And I said to him, President, follow your instincts about this.”
Biden added: “Had this decision been wrong, had he not been there or had it failed, I doubt the 17 people around that table would’ve said ‘I told him he should go’.”
Republicans have used it in attack ads against him.
Some ads claimed that Biden opposed the raid altogether, which according to both Biden and Obama, is not true.
Obama wrote in his memoir that Biden was concerned about “the enormous consequences of failure” if the raid were to not be successful.
Biden said Obama “should defer any decision until the intelligence community was more certain that bin Laden was in the compound”.
The raid ended up being a success, and the Navy Seal team killed bin Laden – founder of Al Qaida – on May 2, 2011, years after he masterminded the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.
In his memoir, Obama wrote: “As had been true in every major decision I’d made as president.”
“I appreciated Joe’s willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations.”
Obama said that “as the helicopters took off” following the successful operation, “Joe placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.”
“‘Congratulations, boss,’” Obama said Biden told him.
Biden has been attacked in the political world for his advice for the former president.
Earlier this year, Biden – now the president-elect of the United States – claimed that he didn’t tell Obama not to go for the raid to take out bin Laden.
