From the skewering wit and insight of Weaponsman.
Another Internet Commando Demands Answers
Is this John Hudson? Image: A blogger who likes guns and planes — our kind of guy.
Another Internet Terrorologist(*) in the Thpenther Ackerman mode is vewwy vewwy upset that he doesn’t have better visibility into the Abbotabad raid that whacked Bin Laden. No word on whether he’s packing his backpack and running away to join the thircus. On the other hand, we can take it to the bank that he’s not running away to join the Army (or Marines or SEALs). Or even the Air Force, that noble alternative to military service. But I digress.
More Revisions to the Official Bin Laden Raid Story – Global – The Atlantic Wire.
As John Hudson, the Internet Terrorologist in question, puts it in The Atlantic, a publication legendary for its insistence that Sarah Palin’s last kid was some kind of Manchurian Child doppelgänger, “the narrative of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound is getting another revamp.”
Let me explain it in terms even the uterus detectives at the Atlantic can understand: those who know aren’t talking, and those who are talking don’t know.
That’s the way we roll in the special ops world. Even a retired SEAL DEVGRU officer can’t find out what happened (Chuck Pfarrer is exactly that, and his book is part laughably speculative and part reasonably speculative, but absolutely all speculative). A journalist’s odds of getting this information? Hah.
It would be unfair to say that operators think of journalists as something like terrorists. The terrorists at least get some grudging respect for their commitment to their twisted ideals, and their imaginative asymmetric exploitation of the few strengths they have in this lopsided battle. The journalists — well, we know where they stand. (Thank you, Mike Wallace, poster boy for moral cowardice in his own phrase). If they’re so cosmically good at figuring things out, they ought to know where we stand.
Hudson’s second mistake is assuming that other people are telling the truth — especially journalists. In the rush to get in print in May 2011, no one bothered with accuracy, or with multiple independent sources. They just started typing. “Shaping the narrative,” gathering (or making up) facts that fit, hammering facts that didn’t into shape, throwing facts they didn’t like away. That’s how they roll.
In the latest, Hudson is upset that information in a speech by a CIA lawyer — trust us, he wasn’t there either, and like any lawyer is closer to being part of the problem set than part of the solutions toolbox — contradicts previous statements by Administration wallahs who also weren’t there, some of whom were quoted anonymously by other journalists (try to give that word the tone it needs, somewhere between oxygen thieves and pedophiles).
If you’re concerned about the anonymous (and probably either uninformed or nonexistent) sources of CBS’s David Martin disagreeing with the anonymous (and probably nonexistent) sources of the New Yorker’s Nicholas Schmidle, go for it.
(One thing Hudson has done is brought out the crazies in his comments section. It’s entertaining in an I-shouldn’t-be-laughing-at-these-peoples’-mental-disabilities kind of way. You know the signs: irrational conspiracy theories, accusations of cover-up, blocks of text with no paragraphs).
(*) Terrorologist: a term used exclusively by self-promoting phonies. Hudson doesn’t use it, but he deserves it after this pathetic column).
Tags: mall ninja, Weaponsman
I have had lots of fun reading the different accounts of what happened on that early morning, and your words “those who know aren’t talking, and those who are talking don’t know” ring absolutely true. As a former Marine Corps Intel guy, I know that this statement is gospel. Thanks for the great read.
Semper Fidelis