Dee Perez-Scott: Pundit

After watching the morning news shows recently, Dee Perez-Scott announced that we should all thank God for President Obama for the killing of Osama Ben Laden. She, as always, limited her accolades to her favorite president, ignoring all the others who were involved in previous presidencies and in the CIA. Leon Panetta made the decision that set this operation into motion before Obama even knew about it. The purposes of his initiative were three fold: (1) to give Obama plausible deniability in case the mission came up empty or turned into a disaster; (2) because it was Panetta’s operation in the first place; and (3) because Panetta expected Obama to vacillate and maybe delay the mission until it was too late. Allowing Panetta to be the official decision maker put Obama in a position to fire him if the mission failed instead of rewarding him with the SecDef job.

Dee Perez-Scott then goes on to rail against comments she attributes to Republican candidates during the last election. She does not provide any URL references to back up her criticisms. Typical Perez commentary. If both McCain and Palin are famous for encouraging the bombing of Iran, then the URLs should be easy to find. Dee Perez-Scott then asks the rhetorical question: “Can you imagine what would have happened if they were in the White House? Clearly they would have bombed Bin Laden's hideout and demolished it, destroying any clear evidence that he was there and inciting a war with Pakistan -- a nation that actually does have nuclear weapons (aka Weapons of Mass Destruction.)”
It goes beyond the pale to suggest that McCain or Palin would have opted for a different approach than what was actually recommended by the agents involved. That is utter nonsense and she should be ashamed of herself for even suggesting it. By pronouncing the unknowable outcomes of "what if” situations that never actually happened, Perez has again damaged her credibility.

Every time Perez looks at the Middle East map she is appalled to see that Iraq is so far away from Pakistan -- where Bin Laden has been hiding since 9/11-- as if to suggest that we should have invaded Pakistan instead. She must have been asleep in geography class when she was in school or she wouldn’t have been so surprised. She recognizes that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was a deplorable dictator (there are so many in the world) but believes that since he had apparently had nothing to do with 9/11 we should have simply ignored him. She says, “Since the start of the war in Iraq, we have had over 6002 American service men and women die in this so called ‘war on terror.’ That is not counting all of the innocent men women and children in the Middle East who have died in this ‘war on terror’ ” In typical Perez fashion she fails to mention the thousands lost in the World Trade Center and other acts of terrorism by Muslims around the world. She shows no intelligent understanding of geopolitics and its relationship to terrorism. In fact, like other gullible Americans, she is a supporter of Islam.

Perez says she is glad to have what she calls “an intelligent, calm President in the White House. “She says he used his logic and technology to identify and hunt down terror leaders.” She omits any mention of the efforts over the years of previous presidents, countless intelligence analysts, interrogators, and troops on the front lines long before Obama appeared on the scene. This stealth attack hardly resulted in "Mission Accomplished." Much work remains to be done before the al Qaeda and Taliban threats are put to bed. Until then the total mission against al Qaeda and the Taliban remains unfinished. It is no more accomplished than the mission in Iraq was accomplished beyond the immediate military success of the war. Unlike Dee Perez-Scott, when President Obama made his Bin Laden announcement, he thanked the Seals, honored our troops and the families of the troops and thanked former President Bush and the American people. His speech may have been presidential but it was hardly historic. Meanwhile Perez continues her partisan insults and attacks. She dishonors herself and the President’s generous and more appropriate remarks.

But we have gotten used to Dee Perez-Scott’s unfair and unbalanced judgments, criticisms, and pronouncements when it comes to those who oppose her extreme left wing views and politics. She couldn’t resist dredging up President Bush’s May, 2003, "Mission Accomplished" statement announcing the end of active military operations when he landed on the aircraft carrier in one of the presidential helicopters. Even though this is a normal mode of transportation for the presidents, Perez attributes this to his desire “to make a more dramatic landing”. As it turns out, the Iraqi mission was NOT accomplished just as the mission against al Qaeda has not been accomplished by the death of Bin Laden. Dee claims that Bush also remarked that Bin Laden was on the run and he wasn't concerned about him but fails to mention that the hunt for Bin Laden continued throughout the eight years Bush was in office. In his speech, Obama recognized Bush’s contributions to the successful mission against Bin Laden.
During the Presidential campaign, candidate Obama, like his predecessors, promised he would hunt down Bin Laden and kill him. According to Perez, McCain called him naïve but provides no reference (URL?). Capitalizing on the groundwork laid by his predecessors and the many contributions of the CIA and other intelligence operatives, President Obama was lucky enough to be able to keep his promise.

It took years-long, detailed, methodical investigative efforts initiated by Obama’s predecessors that resulted in the identification of the courier that led them to the Obama compound. Then it was Leon Panetta that planned and initiated the Navy Seals stealth attack, using technology, training (human and dog), and skills in threading the needle to take out Bin Laden and recover all of his computers, hard drives, and other materials.
As the Obama honored the fallen at Ground Zero this past week, he invited President Bush to accompany him but Bush graciously declined allowing Obama his moment of glory alone. Perez erroneously suggests that the declination had something to do with their different ideologies.
Obama appears to be about to declare victory in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya and bring the troops home. While we will all welcome the return of our troops, it should not be under the false pretenses that the mission has actually been accomplished.