Arizona senator John McCain just released the following statement on the Obama campaign's Osama bin Laden campaign ad:
"Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad. This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden 'to score political points.'
Last week, foreign pressoutlets ran a story that deserves to receive a lot more attention in America. Documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound reportedly show that the terror master helped plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
Perhaps someday we will learn the real extent of Osama bin Laden’s support network inside Pakistan. A truly independent investigation would begin with bin Laden’s ties to various Pakistani military and intelligence officials in the 1980s and walk forward from there. Or, if one prefers, investigators can walk the cat back from bin Laden’s suitors (if they are known) and supporters as of May 2011 to the days of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
At a campaign event this evening at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., President Obama indicated that he had successfully brought about "change"--an ambiguous 2008 campaign promise--by killing terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. From the official White House transcript:
President Obama’s speech to the United Nations, which he delivered this morning in New York, is filled with lots of little surprises. (For instance, “the United Nations helped avert a third World War.” Really?)
Al Qaeda has released a tape commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. According to the invaluable SITE Intelligence Group, the tape includes a speech given by Osama bin Laden that appears to be the same one found in the terror master’s Abbottabad, Pakistan not-so-safe house. The Pentagon previously released video of the speech without sound.
This tenth anniversary of that grim September day when so many innocent people died in the most horrible fashion is a time to mourn their loss, as well as the thousands who have been lost in the past 10 years of the war against global terrorists, and to share in the grief of the loved ones they left behind.
There has been no shortage of articles written from the perspective of the Guantanamo detainees’ lawyers and advocates. The result, more often than not, is a wildly inaccurate picture. A CNN.com piece (“Ten years on, Kuwaiti inmates fear indefinite Guantanamo detention”) published by Jenifer Fenton earlier this month is typical of the genre.
There may be an overtly political reason that moviegoers will be seeing the story of the Osama bin Laden raid just before they vote for president. Sony Pictures, the company distributing next year's film, hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama on their studio's premises in California last April. So far, Sony is the only major studio to hold a political fundraiser this cycle. According to Deadline Hollywood, Sony will release the bin Laden movie, directed by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, on October 12, 2012--less than a month before the presidential election.
Did the Obama administration compromise intelligence and sensitive military information by giving a Hollywood director high level access to details of the killing of Osama bin Laden? That’s what Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wants to investigate.