122 DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN THE PAPER (permalink)

: Do you believe what you read in the paper? On Tuesday, we read an account of the raid on bin Laden that didn’t quite seem to make sense.

The report was written by Schmitt, Shanker and Sanger; it led the New York Times front page. How did the raid on bin Laden take shape? This was the opening paragraph:

SCHMITT (5/10/11): President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

Intriguing. According to unnamed officials, Obama “insisted” that the assault force had to be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted.

That’s how the front-page report began. A bit later, the claim was fleshed out:

SCHMITT: Under the original plan, two assault helicopters were going to stay on the Afghanistan side of the border waiting for a call if they were needed. But the aircraft would have been about 90 minutes away from the Bin Laden compound.

About 10 days before the raid, Mr. Obama reviewed the plans and pressed his commanders as to whether they were taking along enough forces to fight their way out if the Pakistanis arrived on the scene and tried to interfere with the operation.

That resulted in the decision to send two more helicopters carrying additional troops. These followed the two lead Black Hawk helicopters that carried the actual assault team. While there was no confrontation with the Pakistanis, one of those backup helicopters was ultimately brought in to the scene of the raid when a Black Hawk was damaged while making a hard landing.

''Some people may have assumed we could talk our way out of a jam, but given our difficult relationship with Pakistan right now, the president did not want to leave anything to chance,'' said one senior administration official, who like others would not be quoted by name describing details of the secret mission. ''He wanted extra forces if they were necessary.”

Wow! According to this account, Obama insisted that the plan include four on-site helicopters, not two. And sure enough! One of those extra choppers ended up saving the day.

This report appeared on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday night’s Hardball, Chris Matthews marveled at Obama’s wisdom and insight. He thanked one guest, the Times’ David Sanger, for his “great reporting.” That said, Matthews and Sanger were a bit late to this particular party; the Obama administration had been advancing this account for more than a week by this point. Eight nights earlier, on Monday, May 2, Ed Schultz had hailed Obama for this same brilliant planning. In Schultz’s hagiographic account, Obama had amazed the brass with the depth of his wisdom and foresight. (For transcript, see below.)

Do you believe what you read in the paper? To us, that story didn’t quite seem to make sense. To our ear, the original plan described by the Times sounded like something straight out of the Keystone Cops. If the attack force was confronted, they were going to call for the back-up choppers—choppers the brass would have stationed ninety minutes away.

Do you believe what you read in the papers? If that really was the original plan, it sounds like something is badly wrong with our top military planners. Who in the world would devise a plan where the backup was so far away?

To us, that plan didn’t seem to make sense, though there may be some explanation. But no one asked Sanger about this point when he played Hardball that night. Increasingly, we live in a tribalized news environment. Hacks on Fox are paid big bucks to launch absurd attacks on Obama. On MSNBC, hacks are paid the same big pucks to swallow odd stories like this.

Who is left to ask obvious questions? Perhaps Sanger’s story does make sense—but no one bothered to ask. On MSNBC, this story was simply used as propaganda for a wondrously insightful Dear Leader. Consider the way “Beer Hall Eddie” had played it eight nights before.

As noted, administration officials were advancing this story long before the New York Times ran it. On Tuesday, May 3, Time’sMichael Scherer offered this post on the magazine’s Swampland blog:

SCHERER (5/3/11): On Tuesday, White House officials began to offer more details on exactly how Obama had shaped the final assault plan. In particular, the President, they said, urged the Pentagon to revisit the number of helicopters it planned to bring into Pakistani airspace on the mission. One of those extra helicopters later played a role in the mission.

The president made his concerns known in a briefing about 10 days before the assault on the bin Laden compound. According to senior aides, Obama felt that the special operations COA, or course of action, was too risky. Under the COA at that time, only two helicopters would enter Pakistani airspace, leaving little backup if something went wrong. “I don’t want you to plan for an option that doesn’t allow you to fight your way out,” the President told operational planners at the meeting, according to the notes of one participant.

So the plan was revised. Ultimately, four helicopters flew into Pakistani airspace, including two refueling helicopters that carried additional personnel. In the end, the extra forces didn’t need to fight their way out of the compound, but a backup helicopter did play a key role in the operation. One of the two primary assault helicopters, an HH-60 Pave Hawk lost its lift, landed hard and had to be destroyed. The backup landed to lift its passengers to safety. “The President created the ‘fight your way out’ option,” explained an administration official.

Is that what happened? It could be. To our ear, the story doesn’t get fully implausible until we add the claim that the brass felt the need for back-up—but stationed it ninety minutes away. At any rate, someone had already given this account to Ed Schultz on Monday, May 2. That evening, in a remarkably propagandistic rant, he made the president sound like Jesus amazing the elders in the temple.

Schultz cited no source for his detailed report. “Il Duce” simply strutted about, showering praise on his deeply astounding Dear Leader:

SCHULTZ (5/2/11): I have great respect for the way the president has done this, because some of the details that are coming out are so doggone interesting. This guy that didn’t have any military experience had to make some pretty tough calls.

The president was offered four options here. He could have bombed the target. He didn’t want to do that because that of course would have ruined all of the evidence and, of course, we’ve got to have proof that Osama bin Laden is dead, and it would have killed a lot of innocent people, and this president was very concerned about that.

He could have done a clandestine operation, didn’t want to do that.

He could have joined in and done a joint operation with the Pakistanis. But the way things have been going, you know what? He just didn’t want to outsource this one.

He turned to those great kids that you saw. He turned to those kinds of Americans to say, “You know what? You got to do this job. We are focused as a country. We’re focused as a military. I’ve told you on the campaign trail that we are going to get Osama bin Laden. This is the time. This is the moment. This is the chance. And we’re going to move forward and do it—just like we said we were going to do it as Americans.”

You know what that is, folks? That’s leadership. That’s guts. But it’s leadership at its finest hour.

And so the president said, “No. What we’re going to do is we’re going to go with the SEALs. The SEALs are going to get it done.”

So the Special Ops team conducted two rehearsals on April 7 and April 13. And the commander reported back to the commander-in-chief, said, “This will work. This will work.”

The president said, “Well, you know, what are you going to do if a chopper goes down? Think about that.”

The guy that doesn’t have any military experience asks the critical question? “OK. You’re going in with a couple choppers, or one of them. What if it doesn’t work? What’s your back-up plan?”

He knew.

That was President Obama’s concern. He said, “What if one of the choppers failed?” He asked his comrades, the commanders, to come up with a fight-your-way-out plan.

Now on the campaign trail, they were saying that he was going to cut and run. On the campaign trail, they said that this man didn’t have the experience. He didn’t have the country on a war footing. He didn’t understand the war on terrorism.

But at that 11th hour, he asked the critical question, “How are you going to fight your way out? What are you going to do if this happens?”

No, this is leadership. There’s no question about it.

That narrative comes straight out of North Korea. In this narrative, Dear Leader simply “knew.”

We don’t mean this as a criticism of Obama, except to the extent that he is advancing this hero tale. We don’t mean this as a criticism of the SEALs, or of the military planners. We offer this as a portrait of the drift of our “news” establishment. Let’s review:

The New York Times reported a puzzling tale—a tale that didn’t quite seem to make sense.

The Times does that fairly often, of course. But no one asked the obvious questions about this front-page report. Within our emerging news culture, slightly peculiar reports like this are wholly for propaganda now. One side invents absurd attacks. One side invents hero tales.

Beer Hall Eddie pimped this tale exactly as a Dear Leader would want it. Eight nights later, the eternally clueless Matthews had no idea that he was eight days late with a pleasing tale.

Beer Hall Eddie this Tuesday: This past Tuesday night, Schultz staged another set of reports straight out of a mid-century beer hall. We’ll have to give details another day, but the man is a born beer-hall strutter.

It’s striking to think that a lot of liberals may want their “news” this way.