Obama: Secret raid was a 55-45 shot at Qaida chief
US president Barack Obama took a daring and risky call to order a raid inside Pakistan despite being told it was only a 55:45 chance that the quarry was Osama bin Laden, it was revealed.
By Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | Updated:
WASHINGTON: US president Barack Obama took a daring and risky call to order a raid inside Pakistan despite being told it was only a 55:45 chance that the quarry was Osama bin Laden, it was revealed.
In an extraordinary firsthand account of raid on the Abbottabad compound that resulted in killing the world’s most-wanted terrorist, Obama told CBS 60 Minutes that he took the chance despite having only “circumstantial evidence’ ’ that it was bin Laden because he was driven by his campaign promise to nail Osama and his belief in the abilities of American commandos .
“At the end of the day, this was still a 55:45 situation,’’ Obama explained. “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there.’’ The evidence was largely circumstantial , he revealed, because US spooks could not get a clear sight of their quarry.
The US president mused that Washington would have had problems if the target had turned out to be a “wealthy prince from Dubai” instead of bin Laden, because “we’re going into the sovereign territory of another country and conducting a military operation... so there were risks involved.”
Still, he pressed ahead because he had “so much confidence in the capacity of our guys that I felt that the risks were outweighed by the potential benefit of us finally getting our man,” he explained.
Obama, father of two young daughters, said the time of the operation was “the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was three months old, and I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that she was all right.”
In an extraordinary firsthand account of raid on the Abbottabad compound that resulted in killing the world’s most-wanted terrorist, Obama told CBS 60 Minutes that he took the chance despite having only “circumstantial evidence’ ’ that it was bin Laden because he was driven by his campaign promise to nail Osama and his belief in the abilities of American commandos .
“At the end of the day, this was still a 55:45 situation,’’ Obama explained. “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there.’’ The evidence was largely circumstantial , he revealed, because US spooks could not get a clear sight of their quarry.
The US president mused that Washington would have had problems if the target had turned out to be a “wealthy prince from Dubai” instead of bin Laden, because “we’re going into the sovereign territory of another country and conducting a military operation... so there were risks involved.”
Still, he pressed ahead because he had “so much confidence in the capacity of our guys that I felt that the risks were outweighed by the potential benefit of us finally getting our man,” he explained.
Obama, father of two young daughters, said the time of the operation was “the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was three months old, and I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that she was all right.”
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