Flap’s Links and Comments for May 4th on 14:49

These are my links for May 4th from 14:49 to 14:55:

• The Slippery Story of the bin Laden Kill – As for the claim that bin Laden was living in a mansion, as opposed to just a big house, all that's needed to debunk that description is some pictures of the house. A Wall Street Journal reporter went to the scene and gave this eye-witness account, concluding there was nothing mansion-like about it:

  The size and fortress-like nature of the compound stood out in the area, though many of the houses in Abbottabad, built by ex-servicemen and business people, also have high walls. Homes are separated by empty plots where people grow crops like potatoes and wheat.

  The top two floors of bin Laden's three-story house are visible above the high perimeter walls. The house, built in 2005, appears run-down. Grass grows off a ledge below the roof. The outside walls are scarred with damp and mold. A hand-painted advertisement for Jamia Girls College, in Urdu and English, decorates one of the outside walls of the compound.

  One of the awnings on an outdoor window hung down at an angle, perhaps after being damaged during the attack. Otherwise, the house stood intact, with few signs a major firefight only two days earlier.

  There were no visible airconditioning units to keep residents cool through the Pakistan summer. At the back of the house was a small, private triangular garden with a towering fir tree, where bin Laden could have gotten air without being seen by outsiders.

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  Read it all.

  Definitely not a mansion and there has to be a reason why Obama is not releasing bin Laden's death photos.

• To get bin Laden, Obama relied on policies he decried – Let's cheerfully and ungrudgingly give credit to Barack Obama for approving the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

  In my Washington Examiner column last Sunday I criticized Obama's foreign policy, which was characterized by one of his advisers in an interview with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza as "lead from behind." That criticism still stands.

  But in tracking down and nailing bin Laden, Obama led from behind the right way — behind the scenes he made a right but risky decision, without any leaks to the press, to achieve an objective sought by two presidents and thousands in the American government and military since Sept. 11, 2001.

  The decision was risky because the operation could have failed, like Jimmy Carter's Desert One operation to rescue American hostages in Iran failed in April 1980.

  But this time, even though one helicopter was lost, the operation succeeded. There was evidently a lot of redundancy in the plan and a lot of flexibility on the ground. A lot of good people did a lot of good things right.

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  Read it all.

  Yes, he Did