Sunday, October 18, 2026
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
St Martin's Missions Appeal 2025: Video 4, A New Home for the Friars in Jamaica
21 days ago
Dominican Friars in Britain
Please donate to support our work in the Caribbean:
https://www.english.op.org/missions
Uploaded on Oct 21, 2025 at 8:40 am
Saturday, October 04, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Friday, December 20, 2024
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Bin Laden Raid Became Re-Election Mission, SEAL Book Says
- August 29, 2012 |
- 8:44 am
President Obama and his national security team watch the bin Laden raid unfold. Photo: Wikimedia
The mission was twofold: first and foremost, kill Osama bin Laden. Then, once the deed was done and the troops were back safe, help re-elect the president of the United States by promoting the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist.
That’s the accusation in “No Easy Day,” the firsthand account of the bin Laden raid from Matt Bissonette, a former member of SEAL Team 6. Copies of the book, due out next week, were obtained by the Huffington Post and by the Associated Press’ Kim Dozier.
In the excerpts they present, Bissonette praises President Obama for giving the green light to attack bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. But even before the mission began, Bissonette and his fellow SEALs knew that the raid would be played up by the White House for political purposes.
“We’ll get Obama re-elected for sure. I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden,” one SEAL said, according to Bissonette.
Bissonette adds: “We all knew the deal. We were tools in the toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted.”
The degree to which the White House took credit for — and leaked information about — the bin Laden raid has already become a contentious campaign issue. “No Easy Day,” written by Bissonette under a pseudonym and co-authored by the journalist Kevin Maurer, won’t exactly relieve that strain. A political action committee backed by right-wing activists and claiming to represent former special operations forces has gone after the “countless leaks, interviews and decisions by the Obama administration” that have “put future missions and personnel at risk.” Republicans have teased Obama for playing up his role in the mission. “He pats himself on the back every night for continuing the aggressive search for bin Laden started by George Bush,” said one surrogate for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
Obama administration internal messages, released yesterday by Judicial Watch, provide fresh details about the promotional push that followed the bin Laden raid. The CIA, for example, helped a pair of White House-friendly filmmakers, Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, arrange interviews with two of the men who accompanied Bissonette on the mission to Abbottabad. “I know we don’t pick favorites but it makes sense to get behind a winning horse,” agency spokesperson Marie Harf wrote. “Mark and Kathryn’s movie is going to be the first and the biggest. It’s got the most money behind it, and two Oscar winners on board.”
Bissonette writes that the initial accounts of the raid, leaked by administration officials, were bordering on Tinseltown, as well. A claimed 40-minute gunfight between the SEALs and al-Qaida operatives never happened. Nor was bin Laden shot while reaching for a gun, as officials originally claimed. In fact, the terrorist was unarmed and didn’t even bother to defend himself. ”The raid was being reported like a bad action movie,” Bissonette says. “At first, it was funny because it was so wrong.”
Later, Bissonette and his fellow SEALs met the president. At the end of the meeting, Obama invited the troops to the White House for a beer at a later date. A few weeks later, Bissonette asked a teammate if he heard anything about the beer. The reply, according to the author: “You believed that xxxx. I bet you voted for change too, sucker.”
.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Challenges to our mission today:
In this new world we are faced with growing tensions and paradoxes We live in a culture that shows partiality to autonomy and the present we have better means of communication some have greatly benefited , our world is increasingly transnational , scientific knowledge has reached the deepest mysteries of life , In this global world marked by such profound changes in the light of the apostolic mandate to establish right relationships with God, with one another, and with creation
|
Jesus: A fire that kindles other fires |
Source
.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Gabrielle Giffords to see Endeavor's last liftoff
Monday, May 16, 2011
Bruce Weaver / AFP/Getty Images
A gopher tortoise walks near the launchpad with the shuttle Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle is due to begin its final mission today.
(05-16) 04:00 PDT Cape Canaveral --
With wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on hand to watch, the space shuttle Endeavour is poised to give the workweek a roaring and historic start this morning, overcoming wiring problems that grounded it last month.
Giffords' arrival Sunday included a quick flyby of Endeavour on the launchpad, ready to go. The shuttle will be commanded by her husband, Mark Kelly.
"Gabrielle is excited for tomorrow's launch. Do you plan to see history in the making?" her staff tweeted.
NASA officials said conditions - from weather to technical issues - couldn't look much better for the scheduled 5:56 a.m. PDT launch.
Giffords, traveling on a NASA jet with the family of shuttle pilot Gregory Johnson, arrived shortly after the protective structure that surrounds Endeavour was moved out of the way - a milestone in launch preparations that allows fueling to begin.
Last month's launch attempt was scrubbed because of an electrical problem. NASA is expecting smaller crowds today - 400,000 people instead of 750,000 - for the second attempt.
The story of Giffords' recovery from the Jan. 8 mass shooting in her home district of Tucson, has drawn as much attention as the shuttle mission. She was shot in the head in an attack that killed six people.
Doctors cleared her to travel to see the launch. She came for the April attempt, flew back to Houston to resume her rehabilitation work and even had dinner out with her husband.
The main goal of Endeavour's 16-day mission is to haul a $2 billion astronomy and physics experiment to the International Space Station.
This is also the next-to-last flight for the 30-year-old space shuttle fleet. And it is the final flight of the shuttle Endeavour, which has flown 116.4 million miles in 24 previous flights.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/15/MN5O1JGGIU.DTL#ixzz1MV3K6zqh
.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
US spacecraft set for Moon crash
Science reporter, BBC News
Nasa is set to crash two unmanned spacecraft into the Moon in a bid to detect the presence of water-ice.
A 2,200kg rocket stage will be first to collide, hurling debris high above the lunar surface.
A second spacecraft packed with science instruments will then analyse the contents of this dusty cloud before meeting a similar fate.
The identification of water-ice in the impact plume would be a major discovery, scientists say.
Not least because a supply of water on the Moon would be a vital resource for future human exploration.
There is hydrogen down in that crater, we're going to go dig some of it up
Anthony Colaprete, Nasa
The existence of water-ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles had previously been postulated by scientists, but never confirmed.
The $79m mission is called LCROSS (the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite).
There are two main components: the large Centaur rocket upper stage and a smaller "shepherding spacecraft".
These have been connected since they were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in June.
The shepherding spacecraft is designed to guide the rocket to its target at the Moon's south pole, a shaded 98m-wide depression called Cabeus crater.
Rocket separation
In the early hours of Friday morning (BST), the Centaur and shepherding spacecraft will separate.
At a scheduled time of 1231 BST (0731 EDT), the rocket stage will hit the Moon's south pole at roughly twice the speed of a bullet, throwing an estimated 350 metric tonnes of debris to altitudes of 10km (6.2 mile) or more.
With an energy equivalent to that released by one-and-a-half tonnes of TNT, the collision will carve out a crater some 20m (66ft) wide and about 4m (13ft) deep.
The shepherding spacecraft will follow in the Centaur's wake, descending through the debris plume to hit the lunar surface four minutes after the initial impact.
We will have to be careful to keep some areas as 'protected parks' on the Moon
Bernard Foing, chief scientist, Esa
It will use onboard spectrometers to look for signs of water, hydroxyl compounds (OH), salts, clays, hydrated minerals and organic molecules in the sun-lit plume.
The spacecraft will collect data continuously until it too slams into the Moon, generating a second, smaller debris cloud.
Craters such as Cabeus are permanently draped in darkness and thus very cold, receiving heat only from space and from the Moon's interior (which is not thought to be geologically active).
Here in the lunar "shadowlands", ice - perhaps delivered by cometary impacts - is protected from the Sun's rays and could remain stable over geological timescales.
"If ice is present in the permanently shaded craters... it could potentially provide a water source for the eventual establishment of a manned base on the Moon," said Dr Vincent Eke, from Durham University, UK, who is not a member of the LCROSS team.
Excess hydrogen
But Dr Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the European Space Agency (Esa), said it would be desirable to protect some of this polar ice, if it indeed exists.
"We will have to be careful to keep some areas as 'protected parks' on the Moon. This is so that we could, for instance, send a lander, drill down and obtain a core sample a few metres in depth," he told BBC News.
The red dots show impact points for the two spacecraft in Cabeus crater
"Then we could eventually study the history of delivery of water to the Moon and the Earth."
Dr Foing will work with the LCROSS team to compare the data from LCROSS with those collected when Esa's Smart-1 probe which was brought down on the Moon's surface in 2006.
The idea that reserves of water-ice might persist in these dark craters was given a boost by Nasa's Lunar Prospector mission, which launched in 1998.
By looking at the energy of neutrons coming from the Moon, scientists found excess hydrogen at both poles.
This result does not confirm the presence of water-ice; the hydrogen could be in another form. But if it does exist in the form of ice, data suggest the lunar poles could hold hundreds of metric tonnes.
Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator on the LCROSS mission, said data received in the past few days backed the team's decision to target Cabeus crater.
"There is hydrogen down in that crater, we're going to go dig some of it up," he explained.
Professional astronomers will study the impacts using ground-based telescopes, including the Magdalena Ridge and Apache Ridge Observatories in New Mexico, US, and the MMT Observatory in Arizona.
The Centaur impact plume may be visible through amateur-class telescopes with apertures as small as 10 to 12 inches, mission scientists said.
Earth-orbiting satellites are also geared up to observe the collisions, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Odin satellite, an astronomy and aeronomy mission led by Sweden.
Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8297811.stm
.
.
P.S.
- Where are the conservationists protesting this destruction of the moon?
- Where's Al Gore with the Global Warming agenda on this issue?
- I guess there are no polar bears on the moon.
- What is the carbon foot print of this crash?
.
