Sunday School Extra Credit: 10/27/19

 "Aboooo. Baccahhhrrr. Al. Bag-daddy. Is dead."

Thus spoke the president in his prepared remarks yesterday morning.

As I mentioned in our Sunday School post, much of the conversation in the classrooms were about the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, by suicide (not by killing, as has been repeatedly and incorrectly reported).

For this week's extra credit, let's look at what the president himself had to say. I've left out his prepared remarks, read emotionlessly from the TelePrompTer, as always, and I've tried - and it wasn't easy, I can assure you, but I've really tried - to bucket related comments from the open mic that followed the official statement.

On al-Baghdadi himself
Trump said  "from the first day" he came to office, he would say "Where's al-Baghdadi? I want al-Baghdadi."

And we would kill terrorist leaders, but they were names I never heard of. They were names that weren’t recognizable and they weren’t the big names. Some good ones, some important ones, but they weren’t the big names. I kept saying, “Where’s al-Baghdadi?”  

When Trump focuses on something, he tweets and tweets and tweets about it. And yet, with all the alleged focus on al-Baghdadi, there are only two references in his Twitter archive - under any spelling of the ISIS leader's name - one from 2017 and one from 2015. Perhaps he wasn't as focused on this as he said?

Asked if he heard al-Baghdadi 'whimpering' on the video feed he was watching, Trump said

I don’t want to talk about it, but - he was screaming, crying, and whimpering. And he was scared out of his mind.

Later, though, he said that al-Baghdadi "died in a ruthless, vicious manner. That, I can tell you."

Asked if the Syria pullout generated any intelligence for the raid,

No.  We were looking at this -  look, as I said, Steve, I’ve been looking at this -  I’m here almost three years. I’ve been looking at this for three years. They’d come in, “Sir, we have somebody under…”  - I said, “I don’t want somebody. I want al-Baghdadi. That’s the one I want.” They’d said, “Well, we have somebody else.” I said, “That’s great.  Fine. Take them out. But I want al-Baghdadi. That’s who I want. I don’t want other people.” 

As to the operation itself, and participants

One reporter asked if Trump went straight to the Situation Room when he got back to the White House around 4:30, after some golf.

Well, I knew all about this for three days. Yeah. We thought, for three days, this is what was going to happen. It was actually - look, nobody was even hurt. Our K-9, as they call - I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog - was injured and brought back. But we had no soldier injured. 

He added to the obfuscation on the timing with this head-scratching comment.

You know, you would think you go through the door. If you’re a normal person, you say, “Knock, knock. May I come in?”  The fact is that they blasted their way into the house and a very heavy wall, and it took them literally seconds.  By the time those things went off, they had a beautiful, big hole, and they ran in and they got everybody by surprise. Unbelievably brilliant, as fighters.  I don’t - I can’t imagine there could be anybody better. And these, as you know, are our top operations people.

And then there was the identification part of this, the 'jackpot!' moment, if you will.

So, that’s another part of the genius of these people. They brought his - they have his DNA. More of it than they want, even. And they brought it with them with lab technicians who were with them. And they assumed that this was Baghdadi. They thought, visually, it was him. But they assumed it was him, and they did a site - an onsite test. They got samples.

Visually? I thought the guy was blown to bits? 

...  and they, as I said, they brought body parts back with them, et cetera, et cetera. There wasn’t much left. The - the vest blew up, but there are still substantial pieces that they brought back. So they did an onsite test because we had to know this. And it was a very quick call that took place about 15 minutes after he was killed, and it was positive. It was - it’s, “This is a confirmation, sir.”

When asked, he was unable to articulate which of our teams participated in the raid, which is incredible, given Trump's propensity for loving our military and crowing about how they love him.

Many of them, and at the top level. And people that were truly incredible at their craft. I've never seen anything like it. 

The Special Forces teams will be invited to the White House, he said - presumably for hamberders.

Oh, yeah. They’ll be invited. I don’t know if they’ll want to have their faces shown, to be honest with you. You know, they want to - they’re incredible for the country. They’re not looking for public relations. But they love doing what they’re doing. I’ve seen it. The First Lady was out there, recently, looking at what they do. She came back, she said, “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like that.” 

And then he talked about history, when asked about any successors to al-Baghdadi.

Yeah. We know the successors. And we’ve already got them in our sights. And we’ll tell you that right now, but we know the successors. Hamza bin Laden was a big thing, but this is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever.

Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, “a country,” a caliphate, and was trying to do it again.

Regarding the US intelligence community

And he pointed out that "some incredible intelligence officials" did a great job, saying "That's what they should be focused on." And, we can infer, not doing other intelligence stuff like making sure the president is not acting like a lunatic. And there were smart people involved, too.

We were involved, on our own team, with some brilliant people who I’ve gotten to know. Brilliant people that love our country. Highly intelligent people... 

And speaking of loving our people, our great intelligence community,  there's this response to a question on whether we had any intel assistance from others.

We got very little help. We didn’t need very much help. We have some incredible people. When we use our intelligence correctly, what we can do is incredible. When we waste our time with intelligence, that hurts our country, because we had poor leadership at the top... But the people that I’ve been dealing with are incredible people. And it’s really a deserving name: “intelligence.” I’ve dealt with some people that aren’t very intelligent, having to do with intel, but this is the top people and it was incredible.   

Trying to act presidential

On whether he had told Congressional leaders,  that's a negative, at least Pelosi is a negative.

We’ve notified some. Others are being notified now, as I speak. We were going to notify them last night but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before. There’s nothing - there’s no country in the world that leaks like we do...  

And he watched this, like he was watching a baseball game or something (minus the "lock him up" chanting, of course), with "a few of the Joint Chiefs...some generals. We had some very great military people in that room. And we had some great intelligence people... It was great."  

And he of course complained about our allies, because they didn't want their ISIS fighters back.

And I actually said to them, “If you don’t take them, I’m going to drop them right on your border. And you can have fun capturing them again.”

He reiterated that he did not inform House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

No, I didn’t.  I didn’t do - I didn’t do that. I wanted to make sure this kept secret. I don’t want to have men lost - and women. I don’t want to have people lost.  

Someone tried again on what time Trump went to the SitRoom.

Well, I started at five o’clock. We were pretty much gathered at five o’clock yesterday.  We were in contact all day long through, hopefully, secure phones. I’ll let you know tomorrow. But nothing seemed to leak, so I guess they were secure, for a change.

The oil The Oil THE OIL

Look, we don’t want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years. They’ve been fighting for hundreds of years. We’re out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil. And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil.

And we’re securing it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it stops ISIS, because ISIS got tremendous wealth from that oil. We have taken it. It’s secured. Number two - and again, somebody else may claim it, but either we’ll negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it, if we think it’s fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly... 

And there was this:

They’re going to have to make their own decision. The Kurds have worked along incredibly with us, but in all fairness, it was much easier dealing with the Kurds after they went through three days of fighting, because that was a brutal three days... 

Let that last part sink in for a moment. Really let that one sink in.

Back to the oil. It seems that '#1' didn't change from earlier in his remarks, but '#2' has transformed a bit, and now 'vomit' (#3) has entered the picture.

The oil is, you know, so valuable for many reasons. It fueled ISIS, number one.

Number two, it helps the Kurds, because it’s basically been taken away from the Kurds. They were able to live with that oil.

And number three, it can help us because we should be able to take some also. And what I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an Exxon Mobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly...

The one the only ME

You know, these people are very smart. They’re not into the use of cellphones anymore.  They’re not - they’re very technically brilliant. You know, they use the Internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. But they use the Internet incredibly well.

And, there was this.

If you read about the history of Donald Trump — I was a civilian.  I had absolutely nothing to do with going into Iraq, and I was totally against it. But I always used to say, “If they’re going to go in…” - nobody cared that much, but it got written about.  “If they’re going to go in…” - I’m sure you’ve heard the statement, because I made it more than any human being alive. “If they’re going into Iraq, keep the oil.”  They never did.  They never did.

There was more.

Now, I will secure the oil that happens to be in a certain part. But that’s tremendous money involved. I would love to - you know, the oil in - I mean, I’ll tell you a story. In Iraq - so they spent - President Bush went in. I strongly disagreed with it, even though it wasn’t my expertise at the time, but I had a - I have a very good instinct about things.  They went in and I said, “That’s a tremendous mistake.” And there were no weapons of mass destruction. It turned out I was right. I was right for other reasons, but it turned out, on top of everything else, they had no weapons of mass destruction, because that would be a reason to go in. But they had none.

But I heard recently that Iraq, over the last number of years, actually discriminates against America in oil leases. In other words, some oil companies from other countries, after all we’ve done, have an advantage Iraq for the oil. I said, “Keep the oil.  Give them what they need. Keep the oil.” Why should we - we go in, we lose thousands of lives, spend trillions of dollars, and our companies don’t even have an advantage in getting the oil leases. So I just tell you that story. That’s what I heard. 

And there was this.

And then I also wanted Hamza bin Laden because he’s a young man, around 30, looks just like his father.  Tall, very handsome.  And he was talking bad things, just like his father.

You know, if you read my book — there was a book just before the World Trade Center came down. And I don’t get any credit for this, but that’s okay.  I never do.  But here we are.  I wrote a book - a, really, very successful book. And in that book, about a year before the World Trade Center was blown up, I said, “There is somebody named Osama bin Laden. You better kill him or take him out.” Something to that effect. “He’s big trouble.”

Now, I wasn’t in government. I was building buildings and doing what I did. But I always found it fascinating. But I saw this man - tall, handsome, very charismatic - making horrible statements about wanting to destroy our country. And I’m writing a book. I think I wrote 12 books. All did very well. And I’m writing a book. The World Trade Center had not come down. I think it was about  - if you check, it was about a year before the World Trade Center came down. And I’m saying to people, “Take out Osama bin Laden,” that nobody ever heard of. Nobody ever heard of. I mean, al-Baghdadi everybody hears because he’s built this monster for a long time. But nobody ever heard of Osama bin Laden until, really, the World Trade Center.

But about a year - you’ll have to check - a year, year and a half before the World Trade Center came down, the book came out. I was talking about Osama bin Laden. I said, “You have to kill him. You have to take him out.” Nobody listened to me.

And to this day, I get people coming up to me, and they said, “You know what one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen about you? Is that you predicted that Osama bin Laden had to be killed before he knocked down the World Trade Center.” It’s true. Now, most of the press doesn’t want to write that, but you know  - but it is true. If you go back, look at my book. I think it was “The America We Deserve.” I made a prediction, and I -  let’s put it this way: If they would have listened to me, a lot of things would have been different. 

Good lord: A 900-word official statement, followed by 8,000 words of blood, guts, glory, and ego.

See you around campus.