Saturday, May 5, 2012
Inside the Situation Room: A guided tour
Fri May 4, 2012 12:27 PM EDT
By Jessica Hopper, Subrata De and Tim Uehlinger
Rock Center
President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the “most important single day” of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.
“I did choose the risk,” the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams. “The reason I was willing to make that decision of sending in our SEALs to try to capture or kill bin Laden rather than to take some other options was ultimately because I had 100 percent faith in the Navy SEALs themselves.”
A year after the May 1, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama and several of the advisers who helped plan the operation, known as “Operation Neptune’s Spear,” spoke exclusively to NBC News, reflecting on the tense months spent planning and debating the feasibility of this daring raid. The interviews occurred before the president made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Tuesday, where he and President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement on the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
“This had to be such a close-held operation,” the president said. “There were only a handful of staff in the White House who knew about this.”
The president did not share news of the mission’s launch with his staff, or with the first lady.
“Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,” Obama said. “We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape.”
The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.
The leadAfter years of hunting bin Laden, the Central Intelligence Agency got its biggest break in late 2010.
Helmed by then CIA Director Leon Panetta, the agency identified the home of bin Laden’s courier in the upscale town of Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Satellites revealed someone else living at the same compound: a tall man walking in the courtyard that analysts dubbed “The Pacer.”
“Ultimately it was a 50/50 proposition as to whether this was actually bin Laden,” Obama said.
He and his advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hammered out the possibilities.
Clinton said that she was brought into the process in January 2011 when a series of intensive meetings began in the White House Situation Room, or “Sit Room.”
In March of 2011, the president ordered Admiral William McRaven, then commander of Joint Special Operations, to outline a possible raid on the suspected bin Laden compound.
“I remember the moment in the Sit Room with General McRaven,” Clinton said, “and, you know, someone said, ‘Well, this sounds really dangerous and we’re going to expose our guys and what do we know is going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Well, with all due respect, we’ve done this hundreds of times.’”
In fact, the night bin Laden was killed, Special Forces carried out several other missions in the region.
“What may not be known is in addition to this operation that night, this specific one, there were multiple operations just like this going on in Afghanistan,” said retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Some of them actually more difficult than the one that got bin Laden. And when I say more difficult, I don't think higher strategic risk, certainly not more important, but physically more difficult, more dangerous than the one that our great Special Forces executed.”
The dress rehearsalThe plan to raid the compound in Abbottabad developed rapidly and by April 21, 2011, Admiral Mullen attended a dress rehearsal in the Nevada desert.
“When I actually went to the rehearsal and watched it at night at a place where they built a compound just like Abbottabad and watched it in execution, that just gave me great confidence that they could execute this,” Mullen said.
He met every member of the SEAL Team Six that would ultimately carry out the mission.
“I got to look each of them in the eye. They showed me in their execution of rehearsal and also in that steely-eyed glare that they give you that they were ready to go,” Mullen said.
Some of the men weren’t yet aware who they were preparing to attack, but Mullen’s presence signaled that they were going after a high-value target.
“They knew certainly how critical this was. They knew who they were and who they were working with,” he said. “They may not even have known it was bin Laden at that point, but I'm sure they suspected it.”
One week later, it looked like weather conditions in Pakistan would be perfect for the raid — a moonless night with clear skies. If the raid didn’t happen that night, it could be months before weather conditions would be appropriate again for this high-risk operation.
Making the decisionArmed with the confidence that the Special Forces could carry out the mission, it was decision time. So on Thursday, April 28, 2011, the president gathered his advisers in the Situation Room, located below ground level in the White House.
“There was no consensus,” Biden said. “The president on the last day got us all down in the Situation Room and he said, ‘Okay, it’s basically a roll call.’”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recommended an air strike with no forces on the ground. CIA Director Panetta supported a raid by Special Forces and so did Secretary of State Clinton. Vice President Biden wanted to wait on further proof that bin Laden was indeed in the compound.
“It was never contentious because I think everybody understood both the pros and cons of the action,” Obama said. “People who were advocating action understood that if this did not work, if we proved to be wrong, there would be severe geopolitical consequences and obviously most importantly, we might be putting our brave Navy SEALs in danger.”
During the meeting, the president never indicated which way he was leaning. After the discussion, he dismissed his team and said he’d have a decision in the morning. He had dinner with his family and then went to his study after his wife and daughters went to bed.
“Well, there is no doubt that you don't sleep as much that evening as you do on a normal night,” the president said. “I stayed up late and I woke up early.”
The next morning, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he told his national security advisers that the mission was a go.
“You have some serenity in knowing that you've made the best possible decision that you can and, you know, in that situation you just, you do some praying,” Obama said.
A trio of national security advisers – John Brennan, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough – had prepared briefing points for the president, but it was clear his mind was made up.
“My recollection is that he said, ‘It’s a go, we’re going to do the assault. We’re going to do the raid. Complete the orders, let’s go,’” said Donilon.
Keeping the SecretIn order to not raise suspicions, the president and his advisers had to keep up their weekend plans.
Secretary Clinton said she faced an awkward question at a wedding for one of her daughter’s friends.
“It was so ironic,” she said. “All these smart young people who work in all kinds of enterprises, one of them came up and said, ‘Do you think we’ll ever get bin Laden?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I have no way of knowing, but I can tell you this, we’ll keep trying.’”
She also hid the raid from her husband.
“This was such an important secret to keep,” she said. “No one in the State Department knew. “I just felt a personal responsibility to keep it close, but that meant that I was basically, you know, having to consult with myself, to be honest.”
Moments after giving the go-ahead for the raid, the president and the first lady boarded Marine One on a trip to inspect tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And on Saturday night – the evening before the raid – he attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and chuckled when a joke about bin Laden was made by comedian Seth Meyers.
“That was a little bit of acting going on there because my mind was elsewhere,” he said.
National Security Advisor Donilon said that when he left the White House Correspondents’ Dinner early, a reporter asked why he was leaving before the event concluded.
“I got this thing tomorrow,” Donilon said as offhandedly as he could.
The raidOn Sunday, May 1, 2011, the president’s advisers gathered in the Situation Room at around 11 a.m. Half a world away, the SEAL team waited for nightfall.
So as not to arouse suspicion that a major gathering was under way in the West Wing, the team ordered pizza from several different places and also sent someone to Costco to get food.
The president played nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base before heading to the Situation Room at around 2 p.m.
“It is one of those rare moments when you know that the man you’re watching is putting everything on the line,” Biden said. “Everything on the line. Not only risking the lives of these incredible, incredible warriors, but also knowing that if he’s wrong about this man, he’s going to pay a very, very high price for it.”
At around 2:30 p.m., word arrived that the first wave of helicopters had left Jalalabad, Afghanistan, for Abbottabad with Navy SEALs, a Pakistani-American translator and a service dog named Cairo. At the president’s request, two Chinook helicopters stayed close by with additional SEALs as backup.
“They were accustomed to operating in the dark,” Obama said. “They were accustomed to landing in the compounds where they weren’t sure what was behind closed doors. These guys were all trained to do that.”
“A lot of them had as much gray hair as you and me and, you know, if you had passed them on the street, you might have – and if they were in civilian clothes – you might have thought they were accountants or doctors or, you know, worked at Home Depot.”
After the mission started, the CIA provided audio and video of the raid in real time in a smaller room next to the Situation Room. The atmosphere, said Admiral Mullen, was tense.
Soon, the president and his advisers began crowding into the room where the video was being played, which was never meant to hold as many people as it did that day. Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb was receiving and interpreting information from the mission. Never expecting Obama to come in the room, he was sitting in the chair intended for the president.
“He started to get up and people were starting to go through the protocol and figuring out how to rearrange things,” the president said. “I said, ‘You don’t worry about it. You just focus on what you’re doing. I’m sure we can find a chair and I’ll sit right next to him.’ And that’s how I ended up (on a) folding chair.”
The group watched the hazy, but intelligible images and gasped when the first helicopter’s rotor stopped turning and it suddenly dropped, crashing over a stone wall.
“That helicopter didn’t make it to the right spot and everyone went, like, ‘Whoa,’” Biden said.
Obama remembers seeing the Secretary of State cover her mouth with her hand.
“It was just the shock of the moment,” Clinton said. “It was, I mean, all of us sitting there, and I would even predict probably our military and defense colleagues, you know, for a minute were kind of holding that breath again.”
The mishap was blamed on a bad downdraft and unusually warm temperatures, which can affect lift and maneuverability. The president called it a “touch and go moment.”
“The only thing that I was thinking about throughout this entire enterprise was, ‘I really want to get those guys back home safe,’” he added. “I want to make sure that the decision I’ve made has not resulted in them putting their lives at risk in vain, and if I got that part of it right, if I could look myself in the mirror and say as commander in chief I made a good call.”
Back inside the Situation Room, the loss of a helicopter didn’t make any difference in Admiral McRaven's monotone play-by-play voice, beamed in from Afghanistan.
“Did not miss a beat. He is a cool customer,” said Obama.
Clinton recalled watching the SEALs leave the helicopters.
“We could see our guys moving,” she said. “It was an intense experience for all of us because it was real time, visually, until we lost the visual connection inside the building.”
The SEALs had moved inside the compound with their body armor, weapons and night vision.
“At this point, I think all of us understand that we’re a long way to go before the night is done,” Obama said. “And, you know, I’ve said this was the longest 40 minutes of my life.”
As the SEALs moved inside, the national security team listened for “Geronimo,” the code name for bin Laden.
“We knew that was the call sign and when we heard that, they felt they had identified Geronimo, that was the first moment, and then Geronimo KIA,” the president said.
Several members of the president’s national security team told NBC News that there were provisions in place to take bin Laden alive.
“But we also understood that it was not likely that he was going to be giving himself up in that way,” Obama said, “and that there was a strong possibility that he would end up being killed if in fact he was in the compound.”
Along with precision and planning, prayer played a role for some of the president’s closest advisers. Vice President Biden and Admiral Mullen both nervously spun rosary rings on their fingers as they received word that the body of the man they believed was bin Laden had been put on a helicopter with U.S. forces.
“We knew the mission had been successful in that bin Laden was on board, but then it was an hour flight back,” Biden said.
Biden had begun to put his rosary away when he felt a tap on his shoulder from Mullen.
“I leaned down," Mullen explained. "I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, not yet. Keep it going because as important as killing, capturing or killing bin Laden was, it was more important to get him out.’ And so we were a long way, even as we got bin Laden, his body in that helicopter, we were a long way from completing that mission at that point.”
The death photoWhen the SEAL team made it safely back to Afghanistan, photos were transmitted to the president and his team to offer photographic proof that bin Laden was dead.
When asked about seeing the picture of bin Laden, who had been shot in the head, the president took a long pause.
“I think it’s wrong to say that I did a high five,” he said, “because you have a picture of a dead body and, you know, there’s I think regardless of who it is, you always have to be sober about death. But understanding the satisfaction for the American people, what it would mean for 9/11 families, what it would mean for the children of folks who died in the Twin Towers who never got to know their parents, I think there was a deep-seated satisfaction for the country at that moment.”
Secretary Clinton believes strongly that the president was right not to release the photos.
“I looked at them,” she said. “Obviously, (it's) never easy to see any dead body, but it was part of the job. I think we made the right decision not to sensationalize this, not to desecrate it, so to speak. His body was flown to a Navy ship. It was given a proper Islamic burial at sea and I think that we handled it exactly right.”
After the president and his team felt confident that bin Laden was indeed dead, they began calling Cabinet members, Congressional leaders and foreign heads of state.
The president called Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
For Mullen, one of the most important calls placed was to his Pakistani military counterpart about the crashed helicopter.
When the first pictures of the wreckage emerged hours later, aviation websites went wild. The crashed chopper appeared to be proof of a stealth version of the Blackhawk that the United States had been rumored to be developing for years. Its noise-reducing technology and unique fin had been designed for near silent, invisible operation. In coming days, neighborhood children picked through pieces of what had been among the military's best kept secrets.
“I called General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani in Pakistan,” Mullen said. “I felt obligated to let him know what had happened … and then part of that conversation was about the helicopter and I said, ‘We need that back.’”
As more calls were made, the news began to leak, spread at lightning speed by the Internet. The president and his advisers, however, were unaware that throngs of young people were pouring into Lafayette Park to cheer outside the White House.
“The thing that surprised me that night and I don’t think we had planned for was the public reaction,” Donilon said. “We walked out and we could hear the noise and I remember very clearly turning to whoever was walking next to me saying, ‘What is that?’”
Secretary Clinton described it as an “astonishing moment.”
“We could hear this roar. We had no idea what it was,” she said. “Then all of a sudden we were able to decipher, 'U.S.A., U.S.A.'”
Telling his familyBefore the president heard the cheering crowds and addressed the nation, he checked in with the first lady.
“She’s at dinner," he said. "I let her know, you know, that I’m probably going to miss dinner because I’ve got a few other things going on tonight. It turns out we had a fairly important thing to announce.”
He recalled telling his daughters that bin Laden was dead.
“Malia and Sasha, I think, were too young to fully absorb 9/11. On the other hand, they’ve grown like all our children have grown up in the shadow of 9/11 and terrorism and understood who Osama bin Laden was.”
The president said that the full impact of the mission hit him a few days later when he met the SEALs who had carried out the operation. He said that he gave the pilot of the helicopter that crashed a “pretty good hug.”
“They presented me with the flag that had gone on that mission, signed by all of them on the back and I think it’s fair to say that will probably be the most important possession that I leave with from this presidency,” he said.
Inside White House Situation Room on anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death
Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:00 PM EDT
White House photo by Pete Souza
ROCK CENTER EXCLUSIVE
Rock Center with Brian Williams
has been given unprecedented access to the White House Situation Room
and learned new details about the events leading up to the raid
targeting Osama bin Laden.As the one year anniversary of the death of bin Laden approaches, President Barack Obama spoke exclusively to Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams from the Situation Room, the most secure and secret part of the White House. The interview, a first for network television, will air during an hour-long Rock Center special, "Inside the Situation Room," on Wednesday, May 2 at 9pm/8c.
White House photo by Pete Souza
The iconic photograph taken inside the Situation Room offered the world the first glimpse of Pres. Obama's national security team at work during the Special Operations mission. Many of the people present in the room on the day bin Laden was killed are speaking to Rock Center about that historic night.
In addition to the president, Brian Williams interviewed
Vice President Joseph Biden,
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,
former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen,
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon,
Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and
John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
Obama brands Romney ‘rubber stamp’ for failed policies
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio May 5, 2012.
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
U.S. Election
Jeff Mason
COLUMBUS, Ohio— Reuters
Published
Last updated
President Barack Obama used his first large-scale rally of the 2012
campaign on Saturday to attack Republican Mitt Romney for learning the
“wrong lessons” as a business chief executive, and promised to move the
U.S. economy forward if he wins a second term.
Mr. Obama formally launched his Chicago-based re-election effort last year, but the Democratic president’s own campaigning had been confined to fundraisers while the Republican Party whittled down possible nominees to run against him.
That changed this weekend. Addressing a fired-up crowd in Ohio, Mr. Obama sharpened his focus on the presumptive Republican candidate Mr. Romney and made clear he was ready for a fight.
While calling the former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive “a patriotic American,” Mr. Obama, dressed in a button-down shirt with no tie or jacket, said Mr. Romney had a corporate mindset that would prevent him from helping the middle class from the White House.
“He has run a large financial firm and he has run a state, but I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from those experiences. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him make money the rest of us will automatically prosper as well,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Romney frequently cites his background as a business leader as a strength that could help him create jobs and boost growth, accusing Mr. Obama of lacking the expertise to run the country and of not doing enough to bring the U.S. economy out of its slump.
In Ohio, a likely battleground state in the Nov. 6 election, Mr. Obama argued his Republican opponent wanted to cut taxes on the very wealthy and slash key investments because he misunderstood the country’s challenges, saying the problem was that “bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs.”
“Governor Romney doesn’t seem to get that. He doesn’t seem to understand that maximizing profits by whatever means necessary - whether it’s your layoffs or outsourcing or tax avoidance or union-busting - might not always be good for the average American or for the American economy,” he said.
‘FORWARD’
The president, who was propelled to victory in 2008 partly by huge rallies across the country, hoped to regain that momentum with Saturday’s events in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia.
More rallies are expected to follow in the coming months, especially in other swing-states like Florida where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be vying for independent or undecided voters.
Republicans accuse Mr. Obama of having infused politics into his taxpayer-funded “official” events over the past year and scoff at the notion that his campaign is just starting.
Many of the president’s recent trips have featured sharp digs at Republicans in Congress over energy, education and other issues, as well as more nuanced efforts to contrast his vision with that of his potential rivals on the 2012 campaign trail.
On Saturday, with his popular wife, Michelle Obama, by his side and Air Force One as a campaign plane, he sharpened his message and said Mr. Romney would introduce policies sending the United States back to financial crisis and recession.
“We were there, we remember, and we are not going back - we are moving this country forward,” Mr. Obama said. “Forward” is the Mr. Obama campaign’s latest slogan, and people in the Ohio crowd held signs with that word above their heads.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Mr. Obama was now running on “hype and blame” because his record as president has been thin, and because he failed to live up to the “hope and change” slogan he campaigned on in 2008.
“Obama talks a lot about moving forward but has he forgotten he’s been president for the past three years?” Mr. Priebus said. “He failed to change Washington as he promised and unlike 2008, he will have to answer for his record.”
OHIO AND VIRGINIA
The Obama campaign has mapped out several scenarios to win the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency, and the choice of states for his first rallies was not coincidental.
Ohio, with its large cache of 18 electoral votes, is a particularly coveted prize. No Republican has made it to the White House in the last century without winning the state. Mr. Obama bested Republican rival John McCain there in 2008.
Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, also went to Mr. Obama in the last election - the first time a Democrat won there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Polls show Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney in Ohio and in Virginia. Both states have unemployment rates below the national average, which dipped to 8.1 percent in April.
In Ohio, the Mr. Obama campaign is hoping to capitalize on union anger over an attempt by Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, to limit collective bargaining rights for firefighters, police officers, and other state workers.
And in Virginia, the campaign is trying to seize on Mr. Obama’s advantage with women voters after the governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, promoted legislation that would have required women to have a trans-vaginal sonogram before getting an abortion.
Although Mr. Obama enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in Ohio on Saturday, the arena where he and the first lady spoke was not filled to its 18,300-person capacity, with a large chunk of its upper balcony left empty. A campaign official said 14,000 people attended and noted Mr. Romney’s largest event in Ohio had drawn merely 500 people.
Mr. Obama formally launched his Chicago-based re-election effort last year, but the Democratic president’s own campaigning had been confined to fundraisers while the Republican Party whittled down possible nominees to run against him.
That changed this weekend. Addressing a fired-up crowd in Ohio, Mr. Obama sharpened his focus on the presumptive Republican candidate Mr. Romney and made clear he was ready for a fight.
While calling the former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive “a patriotic American,” Mr. Obama, dressed in a button-down shirt with no tie or jacket, said Mr. Romney had a corporate mindset that would prevent him from helping the middle class from the White House.
“He has run a large financial firm and he has run a state, but I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from those experiences. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him make money the rest of us will automatically prosper as well,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Romney frequently cites his background as a business leader as a strength that could help him create jobs and boost growth, accusing Mr. Obama of lacking the expertise to run the country and of not doing enough to bring the U.S. economy out of its slump.
In Ohio, a likely battleground state in the Nov. 6 election, Mr. Obama argued his Republican opponent wanted to cut taxes on the very wealthy and slash key investments because he misunderstood the country’s challenges, saying the problem was that “bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs.”
“Governor Romney doesn’t seem to get that. He doesn’t seem to understand that maximizing profits by whatever means necessary - whether it’s your layoffs or outsourcing or tax avoidance or union-busting - might not always be good for the average American or for the American economy,” he said.
‘FORWARD’
The president, who was propelled to victory in 2008 partly by huge rallies across the country, hoped to regain that momentum with Saturday’s events in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia.
More rallies are expected to follow in the coming months, especially in other swing-states like Florida where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be vying for independent or undecided voters.
Republicans accuse Mr. Obama of having infused politics into his taxpayer-funded “official” events over the past year and scoff at the notion that his campaign is just starting.
Many of the president’s recent trips have featured sharp digs at Republicans in Congress over energy, education and other issues, as well as more nuanced efforts to contrast his vision with that of his potential rivals on the 2012 campaign trail.
On Saturday, with his popular wife, Michelle Obama, by his side and Air Force One as a campaign plane, he sharpened his message and said Mr. Romney would introduce policies sending the United States back to financial crisis and recession.
“We were there, we remember, and we are not going back - we are moving this country forward,” Mr. Obama said. “Forward” is the Mr. Obama campaign’s latest slogan, and people in the Ohio crowd held signs with that word above their heads.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Mr. Obama was now running on “hype and blame” because his record as president has been thin, and because he failed to live up to the “hope and change” slogan he campaigned on in 2008.
“Obama talks a lot about moving forward but has he forgotten he’s been president for the past three years?” Mr. Priebus said. “He failed to change Washington as he promised and unlike 2008, he will have to answer for his record.”
OHIO AND VIRGINIA
The Obama campaign has mapped out several scenarios to win the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency, and the choice of states for his first rallies was not coincidental.
Ohio, with its large cache of 18 electoral votes, is a particularly coveted prize. No Republican has made it to the White House in the last century without winning the state. Mr. Obama bested Republican rival John McCain there in 2008.
Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, also went to Mr. Obama in the last election - the first time a Democrat won there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Polls show Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney in Ohio and in Virginia. Both states have unemployment rates below the national average, which dipped to 8.1 percent in April.
In Ohio, the Mr. Obama campaign is hoping to capitalize on union anger over an attempt by Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, to limit collective bargaining rights for firefighters, police officers, and other state workers.
And in Virginia, the campaign is trying to seize on Mr. Obama’s advantage with women voters after the governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, promoted legislation that would have required women to have a trans-vaginal sonogram before getting an abortion.
Although Mr. Obama enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in Ohio on Saturday, the arena where he and the first lady spoke was not filled to its 18,300-person capacity, with a large chunk of its upper balcony left empty. A campaign official said 14,000 people attended and noted Mr. Romney’s largest event in Ohio had drawn merely 500 people.
Obama targets Romney as campaign begins
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio May 5, 2012.
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
President Barack Obama used his first large-scale rally of the 2012
campaign on Saturday to attack Republican Mitt Romney for learning the
“wrong lessons” as a business chief executive, and promised to move the
U.S. economy forward if he wins a second term.
Mr. Obama formally launched his Chicago-based re-election effort last year, but the Democratic president’s own campaigning had been confined to fundraisers while the Republican Party whittled down possible nominees to run against him.
That changed this weekend. Addressing a fired-up crowd in Ohio, Mr. Obama sharpened his focus on the presumptive Republican candidate Mr. Romney and made clear he was ready for a fight.
While calling the former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive “a patriotic American,” Mr. Obama, dressed in a button-down shirt with no tie or jacket, said Mr. Romney had a corporate mindset that would prevent him from helping the middle class from the White House.
“He has run a large financial firm and he has run a state, but I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from those experiences. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him make money the rest of us will automatically prosper as well,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Romney frequently cites his background as a business leader as a strength that could help him create jobs and boost growth, accusing Mr. Obama of lacking the expertise to run the country and of not doing enough to bring the U.S. economy out of its slump.
In Ohio, a likely battleground state in the Nov. 6 election, Mr. Obama argued his Republican opponent wanted to cut taxes on the very wealthy and slash key investments because he misunderstood the country’s challenges, saying the problem was that “bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs.”
“Governor Romney doesn’t seem to get that. He doesn’t seem to understand that maximizing profits by whatever means necessary - whether it’s your layoffs or outsourcing or tax avoidance or union-busting - might not always be good for the average American or for the American economy,” he said.
‘FORWARD’
The president, who was propelled to victory in 2008 partly by huge rallies across the country, hoped to regain that momentum with Saturday’s events in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia.
More rallies are expected to follow in the coming months, especially in other swing-states like Florida where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be vying for independent or undecided voters.
Republicans accuse Mr. Obama of having infused politics into his taxpayer-funded “official” events over the past year and scoff at the notion that his campaign is just starting.
Many of the president’s recent trips have featured sharp digs at Republicans in Congress over energy, education and other issues, as well as more nuanced efforts to contrast his vision with that of his potential rivals on the 2012 campaign trail.
On Saturday, with his popular wife, Michelle Obama, by his side and Air Force One as a campaign plane, he sharpened his message and said Mr. Romney would introduce policies sending the United States back to financial crisis and recession.
“We were there, we remember, and we are not going back - we are moving this country forward,” Mr. Obama said. “Forward” is the Mr. Obama campaign’s latest slogan, and people in the Ohio crowd held signs with that word above their heads.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Mr. Obama was now running on “hype and blame” because his record as president has been thin, and because he failed to live up to the “hope and change” slogan he campaigned on in 2008.
“Obama talks a lot about moving forward but has he forgotten he’s been president for the past three years?” Mr. Priebus said. “He failed to change Washington as he promised and unlike 2008, he will have to answer for his record.”
OHIO AND VIRGINIA
The Obama campaign has mapped out several scenarios to win the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency, and the choice of states for his first rallies was not coincidental.
Ohio, with its large cache of 18 electoral votes, is a particularly coveted prize. No Republican has made it to the White House in the last century without winning the state. Mr. Obama bested Republican rival John McCain there in 2008.
Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, also went to Mr. Obama in the last election - the first time a Democrat won there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Polls show Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney in Ohio and in Virginia. Both states have unemployment rates below the national average, which dipped to 8.1 percent in April.
In Ohio, the Mr. Obama campaign is hoping to capitalize on union anger over an attempt by Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, to limit collective bargaining rights for firefighters, police officers, and other state workers.
And in Virginia, the campaign is trying to seize on Mr. Obama’s advantage with women voters after the governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, promoted legislation that would have required women to have a trans-vaginal sonogram before getting an abortion.
Although Mr. Obama enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in Ohio on Saturday, the arena where he and the first lady spoke was not filled to its 18,300-person capacity, with a large chunk of its upper balcony left empty. A campaign official said 14,000 people attended and noted Mr. Romney’s largest event in Ohio had drawn merely 500 people.
Mr. Obama formally launched his Chicago-based re-election effort last year, but the Democratic president’s own campaigning had been confined to fundraisers while the Republican Party whittled down possible nominees to run against him.
That changed this weekend. Addressing a fired-up crowd in Ohio, Mr. Obama sharpened his focus on the presumptive Republican candidate Mr. Romney and made clear he was ready for a fight.
While calling the former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive “a patriotic American,” Mr. Obama, dressed in a button-down shirt with no tie or jacket, said Mr. Romney had a corporate mindset that would prevent him from helping the middle class from the White House.
“He has run a large financial firm and he has run a state, but I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from those experiences. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him make money the rest of us will automatically prosper as well,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Romney frequently cites his background as a business leader as a strength that could help him create jobs and boost growth, accusing Mr. Obama of lacking the expertise to run the country and of not doing enough to bring the U.S. economy out of its slump.
In Ohio, a likely battleground state in the Nov. 6 election, Mr. Obama argued his Republican opponent wanted to cut taxes on the very wealthy and slash key investments because he misunderstood the country’s challenges, saying the problem was that “bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs.”
“Governor Romney doesn’t seem to get that. He doesn’t seem to understand that maximizing profits by whatever means necessary - whether it’s your layoffs or outsourcing or tax avoidance or union-busting - might not always be good for the average American or for the American economy,” he said.
‘FORWARD’
The president, who was propelled to victory in 2008 partly by huge rallies across the country, hoped to regain that momentum with Saturday’s events in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia.
More rallies are expected to follow in the coming months, especially in other swing-states like Florida where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be vying for independent or undecided voters.
Republicans accuse Mr. Obama of having infused politics into his taxpayer-funded “official” events over the past year and scoff at the notion that his campaign is just starting.
Many of the president’s recent trips have featured sharp digs at Republicans in Congress over energy, education and other issues, as well as more nuanced efforts to contrast his vision with that of his potential rivals on the 2012 campaign trail.
On Saturday, with his popular wife, Michelle Obama, by his side and Air Force One as a campaign plane, he sharpened his message and said Mr. Romney would introduce policies sending the United States back to financial crisis and recession.
“We were there, we remember, and we are not going back - we are moving this country forward,” Mr. Obama said. “Forward” is the Mr. Obama campaign’s latest slogan, and people in the Ohio crowd held signs with that word above their heads.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Mr. Obama was now running on “hype and blame” because his record as president has been thin, and because he failed to live up to the “hope and change” slogan he campaigned on in 2008.
“Obama talks a lot about moving forward but has he forgotten he’s been president for the past three years?” Mr. Priebus said. “He failed to change Washington as he promised and unlike 2008, he will have to answer for his record.”
OHIO AND VIRGINIA
The Obama campaign has mapped out several scenarios to win the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency, and the choice of states for his first rallies was not coincidental.
Ohio, with its large cache of 18 electoral votes, is a particularly coveted prize. No Republican has made it to the White House in the last century without winning the state. Mr. Obama bested Republican rival John McCain there in 2008.
Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, also went to Mr. Obama in the last election - the first time a Democrat won there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Polls show Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney in Ohio and in Virginia. Both states have unemployment rates below the national average, which dipped to 8.1 percent in April.
In Ohio, the Mr. Obama campaign is hoping to capitalize on union anger over an attempt by Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, to limit collective bargaining rights for firefighters, police officers, and other state workers.
And in Virginia, the campaign is trying to seize on Mr. Obama’s advantage with women voters after the governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, promoted legislation that would have required women to have a trans-vaginal sonogram before getting an abortion.
Although Mr. Obama enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in Ohio on Saturday, the arena where he and the first lady spoke was not filled to its 18,300-person capacity, with a large chunk of its upper balcony left empty. A campaign official said 14,000 people attended and noted Mr. Romney’s largest event in Ohio had drawn merely 500 people.
Obama drops the gloves versus Romney in campaign launch
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday.
Updated 3:02 p.m. ET: COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Obama dropped the gloves against Mitt Romney on Saturday, leveling his most direct criticism to date of the presumptive GOP nominee while making the case for a second term.
In the first leg of a two-stop trip that took him to two swing states — Ohio and Virginia — intended to launch his campaign, Obama assailed Romney and sought to link him to unpopular Republicans in Congress.
"Governor Romney is a patriotic American who has a wonderful family, who has much to be proud of. Ran a financial firm and a state. But I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from his experiences,” Obama said to a crowd of 14,000 at Ohio State University’s Sottenheim Center.
The president started to draw contrasts against Romney heading into the general election by dredging up some of the former Massachusetts governor's most cringe-worthy moments in the primary.
"Corporations aren’t people. People are people!" Obama exclaimed, making reference to an early quip by Romney in Iowa that, "Corporations are people, my friend!"
Prosecuting the case for his own re-election, the president emphasized the gains his administration has made so far on a host of policy ares, including the revival of the auto industry, repealing "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell," ending the war in Iraq and killing Osama bin Laden.
In this week's address, President Obama speaks about his recent trip to Afghanistan, where he met with U.S. troops and signed an agreement that will help put an end to the war.
But the president defied a traditional metric for an incumbent — "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" — and turned the question on its head.
"It’s not just about how we’re doing today, but how we’ll be doing tomorrow," Obama said.
The Romney campaign was quick to remind voters of the struggles in the economy.
"No matter how many lofty campaign speeches President Obama gives, the fact remains that American families are struggling on his watch: to pay their bills, find a job and keep their homes," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "While President Obama all but ignored his record over three and a half years in office, the American people won’t. This November, they will hold him accountable for his broken promises and ineffective leadership.”
The Buckeye State is key for both the Obama and Romney campaigns; the president continued from Ohio to a stop at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Some polls indicate Romney is catching up to Obama here; a Quinnipiac poll released May 3 show Obama leading Romney by two points, 44 to 42 percent, whereas he had a six-point margin above Romney at the end of March.Melissa Harris-Perry and her panelists discuss President Obama's new campaign slogan of "forward," and how Republicans are reacting to his message.
Obama’s trip to Ohio State came just a day after Romney penned an open letter to the president in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer Friday, accusing him of being “out of your depth” on the economy and telling him, "what you are offering Ohio now is too little, too late."
Romney also appeared in Ohio last week, appearing with Gov. John Kasich at an event at Otterbein University in Columbus, just 20 minutes from where Obama spoke today.
It’s not just coincidence that both candidates are spending time in Columbus; according to the media trackers at SMG Delta, the city is just one of 17 swing media markets that George W. Bush won in 2004 and Obama won in 2008.
Analysis: Obama re-election launch seeks to define stakes of campaign
Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama greet suporters after a campaign event Saturday at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio.
RICHMOND, Virginia -- In back-to-back speeches in two key swing states, the Obama campaign indicated how it wants to define the general election: as a choice between a tool of congressional Republicans who wants to undo the president’s first-term agenda and an incumbent looking to spend the next for years building on his achievements.
The president seemed to tie his presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which Democrats use to represent congressional Republicans’ entire agenda. Obama warned that in Romney, the House GOP had a candidate who would be willing to gut Medicare and end regulations on insurance companies and banks – policies “that created this mess,” the president said.
“After a long and spirited primary, Republicans in Congress have found a nominee for president who has promised to rubber-stamp this agenda if he gets the chance,” Obama said at Ohio State University, his first stop of the day, later adhering to the same script at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
“We cannot give him that chance,” Obama continued.
The president also sought to define himself in his two speeches Saturday, employing populist themes that touch on those of several past presidential campaigns while remaining entirely unique to the Obama campaign. Using a sort of “values play” evocative of the pitches used by the Clinton campaign, the president’s wife, Michelle, underscored that he grew up in an environment where everybody played by the rules, sometimes struggling to get by.
“He is the son of a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. That’s who he is. He’s the grandson of a woman who woke up before dawn every day to catch a bus to her job at the bank,” the first lady said of her husband in Columbus.
“So believe me, Barack knows what it means when a family struggles,” she continued.
Michelle Obama’s speech also employed a tactic from George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, in which the incumbent is portrayed as the familiar choice against an unknown risk.
“We all know what Barack Obama is -- who he is,” she said. “We all know what our president stands for, right?” she implored the audience.
There’s also a little bit of Harry Truman’s campaign evident in Obama’s pitch, as he warns supporters that they need to re-elect him in order to stop “those guys” in Congress who are threatening to pass items like the Ryan budget.
President Obama and the first lady hit the campaign trail on Saturday in key battleground states. NBC's Brian Moor reports.
“As long as I’m president of the United States, I will never allow Medicare to be turned into a voucher that would end the program as we know it,” Obama said. “That’s what’s at stake in this election.”
And in preventing Republicans from accomplishing their agenda, Obama is arguing, the lives of average Americans will continue to improve – even as he acknowledges they are not where they need to be currently.
So in a twist of Ronald Reagan’s “are you better off than you were four years ago” trope, which Romney is using, the president is asking his supporters if they think they are on the right direction to being better off, say, four years from now.
The real question, he said, “is not just about how we’re doing today. It’s about how we’ll be doing tomorrow.”
“Will we better off if more Americans get a better education? That’s the question. Will we better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity? That's the question.”
The decision to re-ask a different question to the "are you better off" refrain is a tacit acknowledgment by the campaign that the "are you better off" question isn't an easy one for voters to answer in the affirmative for Obama.
While his stump speech did copy some pages from past playbooks, one aspect of most presidential re-election pitches was absent from the president’s opening salvo: the introduction of a clear second-term agenda.
Instead, the president’s stump speech was all about protecting his first-term achievements like the health care reform law and developing alternative energy sources. And while, historically, second terms are mostly about preserving such accomplishments, there is usually at least a vague nod to what the president wants to get done in a second term.
But that was missing in Saturday’s speeches. Perhaps by the convention, the president will have a more direct pitch about what another four years will look like.
All about field operations
This election will likely be decided on the two groups of swing voters in American politics: that tiny slice of independents who actually do vacillate between the two parties, making up maybe 8 to 10 percent of the entire electorate, and those swing voters who “swing” between voting and not voting.
And while the Obama campaign will hold rallies like the two Saturday to generate media buzz, their more immediate concern is that they connect with exactly these swing voters – especially the second subset – which both the president and first lady seemed to make clear.
“We are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way,” the president said, emphasizing the need to go door to door and establish neighborhood-by-neighborhood teams of volunteers.
The first lady made a pitch directly to college students who, along with African-Americans, are the two groups who came out in the strongest numbers for the president but also run high risk of staying home in 2012.
“To all of the college students out there, all of you -- if you're going to be moving over the summer, remember to register at your new address in the fall. You got that? Get that done,” she urged.
Lost energy?
The crowds at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center were screaming enthusiastically, waving signs and chanting “Four more years! Four more years!”
But the arena did not reach its full capacity of 18,300, with about 4,000 of those seats remaining unfilled. Observers of the 2008 race know that the first Obama campaign would have been able to fill every seat.
But the crowds at both OSU and VCU were more enthusiastic than any so far at a Romney rally. And while the Republican Party has joyfully pointed out that the Obama campaign isn’t generating the same excitement that it did in 2008, the only campaign that has gotten more than 5,000 folks to show up is Ron Paul's, not Romney's.
And while the GOP has fun pointing out that Obama 12 isn't inspiring the response that Obama 08 is, it's worse for the party out of power. The real reason? This is going to be a negative campaign. And negative campaigns involving incumbents are simply different beasts.
It's a campaign in which both sides are painting a pessimistic view of life if the other side wins.
The Obama campaign did flex muscle the Romney campaign has yet to show: It can throw a big rally with supporters who are still gaga for their candidate. The little things that win close elections are something Team Obama is proving fairly adept at. Can Team Romney keep up on this front? It's an open question.
Osama bin Laden papers: top 5 revelations
Pakistani Shiite Muslims shout slogans as a protest against the killing of their community members by gunmen in Quetta, Pakistan, earlier this year.
(Arshad Butt/AP)
1.Al Qaeda honchos offered “tributes”
Palestinian children play on a Palestinian flag during a Fatah rally in the West Bank town of Nablus in this file photo. An Al Qaeda document says Fatah gave a monetary tribute to Al Qaeda for jihad.
(Nasser Ishtayeh/AP/File)
Like tribute money offered to Mafia dons, funds were offered to Al Qaeda out of fear. One letter in the new trove explores whether Al Qaeda leaders should accept such money. It notes, for example, that Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “has offered us funds, purportedly to [support] jihad, but there is another reason, namely their fear of becoming targets of our swords.”
On the plus side, the author notes that “these funds would go towards the purchase and manufacture of weapons.” It also points to insider fighting, noting that these funds might be used to counter the influence of Hamas, “who fear the growth of our influence and dominion.”
2.Time to invest?
A scene from the trading floor of the Dubai Financial Market.
(Jumana El Heloueh/REUTERS)
One letter writer seeks specific advice from top Al Qaeda leaders, including Mr. bin Laden. “Is it permitted to invest funds in the stock market, buying and selling shares, for the goal of supporting the jihad, or investing some donation-derived funds in stock markets and shares?” he wonders.
The response is not included in the released documents, though Al Qaeda operatives are alleged to have used stock markets to attempt to raise money. According to the US Department of Justice, one Al Qaeda operative with links to bin Laden lost some $20 million through a Chicago futures brokerage firm.
3.The dilemma of drug money
An Afghan policeman destroys an opium poppy field in Alingar, Laghman Province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan.
(Rahmat Gul/AP)
“Is it permitted to strike drug traffickers, eliminate them, and kill them, or not?” is the straightforward query of an Al Qaeda member. He struggles with the ethics of using money gained by such means, because drug use is forbidden in Islam. But he also notes a “technicality.” Perhaps, he wonders, it is “permitted to take funds which they have gained from drug trafficking” for the use of “luring fallen addicts to serve as double agents against the Jews” or “bringing down Jewish soldiers, particularly border guards, by means of drugs.”
4.Misgivings about suicide bombing
Residents stand outside a closed gate, near the site of a suspected suicide bomb attack in the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan.
(Fayaz Aziz/REUTERS)
One letter to the leader of the Pakistani terrorist group Tehrik-e-Taliban, which was responsible for the shooting rampage in Mumbai, takes him to task for using citizens “as shields without basing their action on the Shari’a” law.
It also decries the “killing [of] the normal Muslims as a result of martyrdom operations that takes place in the marketplaces, mosques, roads, [and] assembly places.” Included in the letter is a “short list on what is acceptable and unacceptable on the subject of kidnapping.” It urges the emir to “take the necessary action to correct your actions and avoid these grave mistakes; otherwise we have to take decisive actions from our end.”
5.The Sunni-Shiite divide
Pakistani Shiite Muslims shout slogans as a protest against the killing of their community members by gunmen in Quetta, Pakistan, earlier this year.
(Arshad Butt/AP)
But he notes, again, the practicalities of such an arrangement. “They have offered funding to use, in exchange for which we are to work with them ... as a sort of propaganda; the catch being that we would conduct the operation with funding through them, and afterwards it would be announced that we cooperated with them.”
Book on bin Laden raid is a 'fabrication,' says US Special Operations
'SEAL Target Geronimo' by former Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer, which presents an alternate version of the death of Osama bin Laden, is 'far off the mark,' says a US Special Operations spokesperson.
Chuck
Pfarrer's book 'SEAL Target Geronimo' claims the stealth helicopter
involved in the raid on bin Laden's compound on May 2, 2011, crashed
later than the White House reported in their version of events.
Mohammad Zubair/AP
Officials from US Special Operations are saying the book “SEAL Target Geronimo” by former Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer is full of “fabrications” and that Pfarrer’s version of the attack on Osama bin Laden is untrue.
“SEAL Target Geronimo,” which was released Nov. 8, says that many of the official details on the attack released by the US government are untrue. It claims that the SEAL team killed bin Laden less than two minutes after arriving at the compound where bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and that a stealth helicopter that the White House said crashed soon after the raid began actually crashed later, allowing the attack to be carried out in the way the SEALs had wanted.
In his book, Pfarrer says the US account of the attack would mean the SEALs had committed “murder,” but that in his version, in which bin Laden reaches for a gun before being shot, it’s legal. The government says the fashion in which the attack was carried out is legal under post-9/11 combat law, which approves targeting bin Laden with deadly intent.
“I have truth on my side,” Pfarrer told the AP. “I spoke to the guys on the ground and in the secondary bird [an aircraft which held a backup SEAL team on the day of the attack].”
Nye said that this did not happen and that there will not be an investigation into any SEALs speaking to Pfarrer because his version of events is so untrue.
“We have never come forward and gone after an author and [said] that is a lie,” he said. “That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is.”
Nye said he is denying the book’s version of events on behalf of Navy SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven, who was worried Pfarrer’s version would make the country doubt the account of events issued by the government.
Pfarrer implies in the book that he was part of the planning process for the operation.
“It was my privilege to help troops and platoons train for submissions and run parallel HVT [high-value target] missions,” he writes in “SEAL Target Geronimo.”
Nye said that Pfarrer was not involved in any way. Pfarrer said in response that he carried out training for the Naval Special Warfare Command through his company Acme Ballistics, which focuses on security defense, but that the contracts are classified, so he cannot elaborate how it was linked to the bin Laden mission.
Pfarrer, who has been diagnosed with colon cancer, told the AP that profits from his book will go to his medical bills and that he wanted to write the book as a way to honor the “heroes of the bin Laden mission."
Leaders of special operations have also discredited the book.
“The reaction is stunned, chagrined, disappointment,” Rear Adm. George Worthington, a retired Navy SEAL, said about Pfarrer's book in an interview with the AP.
Others have noted Pfarrer makes errors in the book with facts that are widely known, including the date on which Navy SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven was appointed (2008, not this past April as Pfarrer states); the year in which the Army Special Forces Green Berets was created (1952, not 1962 as he says); and the manner in which al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed (in a jet bombing run, not through a drone strike).
Pfarrer has written other titles, including “Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy Seal” and “Killing Che,” and has written and co-written screenplays for films such as “Red Planet,” “Navy Seals,” and “Virus,” which was based on his book of the same name.
Molly Driscoll is a Monitor contributor.
11 injured, including 4 police officers, as Quebec student protest turns violent
RHÉAL SÉGUIN AND KIM MACKRAEL
Published
Last updated
VICTORIAVILLE, QUE.—
More than 3,000 demonstrators disrupted Friday’s Quebec Liberal Party meeting in Victoriaville with a violent protest that sent at least 11 people to hospital.Protesters reported being hit by rubber bullets fired into the crowd and provincial police said at least four of their officers were sent to hospital, including one who had been struck in the head with a billiard ball. At least seven protesters were also sent to hospital, three of whom were injured seriously, according to police.
The standoff started with people tossing projectiles like
smoke bombs, paint bombs and sticks in the direction of provincial riot
police guarding the Victoriaville facility that was hosting the Liberal
gathering.When protesters pulled down a metal barrier outside the building, police pushed back. Using riot gear including stun grenades and chemical irritants, they shoved the crowd into surrounding streets.
“More and more people were there, not just to protest, but to make some criminal acts. So we had to push back all the protesters,” said Captain Jean Finet, a spokesman from the Sûreté du Quebec.
Protesters and provincial police rained physical abuse on each other, which led to multiple injuries on both sides — including a provincial police officer who was kicked, punched and beaten with a stick. In an attempt to protect him, a police vehicle plowed through a projectile-tossing crowd. One protester was reportedly struck in the face with a rubber bullet.
“For the moment, we don’t exactly know who was injured by who,” Capt. Finet said.
Police intercepted three buses travelling away from Victoriaville after the demonstration, but would not say how many arrests were made or whether any charges were laid. Passengers had their identification checked and they were released on a promise to appear in court, Quebec police said.
Police have only confirmed four arrests so far, but said it was possible the total number of arrests could reach 100 or more by Saturday morning.
During the protest, worried delegates looked on from the safety of the well-guarded convention centre.
“This is revolting to see all those riot squad police. I think it only makes matters worse,” said Jehu Hernandez, a delegate from Montreal.
“I find this outrageous,” said Transport Minister Pierre Moreau. “This violence does not reflect what Quebec is all about.”
Premier Jean Charest told party members that its time for postsecondary students to end their three-month strike.
“It is high time that the boycotting students go back to their classes,” he said in a speech Friday evening.
He added that it is his job to make tough decisions in Quebec’s best interests regardless of the reaction they provoked.
“Decisions that we have taken have not been easy. They have not always been popular. Politics is not a long quiet river,” Mr. Charest said in reference to the tuition-fee hikes that sparked the protests.
But for students to go back to class, however, the government needs to strike a deal with student groups. Talks that also included the presidents of Quebec’s three most important labour organizations went late into Friday night, suggesting that union leaders who have backed the students could play a decisive role in ending the dispute.
If Mr. Charest succeeds, it could pave the way for a spring election. Two public opinion polls published on Friday reached different conclusions on public support for the Premier: One gave Mr. Charest the lead and showed that three out of four Quebeckers supported the tuition-fee hike; the second found the Parti Québécois is leading in popular support and two-third of voters are opposed to way the Charest government has handled the crisis.
It was perhaps with an election campaign in mind that Mr. Charest criticized his opponents, claiming that PQ Leader Pauline Marois and Coalition Avenir Quebec Leader François Legault, a former PQ minister, were two of a kind.
“We have before us two sovereigntist parties,” Mr. Charest said. “If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it’s a duck.
“There is but one federalist party in Quebec… and it’s us, the Quebec Liberal Party.”
He warned Quebeckers that should Ms. Marois or Mr. Legault ever form a government they would “put the chainsaw” to funding for health care and education. They were together in the same PQ government that cut spending for social programs, Mr. Charest said, and they will do it again.
With a report from The Canadian Press
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)