Is Biden to Blame For Death of SEALs? Or was it a SEAL's memoirs?

I saw this first mentioned yesterday, certain sites blaming Biden for the death of the SEALs in the helicopter crash, and I thought to myself, sure, they say that now. But what were they saying then?

Did a bit of research today, and they were saying the same thing then.

May 4, 2011: The Telegraph.co.uk: Joe Biden opens his mouth about US Navy SEALs

Since President Barack Obama announced that “a small team of Americans” had killed Osama bin Laden, US government officials have carefully stuck to the line that they will not talk about which units were involved.

Obama did not say it was the SEALs. In numerous television appearances, Obama’s counter-terrorism chief John Brennan didn’t and his deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough didn’t. Despite the numerous news reports that named the SEALs, none of the anonymous briefers from the CIA and Pentagon would confirm it.

Here’s a typical response to a question about the SEALs from a senior defence official in a Pentagon briefing on Monday:

QUESTION: Can I ask you, can you confirm that it was a (Navy) SEAL team? And was this a specially designated team that had been practising or reviewing intelligence for a while and they were the unit of choice?

SENIOR DEFENCE OFFICIAL: Not going to comment on units or numbers.

But here’s what the legendarily verbose and loose-lipped Vice President Joe Biden said at a dinner at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel last night to mark the 50th anniversary of the Atlantic Council:

Let me briefly acknowledge tonight’s distinguished honorees. Admiral James Stavridis is a, is the real deal. He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.

And:

Folks, I’d be remiss also if I didn’t say an extra word about the incredible events, extraordinary events of this past Sunday. As Vice President of the United States, as an American, I was in absolute awe of the capacity and dedication of the entire team, both the intelligence community, the CIA, the SEALs. It just was extraordinary.

But one wonders, if Biden hadn't let the cat out of the bag, would somoene else have done so? After all, on May 10, 2011, a book was published by Stephen Templin entitled SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL sniper. Now, this book doesn't mention Bin Laden, apparently it deals with the mission "capture or kill Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid."

But with such a book at hand, could Muslim extremists not have deduced, on their own, that it was SEAL team six that killed Bin Laden?

A book called The Killing of Osama Bin Laden: How The Mission To Hunt Down a Terrorist Mastermind Was Accomplished, by Mark Yoshiomoto Nerncoff, was also published in May (as an ebook).

In other words, if Biden hadn't let the cat out of the bag, someone else would have. Do you really think the US media wouldn't have been filing Freedom of Information acts demanding to know who the men were?

Having said that, clearly Biden was not supposed to let the cat out of the bag, and should have known he was not supposed to do so, and he did anyway.

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