River Skylan and Hadley Van Dyne face off week to week as they stalk the campaign trails of President Obama and his opponent, Mitt Romney. They dabble in hot topics and issues facing the social and political consequence of the country at large. This week, Hadley gets the first punch while River gets the rebuttal. Tune in next week for more he said/she said of the left and right and to find out just where this debate will take us in time for Election 2012.

Hadley says:

We’re following the recent controversy over President Obama’s handling of the killing of Osama Bin Laden during his campaign. OPSEC, a group of retired special operations and CIA officers, have made claims online that Obama is taking too much personal responsibility for the killing of Bin Laden and not giving credit where credit is due: to the Navy SEALS who actually did all of the work.

This comes as no surprise as the campaign between Obama and Mitt Romney heats up. We’re just about 2 months out from Election Day and with healthcare debates, Iraq and Afghanistan debates and Mitt’s recent announcement of the stellar Paul Ryan as his V.P., Obama needs to pull out all the stops to save himself.

But this isn’t new. Since the moment Bin Laden was killed, Obama has been acting like a rock star and it’s about time someone in the right position to, someone who knows better, has said enough.

The group OPSEC posted to their website that Obama hasn’t been giving enough credit to the Navy SEALS who carried out the raid. They also made an unconfirmed claim that President Obama has given away classified information about the raid for the making of a Hollywood film.

OPSEC is one of many groups of special ops veterans that have banned together the last few months to criticize Obama and his handling of Bin Laden and other military affairs. The overwhelming amount of veterans standing up against Obama speaks volumes about his actions and his honor throughout not only his campaign, his presidency as well.

Sadly, OPSEC is coming under fire for their statements with retired Navy SEAL Capt. Rick Woolard claiming:

They have a good point. I wish there was better OPSEC (operational security), and fewer leaks. But I would prefer that SEALs and other special operators would sit down and shut the hell up.

Now surely, River, you don’t agree that anyone should have to sit down and shut up, right? These vets have the right to question authority and stand up for what they believe in.

River says:

Here here, first amendment. I agree that telling them to sit down and shut up isn’t cool. But I’ve also never adorned a badge quite like these folks and the military bond and unspoken rules are things I will never understand.

Let’s add in to this equation that “Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund,” as they’re known in full, is listed as a social welfare organization, which allows it to receive unlimited financial contributions without having to disclose the donors. However, its already identified members have very Republican ties. So speaking of no surprises, this sounds like a political campaign all on its own.

We should also address that as per the Republican campaign strategy, OPSEC’s delivery of their message is a little bit laughable. They created a 20-minute video of carefully selected footage from Obama’s speech immediately following the Bin Laden raid. They cut out all of the parts where he credited and thanked intelligence and military teams for the operation and replaced them with reverbed repetition of the President saying “I directed.”

The sounds glaringly familiar to the ads Romney made after the “you didn’t build that” disaster where the actual things Obama said were edited to sound like something completely different. The editing is so ridiculous that it speaks volumes about the intelligence level of anyone who buys into it. Same goes for the OPSEC vid.

But the current head of U.S. Special Operatios Command has Obama’s back saying Obama does, in fact, have the right to gloat a bit if he wants to. The leader of the raid, Adm. Bill McRaven, said at this summer’s Aspen Security Forum:

Make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions.

Meanwhile U.S. Army Special Forces Maj. Fernando Lujan, a Green Beret who returned from Afghanistan last year, says rule number 1 in Fight Club: respect the Commander in Chief, writing thus on his Facebook page:

This is an unprofessional, shameful action on the part of the operators that appear in the video, period

He goes on to say that attaching the title of special operator with any political campaign is “in violation of everything we’ve been taught, and the opposite of what we should be doing, which is being quiet professionals.”

So once again we’re using politics to hate on politics, with editing software in the wings to help, and just basically going round and round in circles. It’s almost so exhausting I can’t wait for the election to be over with.