Obama's newest famous quote is "I'm really good at killing people" — but what was the context?

The Daily Mail cherry-picked the quote out of the new book "Double Down: Game Change 2012." The book's not out for normal people until tomorrow. (Buy it here.) So I'm stuck wondering. DM says:

A Washington Post report makes passing reference to the anecdote, saying that while speaking with his aides about the drone program Obama bragged that he was 'really good at killing people.' The Obama Administration has not responded specifically to reports of the alleged boast from the President.

The Daily Mail is punctilious enough to say "alleged" but can't resist characterizing the words as a "boast." We're told he "bragged." The headline says "President Obama joked...." Let's assume for the purposes of discussion that Obama really did say those words in that order. But let's try to imagine why he might have said that.

Perhaps you're imagining a childish man, exclaiming "I'm really good at killing people" like a numbskull teenager playing a first-person-shooter video game. Or maybe you're picturing someone more like a movie super-villain in his vast underground lair, cackling to his fawning minions as he creepily caresses his "kill" button.

But it's possible to think of a context in which Obama would be sympathetic. I could imagine a serious discussion of the lack of genuine accomplishment in his administration.

O: What will history say we have done? Nothing! I was the embodiment of hope, and everything I have touched has turned to ashes.

AIDE: But, sir....

O: What are the accomplishments? Name the accomplish of the Obama administration! What will people say?!

AIDE: He killed bin Laden.

O: A pathetic, isolated idiot sitting in his hovel, watching bad porn. The SEALs blew him away. That was really amazing of me.

AIDE: [Names several significant terrorists who have been killed through the drone program.]

O [sadly, sarcastically]: I'm really good at killing people.

Intent on writing this little dialogue, I searched for a list of 4 or 5 good names for the aide to tick off in an effort to bolster the President's spirits. See if you can do that. I couldn't do it. I kept running into "A List Of Children Killed By Drone Strikes In Pakistan and Yemen." Go there. Scroll through those names (and ages) and think about that context and why Obama might have said I'm really good at killing people.

Abbottabad — the city where Osama bin Laden was killed — is building an amusement park.

I missed this story back in February. Noticing it now after Googling Abbottabad for the last post.

"This project has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden," [said Syed Aqil Shah, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's minister for tourism and sports], adding: "We are working to promote tourism and amusement facilities."

Imagine a bin Laden-themed amusement park. The mind reels.

Osama bin Laden "crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! Same place... He was dead.... His tongue was out."

"I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath. And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I've ever done, or the worst thing I've ever done? This is real and that's him. Holy sh**. His forehead was gruesome. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face. The American public doesn't want to know what that looks like."

ADDED: Here's the long Esquire article. 

Leon Panetta admits that enhanced interrogation was part of locating bin Laden.

On "Meet the Press" today:



"Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that."

"Lady Jerks of 2012: A Year in Review."

Today seems to be my day for finding screwy ideas in Slate. This one seems to be a twist on the old feminist bumper sticker "Well-behaved women rarely make history." I can't quite tell whether Amanda Hess is trying to encourage/facilitate female jerkiness or what. Yeah, there's the ancient problem of wanting to be liked, which is really only a problem if you want it too much and want it above other, better goals. It's perfectly idiotic to think that the solution to the excessive desire to be liked is to be unlikeable.

But, whatever... the women Hess recognizes as the "Lady Jerks of 2012" are: the CIA agent who complained that she shouldn't have had to share the Distinguished Intelligence Medal for finding bin Laden; Anne Hathaway, the actress who talked back haughtily when asked about the photographs that paparazzi somehow were able to take of the body part Hess refers to as "her vagina"; Julia Gillard, the prime minister of Australia who called some political opponent a misogynist; Taylor Swift, the pretty young singer who crashed a Kennedy wedding with her Kennedy boyfriend; and Susan Rice, who, as Hess would have it, lost out on getting to be the next Secretary of State because people thought she was “prickly,” “hard-headed,” “temperamentally unfit,” and “always right on the edge of a screech.” Hess writes: "The personality police eventually moved Rice to withdraw her name from the running." That's not what I heard!