There was a sense of relief inside the narrow, cramped Situation Room on Wednesday evening, when an early report came to President Joe Biden from the risky commando mission underway in northeastern Syria. A family living on the first floor of the building being targeted by the U.S. special operations forces, apparently unaware that the top-tier ISIS leader was living upstairs, walked out after hearing orders being barked by the team on the ground, and were briskly led away from what was about to become a gruesome battlefield.
“It was a relief when one of the first reports was that when the team came on site and called everyone to come out, those on the first floor did come out and were led to safety,” said a senior administration official, who described the atmosphere around the President while he watched the raid in shirtsleeves from the basement of the West Wing with Vice President Kamala Harris, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer and Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall.
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The uninvolved family’s presence was one of the things that made the complex mission hard to plan, the official said. For months, Biden insisted any plan targeting ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi should limit the number of civilians that were vulnerable during the raid. That meant sending in American commandos at night, rather than firing a missile that would demolish the three-story building and, most likely, whoever might be in it.
It also meant having structural engineers working for U.S. intelligence agencies pour over intelligence about the building’s construction and the information American spies had collected on the comings and goings of the families and children living there. Al-Qurayshi himself never went outside except to bathe on the roof, officials said, opting instead to conduct business and communications through couriers.
And yet, even with the President’s specific…
Source : time
