A feat of heroism by the American soldiers left a slightly sour aftertaste as US President Donald Trump enthusiastically revealed sensitive details, especially the involvement of a cutting-edge robot, in the attempted raid and capturing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The US-led raid for the capture of al-Baghdadi resulted in the world’s most wanted terrorist killing himself and three of his children by detonating a suicide vest.
However, Trump, who was enthusiastically talking about the raid in unnecessary detail, ended up revealing a lot of sensitive information.
For example, Trump laid out several of America’s tactical details such as the helicopter flight patterns, and more importantly, the “robot”.
Trump talked about the robot’s involvement several times during his live news conference last week.
Trump revealed during his address that they actually had a robot to go in the tunnel, but that they didn’t send it there because they were tracking al-Baghdadi. He later added that they had the robot “just in case” as they were afraid of suicide vests — which as it turns out, was the case.
In a piece of information which can also be speculated as a comment on the robot’s speed and agility, Trump also revealed that the robot didn’t follow the ISIS leader into the tunnel because they were “moving too fast”.
Journalist: And then in the tunnel, that’s when the robot followed him in, too?
President Trump: The robot was set to but we didn’t hook it up because we were too… They were moving too fast. We were moving fast. We weren’t 100% sure about the tunnel being dead-ended. It’s possible that there could have been an escape hatch somewhere along that we didn’t know about.
A news portal has also speculated that Trump’s comments about tracking al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts with the help of technology could be construed as the usage of infra-red abilities to locate underground tunnels.
President Trump: We have had him under surveillance for a couple of weeks.
We knew a little bit about where he was going, where he was heading. We had very good information that he was going to another location. He didn’t go. Two or three efforts were cancelled because he decided to change his mind, constantly changing his mind.
And, finally, we saw that he was here, held up here. We knew something about the compound. We knew it had tunnels. The tunnels were dead-end, for the most part. There was one, we think, that wasn’t. But we had that covered too just in case.
A former White House official told a news publication under anonymity, “We agonized over what we would put in his [Trump’s] briefings because who knows if and when he’s going to say something about it…”
He added later, “He has no filter… But also if he knows something, and he thinks it’s going to be good to say or make him appear smarter or stronger, he’ll just blurt it out.”
