Osama Bin Laden is dead

[Vacant Horizon]

Knowing that everything the WH releases has a political agenda, I wonder why they chose that particular shot. Clinton looks absolutely mortified.

 

she totally does. that gave me a bit of shiver.

[lamradio]

I wonder why they invited Robert Duvall?

 

I was wondering the same thing about John Lithgow...

[Guest Speed Racer]

All-Star Celebrity Assassinations!

[marino13]

Which one brought the nudie mag with them back from the john that they had to blur out?

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenvoy/20110503/ts_yblog_theenvoy/in-aftermath-of-bin-laden-raid-new-intelligence-shifting-accounts

 

Yeah they watched it in real time, yet they can't figure out if there were one or two women there. I can just see it now:

 

"...wait, we said Osama's wife identified him, and we also said Osama used her as a human shield. Dammit!! How are we going to fix that one? Well, let's just say there were two women there and blame it on confusion over how fast everything went down."

 

It's called Fog of War. Things aren't quite so clear cut when one is in a combat situation. It's like a car wreck x10. You have a different story from everybody involved, not because of any arcane motives to obfuscate. When adrenaline is pumping and confusion reigns, things are simply not clear. And who even knows if the team has been debriefed yet.

 

A lot of you guys are more cynical and jaded than I am.

[Guest Speed Racer]

It's called Fog of War. Things aren't quite so clear cut when one is in a combat situation.

 

Or, rather, when one is several thousand miles away from a combat situation hearing second-hand and watching thermal imaging that could either be depicting a grazing donkey or a jihadist.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Or, rather, when one is several thousand miles away from a combat situation hearing second-hand and watching thermal imaging that could either be depicting a grazing donkey or a jihadist.

 

That's a given. However, I was speaking of the guys on the ground.

[sonicshoulder]

How many would he have killed with resources equal to America.

Nap...hello,

I know you love to argue...no comment or what?

[Guest Speed Racer]

Nap...hello,

I know you love to argue...no comment or what?

 

Without the question mark I thought it was a lamentation. Apples and oranges, buddy. He had all the resources he needed to do all the killing he needed do. The guy was't lacking an impressive body count.

[Good Old Neon]

Eh?

 

From CNN

 

"Osama bin Laden was not armed but did put up resistance when U.S. forces entered the compound he was in and killed him, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/03/bin.laden.dead/index.html?hpt=T1

[Guest Speed Racer]

I know, I thought that was cute. All that says to me is that he wasn't cowering and weeping.

[sonicshoulder]

Oh I was definitely dissapointed by your initial lack of response. What I got from your comment was motive aside Bin Laden is not as evil as America cause he killed less statistically. Did I misconstrue?

[Guest Jules]

Fuck him. I hope they pissed in his wound.

[marino13]

Oh I was definitely dissapointed by your initial lack of response. What I got from your comment was motive aside Bin Laden is not as evil as America cause he killed less statistically. Did I misconstrue?

 

I'll bite. Bin Laden would have killed billions if left unchecked with our resources, because he was a madman. But that's also what makes it so easy to dismiss him as just a single lunatic. For me, it is far more disheartening that we have a large group of individuals, with a system a checks and balances, that is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and a country full of people that elected them there that are either fine with it or choose to ignore it. It's easy to be ignorant to the atrocity of war when it hasn't been fought on your turf since 1865.

 

I'd much rather we went to all special ops (like with Bin Laden) to fight the terrorists vs. bombing. It would greatly reduce collateral damage and would cost us trillions less.

[Good Old Neon]

I'll bite. Bin Laden would have killed billions if left unchecked with our resources, because he was a madman. But that's also what makes it so easy to dismiss him as just a single lunatic. For me, it is far more disheartening that we have a large group of individuals, with a system a checks and balances, that is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and a country full of people that elected them there that are either fine with it or choose to ignore it. It's easy to be ignorant to the atrocity of war when it hasn't been fought on your turf since 1865.

 

I'd much rather we went to all special ops (like with Bin Laden) to fight the terrorists vs. bombing. It would greatly reduce collateral damage and would cost us trillions less.

 

 

Well said.

[lamradio]

 

I'd much rather we went to all special ops (like with Bin Laden) to fight the terrorists vs. bombing. It would greatly reduce collateral damage and would cost us trillions less.

 

Me too. Hopefully we've learned something from this... The operation couldn't' have gone better.

[caliber66]

Me too. Hopefully we've learned something from this... The operation couldn't' have gone better.

They did lose a helicopter.

[sonicshoulder]

I'll bite. Bin Laden would have killed billions if left unchecked with our resources, because he was a madman. But that's also what makes it so easy to dismiss him as just a single lunatic. For me, it is far more disheartening that we have a large group of individuals, with a system a checks and balances, that is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and a country full of people that elected them there that are either fine with it or choose to ignore it. It's easy to be ignorant to the atrocity of war when it hasn't been fought on your turf since 1865.

 

I'd much rather we went to all special ops (like with Bin Laden) to fight the terrorists vs. bombing. It would greatly reduce collateral damage and would cost us trillions less.

I wasn't baiting. It just amazes me sometimes how some people can turn any situation into America bashing. Obviously everyone would prefer special ops type raids opposed to killing thousands but the bottom line is you don't go from the initial offense to special ops mode. This operations was made possible by intense interrogation(torture) which was made possible by the capture and surrender of Al Qaeda higher ups which was made possible by the rampant bombings and invasion of Afghanistan.

[Brennan]

[lamradio]

They did lose a helicopter.

 

Ok well maybe it could have gone better.

 

It just amazes me sometimes how some people can turn any situation into America bashing.

 

Exactly... But somehow I knew that people would still find a way to bash the country in this thread...

[ih8music]

Obviously everyone would prefer special ops type raids opposed to killing thousands but the bottom line is you don't go from the initial offense to special ops mode. This operations was made possible by intense interrogation(torture) which was made possible by the capture and surrender of Al Qaeda higher ups which was made possible by the rampant bombings and invasion of Afghanistan.

That's certainly the path we took to get there; but I'm not sure if one can really say that's the only way to get there. I don't know if the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan was absolutely necessary to capture the al Qaeda leaders that we captured, nor am I convinced that torture was the interrogation tactic that produced the key leads. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we'll ever get the straight story because it's already being reported along predictably conflicting partisan lines.

[Good Old Neon]

For me, It’s not really America bashing, my responses are more of a response to the sanctimonious celebrating and USA#1 chest thumping that drives me up a wall – which is not to say that attitude has been displayed in this thread. In reality, the very real evils perpetrated by this country throughout its history exceed, exponentially, what the Taliban, al Qaida, or Bin laden were ever able to accomplish. That’s not America bashing, it’s looking history coldly in the face and acknowledging inconvenient, ugly-assed truths. Unfortunately, most American’s understanding of our history, the shit we’ve carried out is about as sophisticated as a fifth grade history book. The only truly exceptional thing about this country is its citizens’ willingness to remain willfully and blissfully ignorant.

 

With respect to the role torture played in finding Bin Laden:

 

From Glenn Greenwald:

 

The killing of Osama bin Laden has, as The New York Times notes, re-ignited the debate over "brutal interrogations" -- by which it's meant that Republicans are now attempting to exploit the emotions generated by the killing to retroactively justify the torture regime they implemented. The factual assertions on which this attempt is based -- that waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation methods" produced evidence crucial to locating bin Laden -- are dubious in the extreme, for reasons Andrew Sullivan and Marcy Wheeler document. So fictitious are these claims that even Donald Rumsfeld has repudiated them.

 

But even if it were the case that valuable information were obtained during or after the use of torture, what would it prove? Nobody has ever argued that brutality will never produce truthful answers. It is sometimes the case that if you torture someone long and mercilessly enough, they will tell you something you want to know. Nobody has ever denied that. In terms of the tactical aspect of the torture debate, the point has always been -- as a consensus of interrogations professionals has repeatedly said -- that there are far more effective ways to extract the truth from someone than by torturing it out of them. The fact that one can point to an instance where torture produced the desired answer proves nothing about whether there were more effective ways of obtaining it.

 

This highlights what has long been a glaring fallacy in many debates over War on Terror policies: that Information X was obtained after using Policy A does not prove that Policy A was necessary or effective. That's just basic logic. This fallacy asserted itself constantly in the debate over warrantless surveillance. Proponents of the Bush NSA program would point to some piece of intelligence allegedly obtained during warrantless eavesdropping as proof that the illegal program was necessary and effective; obviously, though, that fact said nothing about whether the same information would also have been discovered through legal eavesdropping, i.e., eavesdropping approved in advance by the FISA court (and indeed, legal eavesdropping [like legal interrogation tactics] is typically more effective than the illegal version because, by necessity, it is far more focused on actual suspected Terrorism plots; warrantless eavesdropping entails the unconstrained power to listen in on any communications the Government wants without having to establish its connection to Terrorism). But in all cases, the fact that some piece of intelligence was obtained by some lawless Bush/Cheney War on Terror policy (whether it be torture or warrantless eavesdropping) proves nothing about whether that policy was effective or necessary.

 

And those causal issues are, of course, entirely independent of the legal and moral questions shunted to the side by this re-ignited "debate." There are many actions that the U.S. could take that would advance its interests that are nonetheless obviously wrong on moral and legal grounds. When Donald Trump recently suggested that we should simply take Libya's oil and that of any other country which we successfully invade and occupy, that suggestion prompted widespread mockery. That was the reaction despite the fact that stealing other countries' oil would in fact produce substantial benefits for the U.S. and advance our interests: it would help to lower gas prices, reduce our dependence on hostile oil-producing nations, and avoid having to degrade our own environment in order to drill domestically. Trump's proposed actions are morally reprehensible and flagrantly lawless despite how many benefits it would produce; therefore, no person of even minimal decency would embrace it no matter how many benefits it produces.

 

Exactly the same is true for the torture techniques used by the Bush administration and once again being heralded by its followers (and implicitly glorified by media stars who keep suggesting that it enabled bin Laden's detection). It makes no difference whether it extracted usable intelligence. Criminal, morally depraved acts don't become retroactively justified by pointing to the bounty they produced.

 

* * * * *

 

It was striking to note in yesterday's New York Times the obituary of Moshe Landau, the Israeli judge who presided over the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. It's a reminder that when even the most heinous Nazi war criminals were hunted down by the Israelis, they weren't shot in the head and then dumped into the ocean, but rather were apprehended, tried in a court of law, confronted with the evidence against them for all the world to see, and then punished in accordance with due process. The same was done to leading Nazis found by Allied powers and tried at Nuremberg. It's true that those trials took place after the war was over, but whether Al Qaeda should be treated as active warriors or mere criminals was once one of the few ostensible differences between the two parties on the question of Terrorism.

 

Speaking of which: I know that very few people have even a slight interest in the unexciting, party-pooping question of whether our glorious killing comported with legal principles, but for those who do, both The Guardian and Der Spiegel have good discussions of that issue

[mpolak21]

I like Patton Oswalds comment:

 

No matter how collected Obama is during his speech, he's hearing LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" blasting in his head.

 

Patton had the best joke of that night for me: "My fellow Americans, I am proud to -- hold on. What? (...long pause) Really? (*sigh*) Cat Stevens leaves behind a legacy of song..."

[Moss]

This operations was made possible by intense interrogation(torture)

 

 

Well that kind of takes some of the joy out of it for me.

[marino13]

I know "fog of war" was used as an excuse for conflicting stories, but how many times can the story change before you finally call bullshit. Once again, I'm not saying he's not dead, just that they are manipulating the story for some reason.

 

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42892575/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-death-obama-story.html

 

"One compound resident pointed out Osama. Three compound residents died in the firefight. One man used a woman as a human shield. She was an Osama wife. They both died. She was only shot in the leg running toward a SEAL. She didn't die. Another woman did on another floor. There was no human shield. The Osama son initially identified as shot and killed may have been the other one.

 

The goal was to capture Osama or kill him if necessary. The plan was to kill Osama all along. He was encountered in a bedroom. He was given a brief opportunity to surrender. He didn't. Blam! He died instantly from gunshots to the chest and head, including a large one in the forehead over the eye. He was unarmed. But he resisted. You don't need a gun to resist.

 

Because it was so important to have photos of a dead Osama to head off evergreen Elvis-lives conspiracies, the gruesome big-hole-in-the-forehead photo has not been released -- and might never be.

 

This is because a ghastly dead OBL photo could offend the "sensitivities" of Osama's insane supporters who have been trying to kill Americans for 15 years anyway, still are, will be but didn't seem to mind photos of thousands of people dying 10 years ago inside burning, crumbling skyscrapers or leaping from them."