Apparently killed by a “US military asset” in a house outside Islamabad, according to reports on CNN.
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Of massive psychological import for the USA.
Of massive importance that it happened under the presidency of Obama.
Islamabad no less. He was hiding in a mansion, not a house and not a cave, and not Afghanistan.
This is very big news.
God, Americans are amassing and have gathered outside the White House singing the Star Spangled Banner.
CNN reporting that Pakistan has confirmed the death and released information confirming that Pakistani intelligence was working with the U.S on this.
Only one more comment:
9/11 was the biggest psychological wound ever inflicted upon the collective psyche of the U.S. No other assault on their soil could come close.
If it is possible for America to have some sense of sewing up of what was rent apart that day, then Bin Laden’s death will be it.
Pity the “US military asset” didn’t take him alive (or ten years earlier). But yes, let’s hope this helps the US citizenry sleep better so we can declare the so-called War on Terror won.
Does this mean the Endless Global
Military AdventureWar on Terror is over? Huzzah!Does it? I wonder. I hope so. But the world currently reminds me of Orwell’s ’1984′ where there must always be an enemy to fight. Nevertheless, I won’t be grieving for the man.
We’ve always been at war with
EastasiaTerror, Fine.Is this really important in the material sense? Did OBL have that much to do with the 11/09/01 attacks? Was he running the war in Afghanistan for the Taliban. Did he direct the uprisings in Iraq? I tend to think this is more of a PR victory and a boon for the MSM. Two global media frenzies within a week, huzzah!
Wonder what it might mean for Obama’s popularity with voters. Certainly sounded like he was guardedly trying to take some credit for it in his announcement.
Oh really? I thought Bin Laden died laughing years ago.
Fox news gets a bit confused just who is dead – http://stfuconservatives.tumblr.com/post/5122704374
Patrickb, symbolism is important. In this case, extremely important.
Amongst other things, it will likely make troop drawdowns in Afghanistan much easier.
It’s also just given Obama’s re-election chances a big boost.
Huge news….. there’ll be massive celebrations in the US tonight.
It’s a shame that it took so long – it would have been good for Bush to have got most of the credit for this given the flack he took, but it looks like Obama claiming the win (‘our No.1 priority when I became president’ etc tec).
This isn’t going to end the WoT. They know that people fear people much more than they fear processes or policies. That’s why the campaign against mitigation has focused on “Fat” Al Gore. Al Qaeda will do for a while, but let’s be on the lookout for “Son of Al/Osama”.
Where’s Mullah Omar when you need him?
Good news. Sadly, I can’t see it making much of an impact on any given conflict situations.
Don’t worry Andrew. Fox will set the record straight. I’m just waiting to see how Trump reports this in his next press conference.
@13
Yes possibly. What is of concern is that the MSM will infuse this with much more importance that it deserves because it suits them to have another great big media event. Meanwhile the situation in Libya is obfuscated simply because it’s ongoing and complex and the MSM are either too lazy or to inept to deal with these kind of developments.
Yet it, and other recent events in the ME, will probably have a far more profound effect on all our lives than the loss of this one life. I mean if the British had killed Ghandi or the South Africans Mandella then yes, history would probably have been different but OBL hasn’t had the kind of material effect that the MSM would have us believe he has had.
It may be spiritually important for Americans but it’s materially unimportant for everyone. (Note to historians: it looks like 02/05/2011 has already been named an “historic day” despite there being as yet no discernible historical effects).
Good news.
Thanks, Casey.
Has there been a press release by Geogre Bush yet?
@ tssk: from the BBC
Although I think Obama’s claims to American exceptionalism in his statement were vomit-inducing.
What am I going to do with my fridge magnet?
I guess then George Bush can stand proud. Not sure how Clinton is relevant here.
Hmmm… the news is an hour old. That should be long enough for the Tea Party to say that Obama faked it to gain popularity.
The conspiracy to switch the DNA samples is already in place.
tssk, Clinton was on duty when the USS Cole was bombed – the war against Al-Qaida started with Clinton, even though the defining event (9/11) happened when Bush was President.
9/11 was momentus because it dramatically changed the direction of US foreign policy under Bush. He was heading down the path of being a very insular President – withdrawing US assets from around the globe. Clinton was far more interventionist. 9/11 changed all that.
I sent my fridge magnet back to JWH as soon as I got it.
But on a more serious note. There was a report a couple of weeks ago, I can’t remember whhich channel, that Al-Quaeda had a nuclear device hidden in an unsapecified European city to detonate in the event of Ben Laden’s capture or death. Let’s hope. for once that was media bs.
It is of course good newsm but only time will tell if it will make a good deal of practical difference.
I’m happy for the Americans and for Obama. This is just what the Republicans didn’t need.
I’m going to go for the following conspiracy. In the dying days of the Bush administration Osama was killed but the news did not reach the President until Obama was in power. Obama then had the corpse frozen just in case of Donald Trump riding high on his amazing television show Celebrity Apprentice would pose a clear and present danger.
That day has come and a week ago they started thawing the body.
The victory of course if George Bush’s and he should be commended foor his foresight when he held a press conference on one of the great ships with the flag Mission Accomplished.
Done!
If the news is an hour old its also time for the riots to kick off. Glad I’m not staying in Cairo tonight
I wonder if the “diplomat” and Glock enthusiast Raymond Davis was part of the pursuit. Even in Pakistan I imagine it is not possible to remain hidden by staying put, OBL would have had to change locations frequently. I’ll have to wait for it to come out in paperback I guess.
wizofaus @10
He’s the Commander in Chief. He approved the operation.
I’m happy for the Americans. Despite what a few on the far left said, nothing justfied September 11 – including American foreign policy.
I demand to see the Death Certificate!
The real one…until then…
I await confirmation. I thought bin Laden had died of renal failure some years ago. Still, good riddance if it true.
On the various links to the news about Ben Laden’s death, there appears to be a report from some right wing blog called The Watchman that Bin Laden’s body had been on ice for months.
Didn’t take them long.
lol Paul. I can’t believe someone would actually go down that route! My ‘ice to see you’ story took me all of two seconds to make up.
I am amazed that the Usonians have been sure about where OBL was been since August last year and they didn’t spook him.
As to Obama taking credit, back in 07 when all the then leading candidates for prez did their Foreign Policy essays, Obama’s was the only one that advocated following Al Q and the Taliban into Pakistan. I reckon he deserves a bit of credit.
And, according to CNN, Ben Laden was killed in a place call Abbottabad.
[Sorry, couldn't help myself. Monents like these, etc.]
I’m a little surprised at how exhilarated I actually feel.
@ dwylah, without knowing too much about the ins and outs of the story, I would guess that they had narrowed it down to a couple of locations last August, and were then watching to make sure they picked the right one.
Does this mean I can walk through my airport without being pulled over, every single time I go to the airport, every bloody single time [well, bar once actually] for a ‘random’ check of my body and bag for explosives?
Cos I’m getting bloody sick of the non randomness of such and the waste of time and public money involved.
And if that pisses me off imagine how pissed off the Iraqi people must be.
A deluded old man in a cave is killed by the largest, most powerful military ever created on Earth, nearly ten years after he was made a target. Good god, sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
Killing an idea is a lot harder, and Osama Bin Laden’s greatest legacy is not the ideas he created and sustained in the Muslim world, it’s the horrifying, banal, senseless, immoral, illegal and terrible ideas he unleashed in the West, in us. He may be dead, but those ideas are still very much alive; I cannot celebrate.
Great! Let’s get our servicemen and women home. Now.
Do you think he could use this politically as a way to try and push through the bills he wasn’t able to before?
I guess this means that in future all those “third highest ranking” Al Qaeda operatives taken out in drone attacks will have to be upgraded to “second highest”.
This is good news, but cannot make up for the horrific news that Karl Stepanoveryou won the gold Logie last night.
I’m afraid I’m with PatrickG.
(Is this a first – every single item in “recent comments” is for this thread. Take THAT, Royal wedding!)
True Jess, but i am seeing a level of restraint, i am not used to seeing in US forces, I am also trying to figure out if this if the first successful high profile action by US special forces since Carter’s Debacle in the Desert, in ’80.
I’m with patrickg on this one.
I wondered how long it would take some dickhead to use this as a stick with which to beat teh left. In this case the dickhead is Paul Austin@32, who also makes a play for strawman of the week title.
Good news for the victims of 911 I imagine too. That ol’ closure thing.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/05/02/3205479.htm?site=melbourne
Robert Fisk says that the overthrow of various regimes in the ME and Africa is more important.
I also agree with patrickg, he has made so many afraid and in their fear they have unleashed their predjudice.But having said that, bring our troops home immediately Julia.Your excuse to continue to be involved in this adventure has just been obliterated.
patrickg and adrian – leave out the snarky comments and just celebrate a fantastic moment in history. One of the most evil men who has ever lived has just been eliminated – that’s worth celebrating!!!!
Fine, the point is not so much the effect of Bin Laden’s death in the Middle East. I think most people paying attention had figured out that he had become largely irrelevant. What matters here, I think, is the effect on American politics.
@52
“One of the most evil men who has ever lived has just been eliminated – that’s worth celebrating!!!!”
Could we please have a comparative body count re Bin Laden and George W Bush, or even Obama..?
Osama Bin Laden’s death might be fuel for the fire of militant Jihadism, but isn’t this propensity for martyrdom a bit of a self-destructive thing? I for one can’t see the movement lasting that long, what with all its adherents insisting on dying before they manage to actually get anything done.
Well, julia ain’t bringing the troops home. Her first public comment was somewhere along the lines of the war must continue.
Absolutely.
This is of massive significance to Barack Obama’s re-election prospects, I’d imagine.
Paul, did you expect her to?
What this does do is make the politics of declaring victory and going home from Afghanistan easier for Obama – and thus easier for us.
While I would dearly love the government to have left Afghanistan ages ago, in the current political context is it realistic to expect a Labor government to open itself up to the charge of being anti-American?
Paul Austin
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps#Concerning_September_11_attacks
God hates America, and those calamities last Tuesday [September 11, 2001] are none other than the wrath of God, smiting f@g America… That wasn’t any accident. That wasn’t any coincidence. There’s only America to blame for those tragedies…
Thank God for 9/11. Thank God that, five years ago, the wrath of God was poured out upon this evil nation. America, land of the s_domite damned. We thank thee, Lord God Almighty, for answering the prayers of those that are under the altar.
and much more in that vein … Then there’s Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson:
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say: “You helped this happen”
Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
Paul, that Watchmen forum is vintage wingnuttery. These events really get them going, don’t they.
Oh, wonderful. The war is over — long live the war!
Yeah, ain’t war grand. In the meantime the Federal ALP shows what a clusterph*ck it is when it comes to the matter of cluster bombs:
Tell me again that Wikileaks isn’t significant.
Fran @ 60. Fred Phelps is not representative of the right or left in terms of politics. That particular church has their own reason for doing and saying what they do.
A wonderful moment. Both Larvatus Prodeo and Catallaxy agree on something.
bin laden dead = good thing.
This assassination has united Australians too. Not just the Yanks.
@Andrew @52
Really? And just what elevates OBL to such status. If the few thousand that died in 9/11 had been in some third world villages or even in a city named Fallujah, the event would have been all but forgotten by now.
But if you want some far more nasty stuff you could start with the US carpet bombing of Cambodia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu . A scale of terror that OBL could not begin to aspire to.
This hyperbole about OBL has been an integral part of the sham GWOT.
Yes, and can we maintain some balance here as well by, for example, looking at the dead civilian count from the 1989 US invasion of Panama:
But they’re only wogs, hey, not the decent educated middle class US citizens working for the finance sector who were killed in 9/11.
Was he really living in a city called tonyabbottisbad?
Quite fitting if true.
Well the madness has begun. Our PM has boldly stated that we will all remember where we were when the news was announced. I heard one commentator on News Radio describe it as this generation’s “VJ” day. An announcer on the same station characterised OBL as the 911 “mastermind”. Wasn’t the KSM who’s banged up in GITMO? So we just have to wait for the interviews with the crack team members to round out the cycle of spin and propaganda that is the modern media event. Meanwhile none of the under lying causes of the September the 11th attacks have been addressed. The stupid, oh the stupid.
PatrickG, he was not in a cave: he was in a large house in a Pakistani city. His body is in American custody, apparently now inside the USA itself. One of his sons was killed in the raid and another it is reported, in the custody of Pakistani security forces along with his wife (or one of them). Its also important I think to realise that the Americans broke this open the old fashion way – human intelligence rather than simple brute force and good luck – and even more importantly have apparently had some success in penetrating the network. Which now it is revealed, has the effect of at least partially disabling it while whatever remains of it tries to cleanse itself.
Terrorism is mostly, if not all, about psychological warfare, this is a large psychological blow against Al Quaeda.
Even though Bin Laden has not been critical to Al Quaeda operationally for many years, in terms of “cult heroes of the Al Quaeda jihad” Bin Laden is ten million times greater than all the rest. Therefore, killing the figurehead of that inspiration is an important step in defeating their ideology.
The outlying franchises are small and generally ineffective and operate without any central operational direction, just ideological inspiration. Operationally the movement’s basically just angry young men who make the most basic trade-craft mistakes and are usually easily detected (see recent news from Germany, for example). While they are certainly a “threat” in some sense they are not a large existential threat to the West and they never were. They are less of a threat now than ever before. The only place where they are an existential threat to any nation is inside a small handful of countries such as Afghanistan, where specifically it’s the Taliban anyway, a more “conventional” insurgency.
Osama’s main problem for us is that he might well be more powerful – ideologically – in death than in life; but if that turns out to be the case it was always going to be that way anyway.
I think it is an important symbolic victory. It could prove to be the path through the other side – clearing a lot of the debris of the last ten years out of the way – both in the thinking of people in the middle east, and more importantly in the thinking of the people in the west too. If people like Howard are declaring “victory” in the “war on terror” it’s an important psychological break which may enable western political systems the breathing space to propose more constructive sets of policies towards both the problems of Islamic terrorism and the political problems of the region it infests (between India and the Gulf) in general.
AKN I’m not looking for a fight here at all. I doing a lot of work on trauma and so, I just thought you should be aware that Muslims died in 9/11 too. And lower class Hispanics, for instance. All sorts of people, really.
Let’s not binarise to the point of meaninglessness. The fact is that on 9/11 the nation suffered a trauma. By saying “oh look what America did before” or “look what they did after” does not occlude the suffering of many people from many races and many classes on that day. Regardless of America’s imperialist tendencies and atrocities. Really. It’s like you cant have empathy for the people who died? I mean, folks jumped from the towers to avoid flames. It was awful. Terrible for those people. The people who died should be wiped from the list of those for which to have empathy then, because of the atrocities of the American nation both before and after? Just like that?
Now I am hearing on the news Osama has been buried. I await to see if this is true, but, if it is, oh the conspiracy theories that will now arise….
Apparently Bin Laden has been buried at sea.
“Was he really living in a city called tonyabbottisbad?”
Abbottabad originated as an old Indian Army cantonment in the days of the Raj. It’s named after a British Army officer who may or may not be related to Tony Abbott.
It’s effectively an outer suburb of Pakistan’s national capital and it’s inconceivable that he could have been established there without the knowledge of people at the highest level of the Pakistani Security establishment. Incredible.
Steve 1 @23 Can you send it to me. I lost my fridge magnet when I moved a couple of years ago and have been living in fear since.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/02/501364/main20058795.shtml
Anyone else disgusted by the celebrations at the loss of life of a human being? I know he was a monster but celebrating someone’s death like this really just reduces all those Americans to the same level as the fundamentalists who celebrated 9/11.
It’s like their team won the Super Bowl or something. Revolting.
@50,
I think you’ll find it’s Robert Fisk and me @9. I always enjoy getting the jump on ol’ Bob.
@52
“that’s worth celebrating”
No that’s idiotic.
Listen up you pikers, especially you Jess.
It’s just been a great last few days. We’ve Kate and Wills and Gaddafi’s three year old son got killed andOsama’s been killed.
I mean, fuck, what more do yez want?
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!
Oh, sorry Sam. I’d better tattoo a Eureka cross on my forehead to teach myself the meaning of Australian pride.
Yes, apparently extrajudicial killings on foreign soil are to be openly celebrated. “I welcome this death” intoned Gillard. What ever happened to bringing him to justice? Perhaps they wanted to avoid a repetition of the ignoble farce of Saddam’s execution.
“I think it is an important symbolic victory. It could prove to be the path through the other side – clearing a lot of the debris of the last ten years out of the way”
Yes and no doubt it will bring “peace with honour”, oh and you walk across my swimming pool?
Someone ended up live tweeting bin Laden’s death from Abbottabad. By accident.
@71
“Now I am hearing on the news Osama has been buried”
No, no, first his body must be displayed in public. What you say about the effect on US citizens post September 2011 is touching however I’m not sure I can have such a sanguine view given the current bout of whooping it up on the street of the USA. It’s a celebration of revenge not a quiet reflection on the deaths of 3000 people or the matters that are still outstanding which contributed in some way to those deaths. 3000lb bombs aren’t sentimental so I’m inclined to temper my warm inner glow with a little reality.
This is a really bad mission failure.
Osama Bin Laden was never brought to justice.
Meanwhile in Libya the regime gets targeted for extra-judicial killings.
Yes Jess, I am disgusted at celebrations of the loss of life of a human being. Alexander Downer was nearly giggling with self confessed excitement over the news while gushing that “I know it’s not right to be excited about someone’s death but…”.
Don’t hate the man, hate what he did.
Jumpnmcar said:
While I’m glad OBL is no longer at large, I don’t see his death as “a good thing”. Certainly if dead or at large are the only options,then his death would be preferable but I’d prefer that he’d been captured and taken to a neutral and secure venue for trial. He was not just a criminal but someone with knowledge of a substantial criminal network.
Most importantly, a trial would have given some of his victims — prominently Muslims — a chance to confront him before the world and deprive him of at least some of his standing. His death will ensure that useful information about his confederates will remain hidden and he will acquire a martyr status that he ill-deserves.
It’s not clear yet whether his death was unavoidable — a mere matter of exigency — but it never occurred to me that if he was truly at large and US forces came across him that they would let him live. His information on the period of the US-led resistance to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the origins of Al Qaeda and the role of the ISI would have been most interesting.
Who gives a rat’s, seriously, it’s chewing gum for the masses. Except I wager the masses bless their cynical hearts either don’t believe the US spin or give a damn. It’s geared for the msm and the bloodthirsty loons.
And since when did governments cheer the killing of the children and family of political opponents? This too is a US innovation, cheered by our disgraceful and stupid PM.
Utter disgrace.
David Killcullen sagely warns from Washington that this doesn’t mean that the “war” is “over”, gee I love being talked to like I’m a moron. Meanwhile in other news OBL was been, perhaps prematurely, dubbed one of the most influential figures of the 21st century.
Jess, I am so glad to read that at least one other person on this planet is not jumping with joy at his extra-judicial killing and is sickened by the mob mentality jubilation. Bin Laden has won. He has martyrdom and will no doubt become the Elvis of a generation of young, dysfunctional and disaffected Islamic fundamentalists. I would like to have seen him arrested, tried by the rule of law and if found guilty, given a humane sentence amd incarceration. The celebration of a shot in the head( even IF it was unavoidable in the capture) is NOT what a civilised people call justice.
They’re exhuming Howard on every news bulletin. Rambling about ‘unspeakable evil’ and the importance of the war (funny, bin Laden was found nowhere near Iraq or in Afghanistan…)
What chutzpah. Does not a single journo remember Howard claiming al Qaeda was praying for Obama to win in 2008??
angela, jess, su, I also think extra-judicial killings are bad no matter who they are targeted at, and the celebrations sick.
89 – he must be – he won the Nobel Peace Prize after 11 days in office.
Chav @ 33
You mean where is the ‘long form’ of the death certificate?
Of course, this underlines Obama’s testiness over the nonsense from Trump and the ‘birthers’.
On the one hand, a US President needing to consider an operation of national import (and one that would have had severe consequences had it gone awry), and on the other hand, the distraction of DT, his hair and the ‘birthers’ and the media frenzy over it.
“It’s a celebration of revenge not a quiet reflection on the deaths of 3000 people or the matters that are still outstanding which contributed in some way to those deaths. 3000lb bombs aren’t sentimental so I’m inclined to temper my warm inner glow with a little reality.”
Oh FFS. I was talking about the people that died right? In response to a comment made by AKN that the people who died were middle class financial district Americans. I made no comment about the “whooping it up”.
Oh, the ‘long form’ quote I should have attributed to a post at Catallaxy. It’s not mine.
The PM will be praising her Atheist stars that this happened – should knock the Newspoll of the front pages.
offfffffff
Casey,
Sometimes people read comments from others on this site, and add their own meaning, then criticise accordingly. Personally, I thought what you wrote was quite relevant.
having said that I disapprove of extra-judicial killings… is that what actually happened here? Seems like he may have died in a firefight. Say what you like about the al Qaida crazies, they’re certainly brave, and if OBL has any admirable traits, being willing to go down fighting may have been it.
@71″and lower class hispanics”? What does that mean pray tell. So please tell me why class is so important in your argument as I note that in your comment at 95 you defend your use of class as err what? That you are some sort of snobby bigot perhaps?
And I am finding the gloating of the likes of howard and downer and for that matter the pm somewhat repugnant.
Razor @93: I was unaware that Bin Laden had won the Nobel Peace Prize. For extra points, what office had he been in for 11 days?
One foreign state has struck a balanced tone: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/binladen-vatican-idUSLDE7410IP20110502
Thank God for the Catholics!
OK Robbo, lento then, the point is, contrary to what AKN said, that many classes and many races and many religions and many nations lost people on that day. It was not all white, all middle class. Is that clear?
You may like to watch the documentary The Falling Man.
Tyro @ 70 – great take.
My thoughts go out to the Pakistani military integrity commission guys (and gals?) who will have to look closely who was withholding information from whom re OBL over the last few years.
Do they have flys on the wall in Islamabad?
also if the stories of AQ’s activities are to be believed (and in this case I’m suspicious, but still…) they have killed very large numbers of people of many religious persuasions, class backgrounds and both genders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They probably also were helping the craziest bits of the Taliban to cling onto their ideology, preventing a slightly more moderate and acceptable (to Afghans) movement from offering the country stability.
If even a quarter of the tales about AQ are to be believed, they have been far worse for the muslim world than they have been for the west.
One of the most evil men who has ever lived has just been eliminated
Oh please, he’s not even in the Junior High of evil, ffs. Dude killed 3000 people at third hand, how can you compare that to people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Noriega, Amin etc etc etc?
Ridiculous. Trivialises the victims of both sets.
@38, @68
The icing on the cake will be when we learn that the special forces were stationed at either the village of
Ternb’ullagud
or the hamlet of
Gilar’dagud
… the consequences for domestic politics’ll be incalculable…
@93
Those bloody commie, greeny, watermelon eating Nobel prize committee members, fancy giving the head of a terrorist network the peace prize, but … well I they gave it Kissinger so I suppose there is a precedent.
@95
Yeah but you go over the tipping point when you accuse people of lacking empathy because they can’t put the bleeding obvious out of the minds. You see at the moment there’s a massive wave of unmitigated hubris breaking over us all. Despite Obama’s attempts to set the scene for a little bit of quiet dignity we’re awash with the sort of ridiculous hyperbole and outrageous self-congratulation that assumes that we are all morons who can’t remember where we are or how we got here.
Maybe it’s not a lack of empathy that motivates some people to find the whole reaction to OBL’s death implausible, maybe it’s the annoying presence of a critical factuality, something that I don’t doubt is well developed in your own good self. BTW I think the burial at sea within the time constraints of the deceased’s religious requirements just shows how different this administration is from its predecessor.
Listen Patrick. Im responding to the first sentence. I will read the rest in a minute. But to this: I didn’t “accuse”. I asked why you can’t have empathy for a traumatic event that happened to thousands of people who came from all cultures, classes and races and also for the victims of the imperialism of the U.S. I asked why you can’t have both.
That is, I asked, for a collapse of binaries. All good. All bad. Fuck that. If you want to think like a child, go for it. It is possible that the U.S. is both a perpetrator of atrocities in the world and at that moment on 9/11 was also a victim of an atrocity. It is one fucken uncontroversial statement.
An important question, and one which I imagine will be examined at length over the next days, months, and years. But one that may not have a straightforward answer.
Can I second (third?) Tyro’s great summary @70? Very insightful indeed.
@111
Perhaps the second par answers you questions. I have seen “The Falling Man” and I’ve read a bit about the September the 11th timeline. I can empathise baby, don’t you worry about that.
Patrick what is the meaning of calling me “baby”? Please explain to me in detail, providing me with empirical evidence – YES – empirical evidence – which backs up your description of me as “baby”, as to why it is accurate for you to call me baby. Many thanks. Casey the fucken pissed of witch.
For those who don’t know about it:
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN
skepticlawyer at 113
Thats a beautiful dog in your avatar.
Sorry about the off topic comment, but the thought just struck me as I saw the pikky.
The will be two beneficiaries from this. One is GW Bush, it allows the right to breath life into his “dead or alive” directive and wash away the myriad sins committed by that truly atrocious administration. The second is Obama although he may find it harder to capitalise on a victory in what is a dead rubber and of course he is always vulnerable to the script writers at Fox News and News Ltd. Still he may be able to use it as a unifying moment despite it’s inherent uselessness.
As to your second paragraph, yet again, I repeat slowly, I never spoke of the “reaction” to Osama’s death. That is, I never spoke of the jubiliation at his death coming out of america. This is something you have added yourself because you are suffering from accusatory delusions of some kind. I spoke of the trauma of the deaths on the day of 9/11. and of the possibility of some empathy for what occurred on that day.
Alright?
You misread me.
Okay?
@115,
Oh you know, it’s a bit of … oh what’s his name … Austin Powers-eqsue humour. “The Falling Man” is one of the most compelling documentaries on the September the 11th attacks, the sensation of terror it invokes of very powerful.
@118
“It’s like you cant have empathy for the people who died?”
Is it, is that what it’s like, having no empathy, for people who died?? Have I stopped beating my wife yet? The take home message is: try not to be condescending. The death of OBL may well help some people with their grief over what happened on September the 11th and I don’t dispute that. I just don’t like having to take out my critical brain and put in my empathic one. One brain, two faculties is better.
Shutup Patrick. For fucks sake.
Wow PatrickB, way to kill a thread. Also, all those angry comments directed to “Patrick” are freaking the shit out of me.
No, no thread killing from me, carry on. Casey, I really don’t get it with you, your … lack of a capacity for .. what, listening?
The jubilation at OBL’s death is sickening. The taking of human life is the most profound undertaking imaginable.
Yeah, he deserved it, but can they please leave off the blood lust ?
As for the relatives of those OBL killed, they have their justice and can legitimately claim comfort in the event, though I am sure some at least do not delight in the fact.
‘The most evil person since …’ would have more salience if not for the nauseating hypocrisy of being uttered by those who ordered an unjustified war against Iraq, whipping it up in the first instance by fraudulently claiming OBL ordered 9/11.
And I would add that apart from my repartee with Casey I’be been scrupulously on topic. Anyway because this is a dead end vis a vis the GWOT I expect the the MSM will have exhausted themselves with 48 hours.
Patrickb : “Yes and no doubt it will bring “peace with honour”, oh and you walk across my swimming pool?”
Do you always take such an effort of charm people with both your wit and insight?
Has anyone got anything use to say?
Well, patrick, I gave my reasoned contribution at #70, if you would like to say something that’s worth engaging with, I might have something “use to say” about it.
TRex
Do you think the frequency of terrorist activity will change,one way or the other, since OBL is dead?
Thanks, Hannah’s Dad @116. The dog in question is a Siberian Husky; he (would you believe) was a stray who my partner and I had for a couple of years, until we eventually found him a home with a family of genuine husky enthusiasts who could give him the attention and exercise he needed. I haven’t given him up in my gravatar, though — he was simply the best looking dog I have ever seen.
Apologies for the OT; as you were.
Does anyone spare a thought for the hundreds of innocent civilians the Americans have killed trying to get Bin Laden?
Just the drones alone would kill scores every month out on the Afgan/Pakinstan border – where Osama wasn’t. Apparently.
Osama didn’t do anything that most US President haven’t done since I’ve been around: killing civilians. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq … etc.
@102 – yep – just reread 89 – oops, my bad.
That sorted – perhaps OBL is. Another 88 years to find out.
All those who are calling this an extra-judicial killing – nup. Purely an act of war. No different to trying to kill any other enemy.
I suppose the million dollar question here is “did Pakistan know”? Given the location (close to Islamabad) and in a Mansion (a bit hard to miss), that in itself leads to a bunch of other issues like … how are the Afghani’s going to feel knowing that Pakistan allowed them to wear the heat when he was always in Pakistan?
Not exactly the ideal circumstance to continue a “cosy” relationship. I know I’d be pissed …
jumpnmycar that’s not really a question I (or anybody else) can answer. terrorist attacks in the developed west are at a pretty low rate already. terrorist attacks in kandahar are not. I don’t think kandahar will get any better – not through this. lord knows what’s gonna happen in pakistan now.
razor, i expect you of all people have already have noted the event is described as a “firefight” so it’s a pretty straightforward operation – the team shot the guys who were shooting at them. whether, of course, they ever intended to do anything other than shoot the guys anyway, i don’t know and no one here does; or probably ever will. i imagine that they made a plan to apprehend him (parading him around confused and half-naked for the cameras; the psychological shock value in that would be very great) but i also expect they knew (or perhaps hoped) he’d go down all guns blazing, and it seemed he obliged them.
Is it a good time to ask Julie Bishop if Australia should still go Nuclear?!!?
extra-judicial killing?
listen ing carefully to the somewhat sketchy news reports and reading that tweet.
One helicopter appears to have been shot down while coming into land in the compound or while it was over the compound,
There was an exchange of gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes. I get the impression the Seals/CIA didn’t find Ben Laden right away, had to fight their way to him and when they did there was a final exchange of fire where Ben Laden was shot in the head, shot one of his sons and a women one of these ‘brave’ terrorists used as a human shield.
I’ve probably got it wrong, but I am used to interpreting sketchy accounts of skirmishes etc, so I reckon it must have gone something along those lines. Just sayin’.
I’ll say it again extra-judicial killing, it was not court ordered.
The US has set a precedent here anyone can be killed by anyone.
harleymc,
Disagree. Its a war. At least, I’m sure that’s how the Americans see it. What happened to BL is what happens toi people in wars.
Last time I looked the US was allied to Pakistan not at war. So a military operation on an allies territory should be considered irregular should it not? If they are capable of organising a major military operaion with extreme force in a civilian neighbourhood why couldnt they manage to arrest him and bring him to trial? I oppose trial by bullet.
Maggie – it is called asymetric warfare. Look it up.
Maggie,
The Americans are at war with Al-Quaeda (and by an utterly illogical extension now, I think, with the Taliban). The Pakistanis could not be trusted not to tip BL off. This is not a war against nation states, but against (for easy labelling, but I think its more complicated) terrorists operating within nation states. As I understand the strategy and philosophy of this war, its not like many or any other kind of war as we easily recognise it. So the language usaed to discuss it is not exactly the languarge one would use to describe conventional war. To my mind, not even guerilla war covers it.
And re allies. Just because some-one is your ally in a war doesn’t mean you get on with them necessarily. The US and Pakistan currently have a very shaky relationship.
Razor @141: I looked it up and I don’t think “asymmetric warfare” is the answer to Maggie’s question.
PB @142:
Might I suggest that in that case it’s not actually a war? (In the way that the “War on Drugs” is not actually a war)
zoot,
Not quite. Its still a war. It still uses conventional tactics and high tech inteligence. Its methods of interrogation of enemy combatants are (still I think, under Obama) somewhat harsher and probably beyond the rules laid down by the Geneva Convention. eg, what happened at Abbottabad was realy just a conventional raid. There are quyite a few examples of the same in WW2, in Special Ops.
Its just notr a war against a nation state, but withgin nation states, with (ultimately, though this wasn’t the case when it started after 9/11)the permission of the nation state wherein the war is taking place.
One way to describe it is by analogy with British Special Ops in Nazi-Occupied Europe. Back then, they were but a small part of WW2. In this war they’re a major part,and are world wide, alongside, say, the conventional tactics and strategies used by US and Coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Paul, I defer to your expertise, but I’m still not convinced.
Here is the google map of the mansion he was killed in – it’s about 3-5cm to the right of the Margis Arif Hospital, the white building with a concrete wall, and a decent amount of land around it.
It’s about 800m from Burnhall College, which is a primary and secondary school run the by the Pakistan Military Academy.
The fact it was near a military school isn’t exactly leaping out at me as being exceptionally suspicious.
Why was he not noticed? He never left the house, they weren’t looking for him, people implicitly trust wealth and rich looking houses, Pakistan has no satellite surveillance…who knows?
It’s also very close to a hospital – which makes more sense you’d think (given his well-known medical history) than imagining he was hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden
Wiki has a pretty detailed rundown of much of what’s known to date.
I’m with Robert Merkel in thinking that this has importance for the re-election of Obama and pretty much agree with Tyro Rex @ 70.
Beyond that I think the implications for Pakistan and the US relations with Pakistan are important. On PM this evening there were 7 items on the whole story including two on Pakistan. It seems that Pakistan helped the Americans find OBL but there is a question as to how much they knew and when they knew it about taking him out. There is some suggestion that the Pakistan military was involved and are miffed that they haven’t been given credit.
I heard one American expert today who says Pakistani fore-knowledge would have been essential to avoid the possibility of a fire-fight with the Pakistani military or police.
In this story Jane Cowan gives an account of the actual operation. It took 40 minutes in all. Four were killed apart from OBL. Two were thought to be couriers, one a son of OBL and one a woman being used as a shield by one of the ‘brave’ men.
Burying OBL at sea is said to be a strategy to deprive devotees of a shrine.
Just on Bill Clinton, there was also the bombing of the embassies in East Africa with 200 killed. He gave the order to take OBL out and latched onto a location where OBL was said to be phoning his mum. But by the time they got organised OBL had moved and they blew up a camel or two. Since then OBL hasn’t used phones.
In briefing the incoming Bush administration Clinton emphasised the importance of going after al-Qaeda, Bush had only been overseas three times in his life, didn’t know the name of the Canadian PM and wasn’t much interested in foreign affairs, so they ignored Clinton.
Nick @ 147, thanks for the Wikipedia link.
Make of that what you will.
NATO official: Bin Laden, deputy hiding in northwest Pakistan
Turns out this guy was pretty much spot on back in October…
Later in the same article…
We can say colloquially that we are ‘at war’ with Al Qaeda but my understanding of international law is that war is only possible against a sovereign state. Paul’s reference to the Nazis is irrelevant, they were agents of a nation state at war with the allies. Terrorist acts by individuals and non-sovereign organisations are crimes. By blurring this distinction we lose those legal protections and principles that make the difference between tyranny and a rule of law democracy. We have become Bin Laden to defeat him, therefore he (and his ilk)wins.
Thank you Jess and Angela for posting your comments regarding the opposition of celebration of Osama’s death. I found this website when I typed in “celebration of Osama’s death disgraceful” to the search engine.
I am an American and I learned of the news about 16 hrs ago. I was sick to my stomach to see people celebrating in the streets. It is not joy that we should celebrate, victory, what victory? Thousands lost their lives globally to this man and the group that followed his beliefs.
Our societies have not changed much in hundreds of years of waging wars, oppression and turning their heads away from atrocities. Yes we are globally technologically advanced by sophisticated equipment, yet with the speed of communication we still have to fight hand to hand putting innocents and other courageous peoples in danger.
In all of time we have not become more wise and compassionate, men in power are still having pissing contests and using people to make their plays, while they sit behind desks and go home to the comfort of their houses and families. To me none of this seems any different than how it was all done hundreds of years ago.
I am sorry but I don’t feel like celebrating!!! We should be thinking of all those who have lost their lives to the horrors of it all.
What Angela said. The generally accepted definition of war is an act of aggression between states or nations. When we go around killing people in the name of a nebulous war against terror we are in danger of becoming little better than those we seek to destroy.
This morning on the radio Lisa Miller told us that the one using a woman as a shield was bin Laden himself. If he was shooting from behind one of his wives that’s pretty cowardly and despicable. There’s no indication yet whether the aim was to capture or kill. Probably the former, otherwise why go in there man to man.
The problem with taking these figures out for example with strikes from drones is that there always seem to be collateral killing of people who don’t deserve to die, in spite of the company they keep. The Israelis do this all the time in the Gaza strip by shelling people in their homes.
A few years ago the Americans took out a terrorist leader in Yemen. Problem is he was in a car with 5 others.
Paul, you seem to have accepted the Bush conception of the ‘war on terror’. As Angela and Adrian have said, war, or at least international armed conflict can only be between or among nation states. This is very clear in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to which all States of the world are a party. International law also recognises non-international armed conflict in certain circumstances. The Bush administration never claimed their self-proclaimed war on terror was a non-international conflict. Rather, they invented an entirely new creature previously unknown to the international law that the US claims to support, namely an international conflict against an intangible thing, rather than a nation state. This conflict, conveniently enough for its proponents, is said to be unlimited in terms of its duration and its geographical reach. In other words: ‘we’ll tell you when it starts, when it ends, what we can do, where and when we can do it, who the targets can be; in fact, we’ll make all the rules up as we go along’.
The killing yesterday can in no sense be justified as an act of war.
I think the idea of war being exclusively with a sovereign state is intensely problematic when you have infra- and inter- national organisations in many states just as well (or better) organised as states themselves. Isn’t it just based on 19th century concepts of statehood?
Is Mexico at war with its various drug cartels? It seems to me that they are – the cartels have better armament than the police for a start. They have a parallel organisation too – a state within a state. What about the Somalian pirates? What if the Indians or the Chinese or the French were to go into one of these Somalian ports and shoot it up and sink all the boats and equipment in an attempt to clean out the pirates (the sort of thing that the Romans did to clear the Med. and the British did in the West Indies)? I mean it’s not very nice, surely, but is it war, or not?
I have no issue with the US carrying out this operation as long as the goal is to capture the target (surely the reason they’d risk their people like this). The fact that the target violently resisted capture is also good enough reason for me that deadly force was employed.
One of the regrettable side effects has been the resurrection of Howard by the media. I do hope it all blows over very quickly.
Just as a skeptical voice: at what point does a woman defending an elderly man who is perhaps to ill too fight for himself become a man “hiding behind a woman”? By being so eager to paint Bin Laden as a coward you may well be denigrating the courage of one of the people who could have been deliberately, bravely and fiercely fighting to protect him.
Just because you don’t like what they stand for doesn’t make these people cowards.
Snorky@158
When it isn’t Howard being quoted it’s his redhead love child.
So who’s next on the most wanted list, Blair, Bush, Bush, Howard or Obama?
Tyro, it may be thought of as a 19th century concept, but it is the concept that is currently recognised under international law. It’s not open to individuals to unilaterally assert that the rules have changed, which is just what the US did immediately post 9/11. When the US claims exceptionalism in this way, it forfeits its right to hold others to account for breaking the rules themselves.
@ tigtog. I suspect it has much less to do with bin Laden’s bravery or lack thereof, and more to do with the US wishing to paint him as a coward. It’s really interesting seeing how they are spinning this with selective information releases (maybe this comment should be on Spotlight the Spin?).
@Jess, the spinning is quite fascinating, isn’t it? I don’t think hardly anything else is going to be talked of for days, so that’s going to allow a whole bunch of other things to slip past the media cycle, too.
All aided and abetted by an largely uncritical and fawning media.
tigtog @159, as a man born in 1959 I have a bit of a problem with the notion that a man born in 1957 is elderly!
My wife was pretty disgusted by the celebrating in the streets and she’s pretty conservative. Still we aren’t in the USA, I think that those on us on the left who have been so quick to judge should be less judgemental of other cultures.
I think a lot of people on the left and the right have failed to see what a cancer his organisation was. Everything that we on the left hated about Bush, Howard and Blair can be laid at Osama’s feet. He lit the wick. We took the bait.
an elderly man
OBL was born in 1957, which would make him the same age as that youthful Spart, Fran Barlow. He was middle aged.
Anyhoo, I am in Melbourne this morning, and I walk past Herald Sun and Age posters, side by side. You can guess what the subject matter is, screaming at the passer by, in identical font, identical size.
Herald Sun: Bin Laden How We Got Him
The Age: Bin Laden How They Got Him
It is just not possible to more simply, and more powerfully, illustrate political-cultural differences in mindset in this country.
Oops – help mods please
Whether OBL’s killing was part of a ‘real’ war or not (by a 19th century definition) is a side issue.
Is the implication here that this sort of action would be perfectly fine as part of a properly declared war? Say, if it had happened in Afghanistan or Iraq?
To me this gets it completely arse-backwards.
If the US had concentrated their efforts on this kind of action instead of going to war, we’d have had this – a handful of guilty people dead – many years ago. And we’d have avoided the killing of a hundred thousand people in no way connected to terrorism against the West.
Of course, it was inevitable that someone would claim that the operation at Abbottabad which took out Bin Laden was a hoax.
I hope some pointed questions are asked of the Pakistani government, They – maybe not the hapless politicians, but certainly the people who actually run the country – must have known where he was.
It just goes to show that you can’t trust people who will fix cricket matches.
Sigh Sam. While the both headlines are grammatically correct I’m betting this will play well in the conservative sphere.
Oops, apologies on the ‘elderly’ error. For the last decade I’ve been thinking of him as at least 15 years older than he really
iswas, apparently.I just googled osama bin laden dead hoax and got 1,530,000 hits…
FDB, I see your point. At times it seemd that the whole operation was a really bad pantomine where we all shouted “he’s behind you” while the US charged into Iraq. But it’s easy for us to be armchair politicians.
And Sam, yeah, Pakistan must be squirming/quaking. The fact it hasn’t come out and condemned the US for conducting an unauthorised military operation in their country speaks volumes.
If I was in Pakistan I’d be very very worried.
OBL did look older than he was. He should have shaved off his beard, like Quiggin did. It would have taken years off him. The septics would never have recognised him, either.
it’ll be interesting to see what role, if any the paki’s really played in this. they’ll probably be happy to take some credit, (it’ll make up for that embarassing cricket match fixing).
and if they were unaware, the commando’s probably had aussie passports in case they got busted.
Casey @71: the citizens of the US have been the beneficiaries of US bloody ruling class foreign policies for a long time. My only suprise about 9/11 was that it took so long for it to happen. As to the matter of trauma, while in NY in ’05 I met a man in Central Park who approached me to talk because he saw me sitting reading a guide map…obviously a visitor. He had been the floor manager of one of the tower buildings. Nice chap, absolutely deranged by his experience. A terrible business but, in my view, he was neither more nor less deserving of decent treatment than anyone else injured, maimed, psychologically scarred or otherwise traumatised by one of the countless US imperial adventures.
The apparent bloodlust would probably have OBL feeling satisfied that his mission was essentially accomplished. While it’s good not to have OBL around any more it seems many of us share a little too much of his medievalist world view and eye for an eye justice (admittedly the US have always had a strong element of this).
It’s good to see people expressing their disquiet – I thought Alana Johnson was decent and brave on Q&A last night.
Snorky,
No. I’m not buting the Bush doctrine. Simply trying to describe the nature of the war. The quyestion of wars being declared by nation states etc is problematic, The Seven Years’ War in the eighteenth century raged for about a year or so undeclared and it was between Virginia and New France. And that’s just one example.
I could equally describe the war from the Al-Queda sidem but that appears to be a lot more factionally cpm[;ocated so I won’t try. The origins of wars are a very complicated business and generally go back a fair way before the actual act of declaration/ For instance, this current conflict could be said to have as a causus belli the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabbia during the first Gulf War. Before that Ben Ladin was a CIA backed ally of the Us, a fact all but one of the news reports I’ve seen have conveniently glossed over.
“A terrible business but, in my view, he was neither more nor less deserving of decent treatment than anyone else injured, maimed, psychologically scarred or otherwise traumatised by one of the countless US imperial adventures.”
Yes, indeed. That was kind of my unremarkable minor point AKN. Thanks for that.
Some more general thoughts on the nature of war. Whether its a war between nation-state, a civil war, a guerrilla war, a localised conflict (eg Israel v. Palestine) or whatever kind of war you want to describe the current conflict as.
Both sides are going to behave badly. each side is going to claim the other side is behaving worse than they are. Civilians will either be killed or turned into refugees. Each side 3ill always conduct some kind of propaganda offensive selling the war to their own people.Yhere is always likely to be some kind of anti-war movement on the home front, either immediately, (usualy on ethical or pragmatic grounds) or when war weariness sets in. If you oppose the war, eventually you’ll get stamped on by somebody from your own side.
Sam Said:
Not exactly. OBL was apparently born March 10, 1957. I was born June 7 1958.
As a man born in 1950, I agree with Paul Norton @ 166.
(Limps off, waving walking stick and muttering about whippersnappers and lawns … )
as a man bin in 1945, all I can say is he was just a rich kid. A very troublesome, uncontrollable rich kid but still a kid.
So apparently information extracted from Guantanamo bay prisoners was used to help locate him – but I can’t help wonder if this was done with or without the use of the torture that Obama (thankfully) banned once he took office.
wizofaus,
Perhaps without the use of torture, though one can never be sure. Apart from the moral objections, one of the reasons for avoiding torture in interrogation, is the person being tortured will tell you anything, including information that is absolutely completely wrong. Perhaps one of the reasons it took so long to catch him is that during the eight years of the Bush admin. Guantanomo detainees were sending the CIA off on wild goose chases all around the world. If the Oboma Presidency was using more subtle means to obtain info from prisoners, one wonders how qickly Ben Laden might have been caught if Bush and Chaney had not been acting like mindless barbarians all the time they were in office.
We’re being drip fed a bit on this, but the latest I heard was that OBL was ‘buried’ at sea from the USN ship ‘Vincennes’. Can you be buried at sea? Cast perhaps, maybe rendered, sunk? And wasn’t the Vincennes the ship that couldn’t distinguish an Iranian commercial jetliner from a jetfighter, ‘rendering’ 200 odd souls to the Gulf waters a couple of decades ago? Lockerbie followed.
Somehow being rendered to the deep in this case has my vote.
Yes, TT, enough of the “elderly”. (Born in 1957, as were Nick Cave and Dawn French, so there!
)
If we could leave the US ruling class and the insane fundies of Islam (Al Q and their ilk) to fight it out on another planet I couldn’t care less what their fate. However, they share this planet and Pakistan has loads of nukes none of which, I would hazard, is kept under adequate control given the position of A-Q in Pakistan. So, my bet is on the Yanks turning the place into an ashtray sooner rather than later. It’ll be a shame but hell, anyone can make soccer balls using child labour and the Greeks make better goat’s cheese anyway.
Listen, they would have said he was using a woman as cover whether he did or not.
The relevant recrutiment target ethno-religious cultures are idiotically, embarassingly, demented and backward masculinist subcultures – so that was always the angle to sell.
Im surprised they didnt chuck that he was eating a ham sandwhich and quaffing a VB when the Seals dropped in.
pablo 189 “Can you be buried at sea?”
Most certainly you can be buried at sea.
A fine, solemn and historic tradition it is, whether in sailcloth shroud as per RN custom, or otherwise.
lefty said:
As a respecter of the wellbeing of animals, I’m also troubled at their willingness to involve normally docile marine creatures in violent (and potentially hazardous) activity. While making them balance balls on their noses is demeaning and doubtless stressful, putting them on helicopters and forcing them to operate machine guns seems far worse.
I don’t think seals are all that docile, Fran, but I’m fucked if I know how they could get their flippers into the trigger guard on a weapon.
Elsewhere: Greg Barns (on the Drum)
Interesting week for Obama. I’m thinking of his speech for the Correspondents Dinner juxtaposed against him having to go in and out of the Situation Room. A room he made mention in the speech.
In the news also this week (or was it last)– Tuscaloosa. The only mention I’ve ever heard made of in the Townes’ song, Waiting Around to Die. You’ll remember Tuscaloosa was largely and spectacularly tornadoed last week. All of which added up to a very interesting week for the President. Character building, one could say.
Truly amazing photograph of them all in said ‘Situation Room’, Hilary with hand over mouth. Helmet-cam huh? I reckon it should be compulsory viewing for all politicians who connive to send people into war . . .
Link
Hmmm, I think he hardly cheery nor particularly hopeful actually.
Abbott a bad.
hehe.
Waiting around to die
Greg Barns (former Liberal Party advisor!) sums it up pretty well.
This killing is a stupid and counter-productive illegal act which will only result in increased violence.
LA Times:
Jess, that may be so, but it is not clear whether this was indeed an extrajudicial killing.
It was claimed that bin Laden died during a firefight. Whether that is true or not is another question, but that is the claim.
Cheering in the streets (while distasteful) should not surprise.
We are alike, separated only by distance, economic circumstance and invisible friends.
“Jess, that may be so, but it is not clear whether this was indeed an extrajudicial killing. ”
My thoughts exactly, more like a “killed resisting arrest”… or “jumped out a window during arrest, while handcuffed and unconscious”
Robert, I suggest you have missed the point of the article linked by Jess. The only way that the killing could be legally justified is if it could be regarded occurring during the course of a war. I take it from your reference to the firefight that, if you accept that this is true, it would legitimise the idea that the whole event – the operation, the firefight and the killing – occurred during the course of a war. Barns’ article argues (correctly in my view) that the killing cannot be legally justified. He also asserts that a preferable course of action would have been to capture him and bring him to trial. He could have added, as the Israelis did with Eichmann in 1961.
Robert: how hard do you think they would have tried to capture him? Did the SEALs give him a chance to surrender, or did they go in with guns blazing? It’s pure speculation I know, but I imagine that there wasn’t too high a premium on bringing him back alive. Of course we’ll never know what really happened.
Greg’s other point in his op-ed which I agree with strongly is that arguments like ‘he doesn’t deserve a trial to spew his propaganda’ are rubbish. And I’ve certainly heard that from quite a few people today.
Ah yes, the conspiracy theories are floating all around. I have a friend who I think of as a member of the demented left (everything the US is dreadful, everything is a giant US plot) who is certain bin Laden was killed years ago. She has no particular logic to her position, just certainty.
One theory I do like is that the reason why the Royal Newlyweds have delayed their honeymoon was that the y were warned something was afoot. Maybe not told what it was; just advised to stay home for a while.
Yeds Jess @ above: the ALP has its nose so far up the Yanks ass on this one that the only visible daylight is coming in through the military nostrils.
Cops often kill people who resist arrest. (“You’ll never take me alive”.) That doesn’t make their actions extra-judicial, well, not necessarily anyway.
I rather think the septics would quite like to have put OBL on trial, followed by an execution.
@200 – totally disagree with Greg Barnes. The Geneva Conventions only apply to war between state actors. Al Queda doesn’t get that protection. I reckon the Taliban shouldn’t either because they don’t wear a recognised uniform (a genral requirement for the Geneva Conventions to apply).
And, if you think that the Geneva Conventions should apply then Al Queda specifically disquaifies itself from protection because they commit espionage operations, are therefore spies. The Conventions specifically rule out protection of espionage activites, including spieing – therefore the US can do as they wish with Al Queda operatives – including shooting them in the head after 30 minute firefight up three levels of a building.
Maybe Will and Kate were intending to honeymoon at Abbotabad? Anyway, explains why Obama didn’t go to the wedding.
A nice extensive trial – would have the benefit of dealing with the conspiracy theorists, upholding the rule of law and hopefully clarifying the extent of Bin Laden’s involvement in a range of criminal matters. Would have been very educational for everyone concerned.
The irony is that he has been killed just at the point at which it had become clear that his project of removing corrupt Arab leaders was beginning to be at least partially achieved not by bombs from his associates but by non-military pressure from the Arab masses.
And to all thos numpties saying he should have been taken alive – please explain exactly how you would convince a very angry, highly motivated, jihadi with an AK47 who has been waiting ten years for a show down to top being silly, put down the gat and we’ed like you to come with us because we have a few question to be answered – sorry about the garden – we’ll send a truck in the morning to pick up the remains of the Spec Ops Blackhawk we just burnt in your lovely garden.
This:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/02/e79bd974c9ce6073a00aaf0a44d6dada88627102.jpg
and this:
http://tinyurl.com/6dvyu9w
Robertson suck my @#$% – where does he get off calling diplomats Amoral – which ones???? And who’s law requires a post-mortem in a combat death??
I prefer this.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/02/87c97e5231065dced26f356a588e896f4ba135f6.jpg
Yes, “rejoicing at the death of your enemy” a bitter way station on the cycle of violence. I find it strange that people think this is a resolution of anything, for anyone.
Knock knock
Hi – Mrs Bin Laden? I’m Specialist Randy Summers of United States Special Operations Command. I was wondering if you’d seen a man who looks like this photograph?
No?
Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice day.
No dice, guys – turn and burn – should be home in time to watch the Correspondents’ dinner on C-Span. Who’s on Bar roster?
Jess and Snorky, Obama’s statement claimed that the intention of the operation was to seize bin Laden if possible:
It is an open question – and one that may never be answered satisfactorily – whether there was any serious intention of capturing bin Laden.
Some people definitely do feel this provides closure though. And as others have mentioned it could be a good opportunity for the US knowing that things aren’t going to get much better to declare victory in Afghanistan and go home.
Razor asked:
This sounds like a strawman. I freely admit that for all I know, there was no plausible alternative in practice to a firefight in which he was killed.
One can speculate though that if it is possible to surround an thus isolate a compound, then it must surely be possible to attack the water supply with some narcotic agent — causing drowsiness in those dependent on the water. Perhaps one might have attacked the compound with tear gas, putting the defenders at a serious disadvantage. If one were really keen to take them alive, this must surely have been possible. Even if it hadn’t worked, the areas was cordoned off, and Plan A would still have been an option.
One suspects that the US had every reason to deny him an opportunity to say where the bodies were metaphorically as well as literally buried. That would have been embarrassing and not nearly as existentially satisfying for the hometown jingoes.
It’s doubtful that the US will furnish the information required to evaluate the matter with confidence. Perhaps they had no good alternative, but one strongly suspects that whether they did or not was moot.
At the risk of sounding a little bit like Graeme Bird…
In a 2007 interview, Benazir Bhutto said that OBL was already dead. If true, the man killed in Abbotabad was not OBL, and explains why the US disposed of his body at sea so soon after his execution. At the very least the disposal of a dead body constitutes destruction of evidence. It’s on a par with the destruction of the steel from the Twin Towers, which constituted destruction of evidence from a crime scene.
On the timing of the raid, it had to wait until after the White House roast which focussed on the birth certificate issue. Obama’s release of the long form birth certificate was part of this strategy of keeping the focus on the birthers for the White House roast.
Whether or not the man killed was OBL, it still appears to be part of a grand political strategy for 2012.
Ahhhh, Fran – surrounding the compound would require quite a few troops.
Would you trust the Pakis to do it for you?
How long do you think they should have stood around waiting for him to comeout with his hands up?
@221 – and if the late Benazir Bhutto said it then it must be true.
Mark Steyn been saying it since Tora Bora got the MOAB treatment – despit ethe voice authenticated tapes released over the years. Was he right?
Someone should ask JWH if he still thinks AQ are happy to have Obama in the White House.
Robert Fisk raises the possibility that Obama may have been played.
If there was even the smallest chance the OBL had been killed on George Bush’s watch we’d all know about it.
@167
…and you mixed metaphors like a drowning man left high and dry, waving a white flag in front of a bull in a china shop!
Why did they bury the body at sea? I don’t get it. No body, no evidence.
What is that all about?
“At the risk of sounding a little bit like Graeme Bird…
In a 2007 interview, Benazir Bhutto said that OBL was already dead.”
It was a slip of the tongue. Several times in the months before and after that interview (and possibly even elsewhere in that interview, iirc?), Bhutto referred to OBL as still alive and at large.
I don’t know the story of what she was talking about, but the person she meant to name is obvious to those who do. It was no surprise revelation.
The stated rationale was to avoid the creation of a burial site which would become a potential shrine for extremists.
FDB proposed:
Fran Kelly did just that this morning on breakfast, but Howard chose his words carefully, knowing that the vacuous Kelly would not challenge him, deliberately blurring the lines between Obama’s position on US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Howard had said:
If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats
Obama had promised an exit early from Iraq
Kelly: Did you have faith that Obama as president could achieve this because I remember in the last election campaign there was some controversy when you said that a victory for Obama would be good for Osama
Howard:
I made some comments based on a position the candidate Obama had in relation to the withdrawal of American forces that he subsequently changed … look I have no doubt that since becoming President he has committed himself conscientiously to the campaign in Afghanistan …
Howard dodges which places “American forces” were to be withdrawn from and then conflates it with Afghanistan, with the clear implication that Obama proposed withdrawing from the latter “by mid-2008″. This was completely wrong as those of us who followed the matter will recall. Obama saw the campaign in Iraq as a diversion from going after Bin Laden.
Howard quickly tries to move on though commending the courage of the special forces (so as to deny credit to Obama and avoid embarrassment). At one point, amusingly, speaking of the value of “well-trained soldiers” he spoke of “all of us in America, and Australia”. He has changed national allegiance, apparently. But I digress.
Kelly tried again, but again he used the phrase “an American withdrawal” (non-specific) — This shows the dishonesty of the man and of course the ignorance and lack of professional incompetence of Kelly.
@ Chris, it seems they do, but although nothing can serve as full restitution, I continue to believe that a secretive killing is a poor substitute for a solemn, thorough calling – to – account, and if the counterterrorism expert quoted by Barns is correct in saying the US did not want to hold Bin Laden to account then that is a sorry state of affairs. If this is the start of a new era I shudder to think what it holds, I can’t see how this can mark the release of old ways of thinking since it begins with the very worst of that post 9/11 mindset.
I think this sort of illustrates my point. Afghanistan will be deadly for many of its people for the forseeable future (the Hazaras for one), and leaving now will mean leaving the Taliban with more than a toehold on power, they already administer a kind of justice in some of the regions as I understand. We may declare it a victory but it will not be a peace, certainly not for Afghanis and not for a considerable number of service men and women who return into their own poorly treated, little acknowledged microcosms of hell.
Robert @218, I’m prepared to take Obama at his word, but the fact remains that the ‘operation to get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice’ can only be legally justified if it took place in the course of a war, or was an act justified on the basis of self-defence under the UN Charter. Even then, there’s the matter of whether Pakistan consented to the operation taking place on their territory. It’s just not open to a country with the military and technological capability to take it upon itself to enter another country and seize a person located there and extract them. If it was, the entire practice of extradition would be unnecessary.
Good thing Obama listened to Howard and Bush!
“This shows the dishonesty of the man and of course the ignorance and lack of professional incompetence of Kelly.”
Apart from the latter point, I agree completely.
oops … fair point FDB … that’s what happens when you get half way through composing something and someone asks you to attend to something else.
An interesting take on the whole jihadi/suicide bomber phenomenon.
Are al-Qaida and the Taliban driven by the desire to help others?
NB: the misuse of the word “sewage” makes for some amusment:
Rather than winning hearts and minds, Berman suggests western powers should always have been focused on providing
sewage{sewerage I’m guessing} and schools. I imagine they’ve plenty of sewage.Fran @ 220 – given they were less than 1km away from a military academy and the US hadn’t told the Pakistani government that they were going there I’m guessing they did not want to hang around for very long. It probably says something about the competence of the Pakistani military that they were able to stay as long as they did (40 minutes) with no one turning up.
su @ 231 – I don’t know if they really did want to capture him alive, but if they did they security implications for a trial and imprisonment forever would be significant. Probably be a magnet and inspiration for Al Qaeda supports for the forseable future.
As to whether or not to stay in Afghanistan I believe it really comes down to whether its possible for the US to make the situation better. On one hand they broke it, they can fix it, but on the other even if the Taliban resume control of the country would the Taliban leading an oppressive regime be better or worse than a never ending war for the general population?
Just to clarify something Chris, I wasn’t arguing that we should stay in Afghanistan, just pointing out that we won’t be leaving behind a peaceful, functional democracy when we leave, and that it’s a huge stretch to call this a victory when we will be leaving a corrupt government to deal with a resurgent Taliban (and they will deal, I think).
I really hate the conflation of civilians-in-place with “civilian shield,” always aimed at our enemies. Of course OBL would have been living with wives/children/servants, and of course any operation to get him was going to risk their lives.
No one would ever say Obama was using his wife and kids as human shields if OBL raided the white house and killed them all. It’s stupid.
And I think it doesn’t do us any favours to deny either OBL’s commitment to his cause, his (probable – we don’t know for sure) bravery, his military ability (eg escaping tora bora) and his ability to inspire others. In light of that it seems much more reasonable to think that the dead woman was fighting alongside him, and/or wanted to be there.
I wonder if this raid indicates that the Pakistani [can we not call them "paki"?] ISI have been looking to the uprisings in the middle east and thinking that authoritarian visionaries and terrorist leaders are no longer of much use to them…
Chris said:
I heard 200 metres … Maybe they could have pretended they were Pakistani Taliban …
Apparently they found Bin Laden on the third floor of the premises in a room — some nitrous oxide a taser and they could have made an arrest.
Chris said:
I heard 200 metres … Maybe they could have pretended they were Pakistani Taliban …
Apparently they found Bin Laden on the third floor of the premises in a room — some nitrous oxide a taser and they could have made an arrest.
So what has been gained if all the terrorism ‘experts’ are predicting more terrorist attacks, including a new 9/11 in ‘revenge’ for the death of Osama bin Laden?
Can the “War on Terror” ever be won?
speak for yourself Fran. I don’t think I’ll choose to judge whether or not such things were possible in the circumstances. I don’t think I’d be inclined to take risks if I thought someone was holed up in a room with a couple of hand grenades, a machine gun and a suicide belt. Bugger that for a way to provide for your wife and kids…
SG
I don’t rule out the possibility that capturing him alive may not have been technically feasible, but I just don’t see that the US could have been all that appealing for them. Really, it’s all downside and risk, so when they say that he was killed with a single shot to the side of the head in a third floor room, I’m disinclined to believe that killing him was the only course. The raid was apparently video-streamed live back to the Potomac River for the benefit of Leon Panetta (CIA chief) so I’d like to see the footage.
The helmet camera’s video images broadcast for the viewing pleasure of the White House group shown watching the raiding party as shown today would of course be interesting to see, but don’t hold your breath.
oops
but I just don’t see that {for} the US, {taking him alive} could have been all that appealing for them
su @ 238 – when I said “declaring victory” I was talking about using OBL death as a political excuse for Obama to withdraw troops. With him now found those supporting the war will have one less thing to criticise Obama if he does decide to end the war.
I agree leaving now would not leave a peaceful democracy. Can’t say I’m optimistic about there being a peaceful democracy in Afghanistan for a long long time, regardless of whether the US stays or not. Can’t even tell which option is least bad.
“I don’t know the story of what she was talking about…..”
Nick at 228 – Daniel Pearl. Interview with Frost.
Stormfront et al probably would!
Heard an ANU academic interviewed on ABC Sydney this afternoon who said that Afghanistan has traditionally been closer to India than to Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan prefers a chaotic Afghanistan to a peaceful Afghanistan, and their actions (or lack of action) have been to this end.
He also thought it pretty unlikely that “the equivalent of Duntroon” would have NOT looked in to who was living so close by. And the town is popular with retired military officers.
Oswald shot JFK and there was no other shooter.
The moon landings are real.
No aliens have ever reached earth.
Holt drowned because he made a bad decision.
There was never any US Government conspiracy in 9/11.
Obama is a US Citizen.
Bin Laden was killed by US SEALS in Abbottabad and was buried at sea.
Did I miss anything?
Cheers, murph.
Finally had a chance to read some news today, and it looks like I pointed to the wrong compound last night!
The coordinates were already published everywhere, so just assumed the site I got it from must have it correct…but apparently the Guardian and Telegraph both had it wrong initially and caused a lot of confusion…
Bullshit Razor. There’s no way the moon landings are real. The evidence is plain for all to see.
As one who was born in 1940, I reckon 70 is old, but I’m still trying to work out what it means. It means things like visiting my dentist today at Unit 4, 249 Coronation Drive, just around the corner from Park Road and realising that the room I was being treated in was the very same room I rented 47 years ago as a penniless student.
OBL was still a pup.
tt @ 210, sg @ 239, Lefty E and others, I think we are never going to know exactly what happened. I did say if Osama was using a woman as a shield he was a coward. The circumstance I had in mind was that he may have been relying on the US Seals’ natural chivalry in being reluctant to shoot an unarmed woman for advantage while he was shooting at them.
I did hear one report that it was OBL’s wish to go down fighting for his cause.
Cited here and elsewhere.
Back in 2001 when the Twin Towers were hit, Bush was sitting down with a class of primary school kids in Texas. At the time I said he’d know it was all finished when he could sit down with a similar group of kids in Tehran and Baghdad.
There’s still a way to go.
i think the real question barnes and robertson are posing is: does one country have the right to send armed men into another sovereign country to arrest ORRRRR kill someone without that country’s permission?
should anyone be exempt from this international law?
if so, then what right do we have, say, to criticise the chinese for ‘silencing’ internal enemies of china? (even a loud voice can destabilise a gov and cause death’s.)
if the yanks had of ran it by the pakistani authorities, and subsequently bin laden tipped off and escaped, then the US would know better where pakistan stood, maybe even have grounds to ‘punish’ them, as they did to the taliban when they initially refused to hand over bin laden.
by all accounts, bin laden didn’t even have a mobile phone, wasn’t contributing much to his side of the war except as a symbol, arguably only made stronger in death.
please don’t get angry with me. i just think no-one should be above the law, or perhaps ‘international law’ should be re-written to allow this sort of thing. dunno.
the world probably IS a better place without this extreme of extremists, but was getting this one man worth trashing a law meant to protect us all?
assange has harmed the US, maybe not on the same scale or as directly as bin laden, are the calls for his assassination just?
The latest coming from the White House is that bin Laden was unarmed and that he did not use a woman as a shield. A woman in the room was shot in the leg.
They said bin Laden was a threat and that you don’t need to be armed to be a threat.
They say they are considering releasing the videos.
Razor @ 250, spot on!
As to everyone claiming the Pakistani govt knew nothing about the raid, has anyone considered that this, at least, might be misdirection? It gets them off the hook with local extremists, to some extent.
It seesm to me that treating the Pakistani government, security/intelliegence as if it were a sinle entity with a single mind is a problem.
While it is surely certain that at least some high ranking officials knew of OBL’s presence and whereabouts, that is not the same as saying “the government” or “the security services” must have known. If, as seems likely, individuals or cliques with in the state were running their own agendas it’s quite likely that a great deal of information is not shared.
Even the US government has its own boltholes of information. I notice they recently used the term “red teaming” to indicate an operation in which one part of national security chooses to share information for modelling purposes with other sections.
It seems likely that given the development of governance in Pakistan since 1971, its long periods of military/security bonapartism, active insurgency, involvement in civil war across the border with Afghanistan, and in Kashmir etc, that factionalism and want of trust within the regime would be rife. High ranking officials are being regularly killed. A presidential candidate was murdered. It would be astonishing if everyone at or near the top got access to everything.
Oswald,
I, or one, would be surprised if anyone on this forum needed to be convinced that:
“The moon landings are real.” and
“No aliens have ever reached earth” (or, at least, that there is no known evidence that they have).
On the claim that “bin Laden was killed by US SEALS in Abbottabad and was buried at sea,” if no-one has independently verified the evidence that it was Osama bin Laden that was killed before he was buried at sea, what convinces you that nothing that the US military says can be questioned?
Did you accept everything told to you by the US military prior to the invasions of Iraq in 2003?
Have you seen Fair Game starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn that was released late last year? It shows incontrovertibly that the story that we were fed in 2003 about Iraq posing a threat to other nations with its supposed nuclear weapons program was a lie and known to be a lie by the US Government, the UK Government and, almost certainly, the Australian Government.
The movie ends, by switching from a scene of Naomi Watts playing former CIA agent Valerie Plame-Wilson to live footage of Valerie Plame-Wilson testifying before US congress. (Naomi Watts has such a striking resemblance to the real life character she was playing that I did not pick the switch the first time I watched the movie.)
I think, given the long history of world public opinion having been deceived by the US military, at least from the time of the My Lai massacre, going through the years of the Grenada invasion and the harassment of Nicaragua in the 1970′s and 1980′s, the “incubator babies” hoax prior to the 1991 war agant Iraq, and the abovementioned “Weapons of Mas Destruction” hoax of 2003, that some of us are entitled to be skeptical when physical evidence that could have been used to prove (or disprove) their claim of having killed Osama bin Laden was destroyed.
On the other (somewhat off-topic) issues you have raised, my mind is still somewhat open, that is, unless you can provide links to evidence that would convince me of your views.
Un unarmed man, a single shot to the head, that is an execution. They had no intention of capturing him.
Razor @212:
Looks like the mainstream media has got it wrong again:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/unarmed-bin-laden-killed-after-wife-rushed-commando-us-says-20110504-1e75m.html
su @ 262, it’s looking a lot like execution, whether planned or not.
Re the fact that BL died years agfo or didn’t die at Abbottabad.
Yeah. Obama also forgot to announce, as an election clincher that a manned space-ship had just landed on Mars.
Of course it bllosy happened. I don’t doubt that. Now they’ve just got to sort out the details of how it happened.
I love this country. If someone were to read out the poetry of Henry Lawson, on Australia Day, to the accompaniment of Waltzing Matilda, whilst waving the Australian flag, and taking alternate swigs of vegemite and Fosters or even if a mass murderer was killed resisting arrest in Pakistan, you can guarantee that someone will protest. Which is exactly as it should be.
@ 260 – exactly.
As for the stupid question of do we trust them? How infantile. No adult trusts anyone completely. Australia has a Security classification called AUSTEO – Australian Eyes Only – stuff we don’t share with our nearest and dearest allies. I have things I don’t tell my wife. Grow up.
@ 263 – yep, based on the information now available I was wrong – he wasn’t shooting at them. Not particularly worried that they topped him. Best outcome allround.
which takes me to my next point –
@261 – intelligence is not a science. Information isn’t alaways perfect. Every major intelligence agency in the world beleived that Hussein had the capability and intent to use (=threat) NBC weapons. Even Iraqi Generals believed that they had the capability, just someone else in the organisation was responsible.
Troubling to me is the ‘story’ that the house was littered with toys and that one of Bin Laden’s sons was killed. So how old was the son? Who was the owner of the toys and what has happened to those who weren’t actually killed?
@232
“It’s just not open to a country with the military and technological capability to take it upon itself to enter another country and seize a person located there and extract them”
Adolf should never have been “extradited” from South America back to Israel I suppose.
Wadda they mean he was unarmed. He had his wife there.
Heh!
Bin Laden was losing support amongst Muslims
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, head of the Intelligence Committee has denied the intelligence about the couriers came from Guantanamo.
Razor @250, you missed one:
The N*zis really did kill 6,000,000 Jews.
su, I think she denied the courier’s code name was gained through torture – not the fact it came from an arrestee at Guantanamo (back in 2003-2004)?
Ok, I read it on USA Today here, they may have taken her words out of context or misquoted her.
http://www.politicalruminations.com/2011/05/senate-intelligence-chair-debunks-stubborn-right-wing-meme-regarding-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html
This page has a link to a YouTube clip of her making the actual statement…
“To date, the answer to your question is no. Nothing has been found to indicate this came out of Guantanamo.”
Interested to know where the NYT got their information from, as it seems they were the first to run with it…
On the use of torture, Rumsfeld states:
“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”
Razor (not Lee Harvey my apologies), wrote:
Wonderful!
Then you will have no difficulty showing the rest of us why Valerie Plame’s testimony to the US congress was false, and why the movie, Fair Game, supposedly based upon what happened to her and her husband, journalist Joseph Wilson, in 2002 and 2003 was also false.
After that, we can, no doubt, learn how the monstrous Iraqis did, in fact, hurl babies from incubators onto hospital floors in 1990 and how the Iraqis were not set up in 1990 when the United States got Kuwait to slant-drill under the Kuwait-Iraq border into Iraqi oil fields.
BTW, I am still curious to know: How has the supposed death of Osama bin Laden brought the almost 10 year old “War on Terror” any closer to an end, given that all the terrorism ‘experts’ are predicting ‘revenge’ attacks including possible new 9/11′s. Could our circumstances be any worse if our governments had not launched the “War on Terror” in the first place?
One account I read was that they put the name of the courier to KSM and Al-libi, and when they both disavowed knowledge, they concluded that they were onto someone significant.
That’s what I call intel! You can’t get information like that except through harsh interrogation.
It recalls this scene from The Life of Brian
Only the true messiah denies his divinity
Razor @ 250
Did I miss anything?
Just one thing. Anthropogenic climate change is real and is not an invention of grant grubbing scientists and/or communist conspirators.
It does not really matter whether OBL was killed in a cave at Tora Bora in 2001, or his dialyis machine gave up on him somewhere in Waziristan a few years later, or he died in a hail of bullets a couple of days ago in Abbottabad.
The only reliable fact is that the US president has announced that OBL is dead, at a time of the president’s choosing, and that no-one is contradicting him by producing a living and breathing OBL. The president must be very sure that he cannot be contradicted, and that’s enough for me.
The global media frenzy (show us the bullet wounds, wife used as shield, the pakis must have known, one goat a day, etc) is nothing but a gruesome and pointless sideshow (but generating fabulous media profits) and we can choose to tune in, or not. I’m tuning out.
The real consequence of this announcement is not that the War on Terror is now over and we can all rest easy in our beds, or alternatively, that revenge attacks might come any time and any place on the planet and we should all live on our knees in fear, but that President Obama jas now made for himself one positive moment in the sun, in the run-up to the 2012 election. That is worth an approving nod.
And yes, as someone mentioned above, the movie “Fair Game” is well worth a look at this time.
@ 280 – you’ll find most rational people agree with your simplistic statement. The arguments over the specific science, economics and politics of whether, what and how we should do something is much more complex.
Raze, mate, you’ll find that a good many people on your side of the fence do not agree at all with statement (which is simple, but not simplistic). They invoke exactly the same kind of conspiracy arguments as the birthers, the truthers, the deathers, and so on.
The latest rep[orts indicate that Bin Laden was executed out of hand with full Presidential authority. Oh well so much for the rule of law that is supposed to make us better than “them”.
Huggy.
OBL did say “we love death”. They gave him what he loved. We should all be so lucky.
@283 – Sam, I’d suggest at the moment that you worry about your side of the fence – not even 50% of ALP voters support the proposed Carbon Dioxide Tax.
Just listening to yesterday’s Book Show and the expert they had on pointed out that the blame for Osama ramapaging about can be laid at the feet of Bill Clinton for being a coward noting that the military gave him four opportunities to capture or kill him which he turned down.
Audio with Michael Scheuer former CIA operative here for the above comments.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3205932.htm
Razor, you’re changing the subject, which is very naughty. I was talking about the science and conspiracy theories related thereto.
I’ll say it again. Whether it’s about Obama’s birth certificate, Osama’s death certificate, or climate change science, it’s the same crackpots who think they are being conspired against by sinister groups who seek world domination.
I was about to ask WTF this thread had to do with climate-change -unless Bin Laden farted a lot.
tssk,
are you sure you haven’t fallen for some foul republican propaganda, the meme of which is anybody but a democrat is responsible for getting OBL. Sounds like it to me .
Reality check – for 8 years that grossly incompetent imbecile G. W. bush did nothing to catch OBL. Obama did it before the end of his first term. One really does have to ask wtf was the American Imbecile doing all those years, aside from having fantasies that he was the guy in the white hat?
We have learned today that OBL was unarmed when he was killed. What is clear is that Obama has been lying from the start. In this regard Obama is little different from Bush.
Link @ 268
Good questions. What has happened to those kids? How many kids were there? Were any of them killed? Did the SEALS know there were kids in the compound when they raided it? If they did, what were there plans for them?
Paul, Michael Scheuer in that interview credited Obama with having taken the first opportunity offered to give the order. he noted that Bush also took the opportunity but used local forces instead of US forces which met with failure. He was blaming Clinton for not taking up any of the four opportunities offered from 1996 onwards.
Anyway you can listen to the interview, the guy was CIA until 2004.
Quite right Paul @ 291. You also have to wonder how the right in the US would react had the deed been accomplished by a Republican President. No doubt he/she would have been instantly elevated to a status akin to sainthood, in contrast to the begrudging acknowledgements that have been forthcoming from the likes of Palin (speaking of imbeciles as we were) and others.
Oh, dear.
The unequal struggle between the US Intel community and the truth continues.
But of course, the Hollywood ending concocted by the Intel spinmeisters will live on in the minds of America’s mall rats. This is SOP.
On OBL himself, it is quite clear that the vast majority of Muslims want nothing of AQ’s Caliphate. From that point of view, OBL’s life was a failure.
On the other hand, many more Muslims are prepared to sacrifice themselves in the cause of a Caliphate than before OBL came along. In that sense, OBL’s life was a success.
Accidentally, OBL entrapped the US in a highly damaging, self-defeating mission. That consoling thought may have passed through OBL’s brain at the same time as the SEAL’s bullet.
The latest- apparently OBL’s daughter(12) was in the room and watched her father being shot. This info came form nine news and the Pakistanis. A number of children were in the compound.
Sorry if this infor already provided http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/05/03/cia_director_leon_panetta_orders_were_to_kill_bin_laden.html
As I suspected, above, the wife as human shield story was spin.
Incidentally, if you want my guess – key elements of the Pakistani leadership probably did collaborate with the US, but most certainly dont want anyone to know that. Hence the “we didnt know, or did know and werent playing along” routine.
I for one suspect neither is true. Watch the aid continue much as always after some short -term furore.
Lefty: Can I say I called it at 163?
Debbieanne: Thanks for the link. Sounds like there might be a few questions about the way the operation was conducted, but we’ll probably never know the answers.
I can see that we will be waiting a very long time to get any straight answers from US Government agencies, their allies and at least one of their mouthpieces on this forum. Some visitors may be able to make some sense of this staged media event by reading:
SKEPTICISM: The Agendas Behind the Bin Laden News Event - When the Lie Becomes the Truth… by Paul Craig Roberts.
From the link provided by Debbieanne @ 297:
I heard the same comment yesterday on RN’s The World Today. On a quick look I cant find it but those were the words exactly.
Obama’s statement, at best, was spin designed to obfuscate.
The actions of the wife have variously been characterised as a brave unarmed attack to begging for mercy. Plenty of room for spin there too.
Katz,
“Accidentally, OBL entrapped the US in a highly damaging, self-defeating mission.”
I always thought that was the deliberate strategy.
I&U, the success of AQ strategy relied upon an unforced error on the part of the US.
Perhaps OBL knew how stupid, arrogant and blind the Bush administration was. But I doubt it.
At the time there was nothing to indicate that Bush would go off half-cocked the way he did. Indeed, all Bush’s pronouncements until 9/11 had been about cautious intervention only in international affairs.
Wasn’t only the US that made the same mistake add in Britain, UK, Australia, the coaltion of the willing was a long list.
And in the wash up the spending on the US lead war on terror has pretty much bankrupted the western world, caused many goverments to collapse and thrown out the established rule of law.
Now picture the alternative….
2001-09-11 George Bush instead of declaring a war on terror, announces that resources will be allocated to investigating and police actions against an international criminal conspiracy. Rule of law could have been upheld, two invasions avoided, economies saved, civilian deaths avoided and a trial happen, where an inhumane ideology would have been exposed for what it is.
harleymc,
all true, but your latter paragraph was based on the assumption that the US was not at the time being run by a bunch of morons.
Dead Pakistanis porn with lotsa lotsa blood, courtesy the Seals, below.
http://www.reuters.com/subjects/bin-laden-compound
If only Bush’s friends in the armamaments industry had seen it your way all those years ago, harleymc!
@304
“civilian deaths avoided and a trial happen”
What trial?
Who would have been on trial?
Where would this have happened?
Where would the person on trial have been captured?
There’s also another RW version of events doing the rounds that casts Obama as a ditherer on the raid, manipulated by an adviser (Valerie Jarratt) versus the Gates-Clinton-Panetta faction who had to manipulate the President into going ahead.
This has the advantage of making Obama look weak and gullible despite “getting his man”. It flatters Hillary, but that is OK because a liberal man being weaker than a hawkish woman plays to the RW audience quite well.
Regarding the back-pedalling in spin, my ever-astute partner suggested it may have been because it turned out there were so many children present. Kids don’t lie, and you can’t lock them up…
@310
“Kids don’t lie, and you can’t lock them up…
”
But you can just kill them.. then they cannot talk.
Asking fran barlow
“It flatters Hillary, but that is OK because a liberal man being weaker than a hawkish woman plays to the RW audience quite well.
”
What is the validity or integrity of this claim?
Sorry fran i meant to quote this.
“There’s also another RW version of events doing the rounds”
What is the validity or integrity of this claim?