Osama Bin Laden is Dead

[Rahwana]

Pakistan is supported by China.
Pakistan is a country with nuclear weapons.

India won't do anything.....ever.
USA, well if they really have managed to kill Osama, I don't think they'll want to waste any more time or manpower in the area.

@Jolt
That's exactly it. Now why would someone create a fake picture? Just to boost their channel's ratings?

well, maybe then, the Islamic terrorism was Chinese play all time long, we just didn't want to even imagine it.
Chinese governments hate americans, we all know that. The muslims just become Chinese's victim.

[Lemur]

well, maybe then, the Islamic terrorism was Chinese play all time long, we just didn't want to even imagine it.
Chinese governments hate americans, we all know that. The muslims just become Chinese's victim.

Ah yes, the Chinese Communist/Jihadist axis of something or another. Don't you hate it when atheist totalitarians and Islamists team up? I think the Freemasons and the Illuminati are mixed up in it too.

[Subotan]

Couldn't help myself, checked out Fox News' home page. Nice pic of president Bush, lots of headlines about the SEALs, only a tiny, buried reference to the current Prez. Astonishing, really. See if you can find mention of Obama on the page. Warning, it's quite small. (And yes, I know this is a minor, minor point, but I continue to be surprised by the overt, mindless, unthinking hostility to our President, regardless of context and fact.)

What every news anchor is thinking right now:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[drone]

It's been a decade-long hunt for the front-man responsible for the cold-blooded murder of 3000+ citizens. Some cheering and chest-thumping is warranted.

Cheering I could stomach. Chest-thumping? Not so much.

"Yeah! OBL is dead! USA, USA! We're #1!. (Pay no mind to the trillions of dollars, Constitutional costs, thousands of American soldiers' lives, and countless lives in occupied lands spent)"

Not really much to be proud of. It's a task that needed doing, and one that we botched in a very large, messy way.

[rajpoot]

well, maybe then, the Islamic terrorism was Chinese play all time long, we just didn't want to even imagine it.

If you're joking then it's OK, because that is so not what I meant.

All I pointed out was that China has been using Pakistan to control the status quo of power in the subcontinent since quite some time. It is not news that AQ Khan researched n-weapon technology using Chinese aid. Infact I remember reading somewhere that recently when a US delegate confronted a Chinese diplomat about their support to Pakistan, he commented that Pakistan was their Israel.

[Lemur]

Not really much to be proud of. It's a task that needed doing, and one that we botched in a very large, messy way.

Well, hmm. I don't agree. My personal response has been sober and somber, because you're right, this has come at a high price. But on the other hand, I don't begrudge anybody who wants to chest-thump and chant USA! USA! USA! That's their right, man, and I can understand where they're coming from. This is a moment to focus on what has been accomplished. Does it signal a shift away from some of the stupider elements of the GWOT? I hope so. Will we reevaluate our commitments to three, count 'em, three wars in Islamic nations? I hope so. Does it say something that seven years of torturing enemy combatants didn't yield this result, but two years of diligent intelligence work did? Yeah, I think that's blindingly obvious to anybody who isn't a rabid partisan.

And hey, it's your right to feel revulsion at the celebrations. That's legit too. But I don't share your feelings, and I think US citizens are owed a little kegger right now. It's been a hell of a decade, not a good one for the US by any measurement. Let's bask for, say, 24 hours in a job well done.

-edit-

C'mon, even you must understand and empathize with the reaction at the US Naval Academy. We want our warriors to be pumped up when we take out the enemy. And this is their moment.

[Tellos Athenaios]

It leaves me utterly unmoved. Good to know there is one less terrorist to not worry about, now please get on with the real job. (Fixing what we broke.)

[PanzerJaeger]

And as per usual, Fox News can't help themselves.

C'mon man. The Sacramento Fox affiliate makes a common mistake and it's 'omg faux news attacks!'? I guess MSNBC has chosen to go the same route.

I watched a few hours of coverage on Fox last, the actual cable channel and not an affiliate, and all the hosts and commentators were very congratulatory and complimentary towards the president, as they should have been. This is a good day, let's not mar it with the typical 'fox news/msnbc/cnn said what!' crap that seems to accompany every major news story these days.


Anyway, I feel slightly vindicated after years of arguing over Gitmo on this forum.

After years of dead ends and promising leads gone cold, the big break came last August. A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden’s whom American spies had been hunting for years was finally located in a compound 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, close to one of the hubs of American counterterrorism operations….

Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated.

[Lemur]

A very good thought:

This is a triumph for the United States of America, for our soldiers and intelligence operatives, and for the president as well. But it is not quite the triumph that it would have seemed if bin Laden had been captured a decade ago, because those 10 years have taught us that we didn’t need to fear him and his rabble as much as we did, temporarily but intensely, in the weeks when ground zero still smoked.

They’ve taught us, instead, that whatever blunders we make (and we have made many), however many advantages we squander (and there has been much squandering), and whatever quagmires we find ourselves lured into, our civilization is not fundamentally threatened by the utopian fantasy politics embodied by groups like Al Qaeda, or the mix of thugs, fools and pseudointellectuals who rally around their banner.

They can strike us, they can wound us, they can kill us. They can goad us into tactical errors and strategic blunders. But they are not, and never will be, an existential threat.

This was not clear immediately after 9/11. On that day, they took us by surprise. They took advantage of our society’s great strength — its openness and freedom, the welcome it gives to immigrants and the presumption of innocence it extends. And in the wake of their attack, we did not know what they were capable of, or how they might follow up their victory.

Now we know. We know because bin Laden is finally dead and gone, but in a sense we knew already. [...]

Day after day, hour after hour, we learned that we were strong and they were weak.

[drone]

It's exactly the prelude, not the final act, that should temper our celebrations. Almost 10 years to figure out what should have been done in the first place. And it's hard to enjoy a kegger when all you can afford is Old Swill, Beast, and Cook's.

Actionable intelligence, operators on the ground, no or very little collateral damage. In the end, it was almost 20th century European in it's execution. What's the old saying? "The United States will, after exhausting all other options, eventually do the right thing." I'll pop one for the SEALs tonight, they deserve it and more.

[Strike For The South]

It's exactly the prelude, not the final act, that should temper our celebrations. Almost 10 years to figure out what should have been done in the first place. And it's hard to enjoy a kegger when all you can afford is Old Swill, Beast, and Cook's.

Actionable intelligence, operators on the ground, no or very little collateral damage. In the end, it was almost 20th century European in it's execution. What's the old saying? "The United States will, after exhausting all other options, eventually do the right thing." I'll pop one for the SEALs tonight, they deserve it and more.

But....But MURRRRHHHHHHHHIICCCCCCCAAAAAAA

[Xiahou]

Does it say something that seven years of torturing enemy combatants didn't yield this result, but two years of diligent intelligence work did?

Well.... technically, the lead that started the years of diligent intel work are said to have come from a Gitmo detainee. They gave up the nickname of OBL's couriers, which eventually led to tracking down Osama.

Another point I'd like to make is that I think too many people are diminishing the importance of Bin Laden's removal. No, it's not going to end the terrorist threat, but by most accounts it seems he was still very much operationally involved in Al Qaeda. His compound had couriers coming and going and there were said to have been multiple computers recovered from the compound.

"Yeah! OBL is dead! USA, USA! We're #1!. (Pay no mind to the trillions of dollars, Constitutional costs, thousands of American soldiers' lives, and countless lives in occupied lands spent)"

Eh, aside from the invasive security theater our airport screenings have become (and that's a big aside), I think the Constitutional costs of been comparatively mild. Things like the DMCA have probably caused more long term damage to our freedoms.

Edit:

Burial at sea within the Islam-mandated 24-hour framework strikes me as extremely wise. Well done CIA, well done Delta Seals, well done President Obama.

Indeed. This was definitely the best course of action I could think of. His corpse is gone with no grave to become a terrorist tourist spot and no one can rationally say we were disrespectful to Islam overall.

[Lemur]

Well.... technically, the lead that started the years of diligent intel work are said to have come from a Gitmo detainee. They gave up the nickname of OBL's couriers, which eventually led to tracking down Osama.

PJ provided a link for that point, and it's a fair one. I guess the unknowable will be whether or not indefinite detentions and "enhanced interrogation" were truly useful to this purpose.

Anyway, well done Seal Team Six, the CIA analysts who cracked the case, and the President who decided to go in rather than nuke the site from orbit.

[Rahwana]

Edit:Indeed. This was definitely the best course of action I could think of. His corpse is gone with no grave to become a terrorist tourist spot and no one can rationally say we were disrespectful to Islam overall.

yeah, burial at sea was among the cheapest way of burial, but still acceptable for muslim. Usually, it's done to make the eternal rest for fishermen and sailor's remains, usually the lowest position of peasantry...

that was very2 suitable for osama...

[Xiahou]

yeah, burial at sea was among the cheapest way of burial, but still acceptable for muslim. Usually, it's done to make the eternal rest for fishermen and sailor's remains, usually the lowest position of peasantry...

that was very2 suitable for osama...

And nonetheless, people are coming out of the woodwork already to complain about how it was insulting/disrespectful. To them I say- he deserved much worse than he got.

"What was done by the Americans is forbidden by Islam and might provoke some Muslims," said another Islamic scholar from Iraq, Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, who preaches at Baghdad's famous Abu Hanifa mosque. "It is not acceptable and it is almost a crime to throw the body of a Muslim man into the sea. The body of bin Laden should have been handed over to his family to look for a country or land to bury him."

[Kagemusha]

Good riddance. One less madman running around.

[Lemur]

In a further response to PJ and Xiahou drawing a link between Guantanamo and the execution of OBL, I think there's a some conflation going on. Doing a bit of reading between jobs, I don't see any evidence that the pseudonym was extracted under torture. At least, nobody with knowledge is saying that (please ignore the bloggers for the moment; they know not what they type). As one writer puts it:

When I visited Guantanamo, interrogator after interrogator stressed that the best information comes from standard tactics, not from brute torture.

"[It's] bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough," former CIA officer Bob Baer told ABC News. [...]

Much credit should go to the interrogators in Cuba who got the info that brought Osama down.

But until I see evidence to the contrary, I don't believe they couldn't have done the same job just as effectively -- without the gross damage to America's reputation abroad -- in any other prison on U.S. soil, under U.S. laws.

[rajpoot]

And nonetheless, people are coming out of the woodwork already to complain about how it was insulting/disrespectful. To them I say- he deserved much worse than he got.

Let's see...the extremists would already be raging that he was killed. So now they just have another reason to rage.....people always find something to complain about.
I'd like to see how many of those who say it was disrespectful would've accepted the responsibility to bury the body themselves....even his own family (I think) do not approve of him.

[Vuk]

lol, I am hosting a Don't *$&#! With America party at my house tonight and I already got 32 people confirming that they are coming. I have some awesome entertainment planned!

[Lemur]

@Vuk, I would suggest a theme song, but it would violate Org policy. It's from the film Team America: World Police, and it will make a rousing sing-along.

[Vuk]

@Vuk, I would suggest a theme song, but it would violate Org policy. It's from the film Team America: World Police, and it will make a rousing sing-along.

lol, good idea.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It appears that he was buried at sea and following the appropriate muslim traditions. I find this reasonable as the idea of doing outrage to corpses leaves me thinking about my celtic ancestors -- the ones we rightly label barbarians.

Bin Laden was, apparently, tracked to the location using good old-fashioned intelligence/detective work. Being unable to confirm that Bin Laden was 100% likely to be present, President Obama sent in boots who would not shoot innocent bystanders and the like. Good choice, and well-executed by the multi-part team that put the operation in play.

It remains to be seen how much of Osama's hideout location near the Pakistani capital and military academy was the result of Pakistani complicity and how much was simply the choice to go the "purloined letter" route to hide him. I am reasonably certain that the question will be asked.

[Shibumi]

This thread has gone from tasteless to disgusting.

So much short sightedness, so many moral compasses ill aligned.

We might as well hand out whiskey and six shooters.

[Centurion1]

And what is your opinion oh mighty shibumi. I find that this thread is surprisingly tasteful despite the fact that the man did nothing to warrant respect.

[Vuk]

This thread has gone from tasteless to disgusting.

So much short sightedness, so many moral compasses ill aligned.

We might as well hand out whiskey and six shooters.

Do you know how many thousands died horribly because of that 'man'? Not to mention all the people who died in efforts to get him and people in his organization.
Your sympathy is touching, but he has done nothing to deserve it. I sure as heck will celebrate when a murderer of his magnitude dies.
And actually, you are right on the money about whiskey and six shooters...well, really close at least. I am actually hanging a bunch of Osama targets up that I bought after 911 and having been waiting on this morning for. After THAT fun, we break out the vodka. I am not a drinking man, but tonight I make the exception.

[rajpoot]

We might as well hand out whiskey and six shooters.

And then we invite Clint Eastwood....or John Wayne maybe.

Why exactly do you find it disgusting though?

[Lemur]

I don't see anything disgusting in the thread, but maybe that's because I am an Evil Imperialist American. Anything's possible.

Looks like UBL went out of this life with the same class he had throughout:

Brennan also identified bin Laden as the combatant who had used a woman as a human shield. She was the only woman who died in the operation, which also killed a courier for bin Laden, the courier's brother, and one of bin Laden's sons, Brennan said. Brennan later said it was his understanding that the woman was one of bin Laden's wives.

"She served as a shield -- this is my understanding -- when she fought back -- when there was an opportunity to get to bin Laden -- she was positioned in a way that she was used as a shield. My understanding was she was one of bin laden's wives," Brennan told reporters.

[drone]

Just to show I'm not trying to urinate in the collective punchbowl, I did get one good laugh from the news today. It allowed some sportswriter to post a link to this old (2001) little gem from the Telegraph today.

[Shibumi]

I do not believe in evil.

OBM might have been ****** up from our perspective, but at the end of the day he probably was a man who did what he could in the situations he was put in.

Remember back in the days when he was a CIA sponsored freedom fighter? Oh how fast it goes from hero to zero.

Do not get me wrong, I do not think this man contributed with much good to society or the world at large. He has as much innocent blood on his hands as, say, the American general who reigned the first years of the Afghan war (count civilian deaths people).

Does it mean I cheer and pop open a bottle of champagne when he is dead? No - I rather pour me a glass of red, go out on the terrace, and think about the destiny of mankind at large.

I guess this reminds me of a rabid fox. Should they be put down? Yes indeed. Will I cheer at it - no. I will feel sad that the fox got the disease in the first place, and spend some thoughts on the disease.

Same goes here, what is the disease in humanity that made this mess.

But oh well, you all go out partying. The big questions do not matter. All that has changed the past 10 years (for the worse mainly) mean nothing, because an elderly man got assassinated.

Yey.

[Vuk]

I do not believe in evil.

OBM might have been ****** up from our perspective, but at the end of the day he probably was a man who did what he could in the situations he was put in.

Remember back in the days when he was a CIA sponsored freedom fighter? Oh how fast it goes from hero to zero.

Do not get me wrong, I do not think this man contributed with much good to society or the world at large. He has as much innocent blood on his hands as, say, the American general who reigned the first years of the Afghan war (count civilian deaths people).

Does it mean I cheer and pop open a bottle of champagne when he is dead? No - I rather pour me a glass of red, go out on the terrace, and think about the destiny of mankind at large.

I guess this reminds me of a rabid fox. Should they be put down? Yes indeed. Will I cheer at it - no. I will feel sad that the fox got the disease in the first place, and spend some thoughts on the disease.

Same goes here, what is the disease in humanity that made this mess.

But oh well, you all go out partying. The big questions do not matter. All that has changed the past 10 years (for the worse mainly) mean nothing, because an elderly man got assassinated.

Yey.

A rabid fox has no conscience and no choice, Osama did. He murdered innocent people, exploited those around him, and only cared about himself and his rewards on earth and in paradise.