Osama Bin Laden is Dead

[a completely inoffensive name]

Actually, one more post just because I still like you guys and want to share some cool content with you. Here is a picture of Obama and his team watching the raid live as it was happening.

[Strike For The South]

secert muslim

Not real

[Warluster]

A man in Washington has shaved his beard after swearing not to shave it until bin Laden was captured or killed on September 11:



CR

I thought I'd contribute to these dicussions... by pointing out that this guy ended up looking a bit like Bin Laden...

Also, ACIN, that shot of the political bigwigs is fascinating - the intense concentration of Obama must only be a fraction of the anxiety they all felt.

[Hax]

^ so true

Couldn't agree more, although the cheering is pretty embarrassing as well. If I was a terrorist I'd lol@that, mission ackomplished

Too true.

[Furunculus]

"Osama Bin Laden is Dead"

Awesome news, i look forward to wikileaks part deux where some hairy US spec-ops guy tea-bags the osama before slotting him.

[Greyblades]

You know I think I gotta agree with strike, crazed rabbit, etc on this one, you yanks have been after this individual for 10 years and you finaly found him afer a decade of hell in the middle east I think you deserve your celebrations. Still you realy should have only captured him and put off the execution untill september 11.

[rory_20_uk]

The head of the CIA was about to be replaced. If I were in that position, I'd want to get the guy on my watch (with all the attached glory that brings) rather than wait a few more months.

He was never going to be taken alive. Trying him in a court would prove very, very messy for oh so many reasons. Shot in the chest and in the head - sounds like one in the firefight and then another one afterwards to be sure.

[Lemur]

I've got some more constructive things to do than to participate in a discussion that results in everyone I talk to calling me a "college liberal", beatnik or what have you.

I know I was kidding, and I rather suspect Strike was as well, since "kidding" is pretty much his home address. Figured the clove ciggies and the beatnik cafe would tip you off. Apologies for any late-night offense.

I should have included further details to make my stab at humor more obvious, something about your beret and your participation in feminist performance art. Maybe elliptical insults about your pencil goatee and your penchant for reading Camus. I never know precisely how absurd to get.

[Greyblades]

The head of the CIA was about to be replaced. If I were in that position, I'd want to get the guy on my watch (with all the attached glory that brings) rather than wait a few more months.

He was never going to be taken alive. Trying him in a court would prove very, very messy for oh so many reasons. Shot in the chest and in the head - sounds like one in the firefight and then another one afterwards to be sure.

How would it be messy? If I remember correctly he was guilty as sin's less conservative twin brother. The only thing I could imagine becoming messy would be finding a jury that wouldnt try to lynch him he second they enter court.

[Banquo's Ghost]

The one thing that I find dubious is the tenuous claim that somehow the Guantanamo detainees contributed useful intelligence. This seems a convenient claim, but highly unlikely.

Pretty much everyone in Gitmo has been out of the loop for some time. Someone who has evaded capture for as long as bin Laden is highly unlikely to keep couriers around who could be compromised by people captured by the USA. This is elementary school counter-intelligence and whatever else bin Laden was, he was not an amateur. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that anyone in Guantanamo had knowledge of people like couriers and their names to share.

One suspects this was really informed by clever intelligence work on the ground and careful infiltration of networks, the ISI and/or observations of known al Qa'eda operatives in the field. This detailed and painstaking work should be commended, not obfuscated through implying Guantanamo sources were of any use.

[Banquo's Ghost]

How would it be messy? If I remember correctly he was guilty as sin's less conservative twin brother. The only thing I could imagine becoming messy would be finding a jury that wouldnt try to lynch him he second they enter court.

I know it's easy to miss in our modern world, but the USA still operates their justice system (in the main) on the basis that someone is innocent until proven guilty. To arrest bin Laden would have been to require a fair trial - which as you note, might have been challenging. In addition, the attempts by lunatic followers to force his "release" would have been costly to innocent lives. Therefore better to give him what both the Americans and he wished - a swift, unmessy (save for the bed linens) execution in "battle".

Not the idealistic thing to do, but a lot less mess.

[rory_20_uk]

How would it be messy? If I remember correctly he was guilty as sin's less conservative twin brother. The only thing I could imagine becoming messy would be finding a jury that wouldnt try to lynch him he second they enter court.

OK...

First off: Jurisdiction. The Hague? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? USA?
Second: getting a jury that isn't biased - in any country
Third: evidence that stands up in court. Most is probably inadmissible. His acts are so extreme that what if he were to plead insanity?
Fourth: sentence. Would anything but death be sufficient? Not all jurisdictions do that.
Fifth: length of trial. It could turn into a circus, and take years.
Sixth: type of trial. A nice military kangaroo court would hardly help future international standing.

I agree that anyone in Cuba is well past their sell-by date. Where he was wasn't even built when they went in there. But it's an easy claim to make and right about now people will believe anything. A clever political ploy to limit the damage that not closing the place could cause. To protest about it now is going to be very difficult.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. ...

I always did enjoy the bard of Baltimore. What a charming cynic!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Actually, if you take history as a guide, movements such as Al Qaeda rarely survive the death of a charismatic leader. So this really does mean something, no matter what you existentialist impulses tell you as you smoke your clove cigarettes in a beatnik cafe....

A fair point. AQ was, in many ways a "coalition of the willing" that coalesced around Bin Laden. They may well splinter into a much less coherent group. Though that would make continued extirpation efforts more difficult, it would also limit their total threat potential.

[drone]

Brigadier General Webb is playing Farmville.

[Strike For The South]

I always did enjoy the bard of Baltimore. What a charming cynic!

I'm fully aware of the man I quoted

I figured the esteemed backroom didn't need me to hold their hand through every refrence I make, of course times being what they are....

[gaelic cowboy]

A fair point. AQ was, in many ways a "coalition of the willing" that coalesced around Bin Laden. They may well splinter into a much less coherent group. Though that would make continued extirpation efforts more difficult, it would also limit their total threat potential.

He was like a figurehead monarch or the Leader from the Simpsons basically groups all over the place gained press and funding by invoking his name however the majority never met him or anyone even remotely connected to him. Broadband Jihad is what were dealing with here and it will likely be impossible to get rid of, maybe we need an Islamic version of angry birds for web enabled radical muslims to give em summit to do other that downloading the terrorist cookbook from rapidshare.

[Viking]

I'm fully aware of the man I quoted

I figured the esteemed backroom didn't need me to hold their hand through every refrence I make, of course times being what they are....

You'll get kicked out of uni one day, I fear.

[Don Corleone]

I'm not exuberant, as I had imagined I would be. I am very, very glad my children no longer have to share the planet with that murderous, dehumanizing, misogynistic bag of puss. And as Lemur and others have related in excellent fashion, the viper of Al-Queda has been defanged. Yes, Islamic militancy will continue, but it will exponentially less effective in the years to come. Beyond the cult of personality OBL brought to Islamic Terrorism, many of you have missed his second, only slightly less beneficial gift to the jackals of the terrorist world: He was the conduit of funds/exchange of communication to the Saudi, et. al., financial sponsors of all of this mayhem.

When Leon Panetta talked about "a startling amount of actionable intelligence", I strongly believe that chief among that is a names list of the boys back in the Kingdom coughing up for all of this. Were I a Saudi wife-beather, funding Wahabist lunatics to try to ease the pressures at home, I would be wetting my bed on a nightly basis, especially given the current political clime of the Middle East. Al-Queda has always been only half the problem... their support network, which we could not penetrate, has been the other half. First, I imagine we picked up at least some directly actionable intelligence yesterday. But secondly, the great-qualifier, the one man who stood in both worlds and could tell the Saudi sheikhs which bomb-throwers were real and which ones were CIA plants (and vice-versa) is gone. They must now either accept that this link can and will be breached (leading to their capture) or they must sever it. Either way, those who pursue freedom come out ahead.

And I am very, very proud of our military, our intelligence services, and yes, our President, of whom I have the highest praise. He made many diffficult decisions over the past few weeks, and did so with a jackass taunting him on international media at every turn. I may not always agree with the man's politics, but I give a heartfelt salute to our Commander in Chief, who earned the title.

But none of this raises to the level of exuberance or joy. Why?

I guess even though Bin_Laden got what he had coming to him in a much more merciful way then he deserved, my friend Jim Greenleaf didn't... and I won't/can't equate their two deaths. Jim was so much more, and his death, a true loss, is not validated or felt less painfully because this flyspeck of humanity has been removed.

But I certainly welcome the cheering in others. Make merry for me.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm fully aware of the man I quoted

I figured the esteemed backroom didn't need me to hold their hand through every refrence I make, of course times being what they are....

I was simply complimenting your choice.

[Strike For The South]

I was simply complimenting your choice.

Well then my new thread sounds insane

Mea Culpa, I'm seeing things that aren't their

[Greyblades]

Hmm... Ive seen alot of these images of a dead osama floating on google's image search and found this image while searching the net, I gotta say while it isnt exactly 100% convincing me I realy got to wonder, where did the first image come from?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Link is pretty gruesome so NSFW:
http://img4.sankakustatic.com/wp-con...n-killed-4.jpg

Its probably just that the image is faked and not one of the actual images taken by the US SEALs.

[Rahwana]

so, there's a possibility OBL is still alive....

[Ronin]

Hmm... Ive seen alot of these images of a dead osama floating on google's image search and found this image while searching the net, I gotta say while it isnt exactly 100% convincing me I realy got to wonder, where did the first image come from?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Link is pretty gruesome so NSFW:
http://img4.sankakustatic.com/wp-con...n-killed-4.jpg

Its probably just that the image is faked and not one of the actual images taken by the US SEALs.

that image has been floating around the net for a very long time.
some moron in a tv station or newspaper picked it up yesterday and started circulating it.
now people are using it as "proof" that the US is lying.....the US government hasn´t released any photos yet.

[Lemur]

so, there's a possibility OBL is still alive....

Anything is possible. The sun could be made of cheese. It is overwhelmingly likely, however, that OBL is dead.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Anything is possible. The sun could be made of cheese.

*devises plan to bake the largest pizza of all time using the sun's own heat... and cheese

[drone]

*devises plan to bake the largest pizza of all time using the sun's own heat... and cheese

But how are you going to deliver it?

[Askthepizzaguy]

But how are you going to deliver it?

Deliver it?

Gravity, my friend. It's so large that you're delivered to it, not the other way around.

[Azi Tohak]

that image has been floating around the net for a very long time.
some moron in a tv station or newspaper picked it up yesterday and started circulating it.
now people are using it as "proof" that the US is lying.....the US government hasn´t released any photos yet.

I hope they don't. I don't know what would be gained by releasing a brutal picture of some old bearded guy with half a face. If you believe he's dead, it will be Osama himself. If you don't, then you'll claim it is some innocent old dude who happened to get REALLY unlucky. Keep the images, keep the names of those who participated, and give me a Call of Duty level where I can pretend I get to infiltrate his compound.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Deliver it?

Gravity, my friend. It's so large that you're delivered to it, not the other way around.

Won't work: we're doomed to orbit it, until the pizza becomes a red pizza giant and it will have incinerated us all.