I have to admit to being a little puzzled by your repeated reference of how the AUMF somehow makes a stealthy killing of a foreign subject on foreign soil a permissable act. Is Pakistan our 51st state? Is FDL buying into the notion that if the President says it’s OK, then that should be enough for us mere peons? A little more on this would be greatly appreciated; from a number of posts it seems the position of FDL is that international law is satisfied because of a law the US congress passed, which is certainly not the case.

Since I believe firmly that Pakistan signed off on the mission, they wouldn’t have to be the 51st state. Re: laws of war, there was an analogous situation during WWII when the military commander of Japan, Yamamoto, was shout out of the air. I’d prefer to consult a con law expert but I’ve been satisfied by what I’ve read on the subject.

Not analagous at all – Yamamoto was a military leader of a nation at war traveling in an aircraft of that nation’s military, in an area both nations accepted as a warzone. OBL was, for all intents and purposes, a private citizen residing at a private residence in an independent state with whom we are at peace. The question of international law comes up under circumstances where the host country has not given authorization. If Pakistan had signed off on it, then so be it… although, like all other aspects of this event, the messages are mixed, and our reasons for not informing Pakistan about this would be many. But, the issue of how the AUMF comes up at all is still a question, and it seems like an effort to obscure what the true issues are. Would it mean this action conformed to our laws? Good for us! – but hardly relevant.

Bin Laden had to be killed because if he was captured and put on trial his lawyer/defense team would reveal waaaay too much embarassing shit about the CIA, the Bush family, Saudi connections to terrorism, etc.

If they captured him, then they’d either have to torture him for info, or not torture him and thus destroy the argument that torture is sometimes necessary to extract vital information. (If you can’t/won’t torture the world-wide king of terrorism, why torture anyone lower on the ladder?)

If they captured him they’d have to confine him someplace (Gitmo? Quantico? — Maybe in Manning’s old cell!) and then try him, but where and how? NYC? Gitmo? Civil trial? Military tribunal?

In other words, if we captured OBL we’d have to act like a democracy under the rule of law rather than a banana republic that makes shit up as it goes along.

Bon Ladens assasination is a complete scam. The whole thing is a total lie. No body, no photos, no prisoners, no evidence whatsoever. bin Laden was most likely dead already!

Dave, you dont think that the Bin Ladens just sit around inside their homes wearing suicide vests day in and day out do you?
It’s not a war. It was operaton Geronimoe.This Administration doesn’t understand the value of a group meetings to solidify the message and devise a cohesive and coherent theory. Seems like everybody just hits the press conferences or gives statements without message coordination.

The CIA categorically denies

Well, that should settle it.

Yeah, I pointed out on one of yesterday’s threads that ordinary people, like one’s family, living every day in a house that’s wired, could be hazardous to one’s life. One could imagine a short circuit, or a flood, or any number of reasons to make such an hypothesis not pass the giggle test.

Like the U.S. pays any attention to the rules of war.

I believe there were warrants outstanding for OBL in the U.S. and charges had been filed against him in absentia. (Too lazy to look it up.) But yeah, that’s just a schmigeony digeony diff from being a military commander in a military vehicle.

Haven’t lied in my lifetime that I know of. /s

And we all would like to know why those special flights full of bin Ladens were allowed out of the U.S. right after 9/11 wouldn’t we.

No no no no. Can’t have the prolls find out the A to that Q.

“I am unaware…”

“I don’t recall…”

AGAG (Atty Gnrl Alberto Gonzales)

And while we’re on the lawful & proper behavior of the USG wrt terriss, what did it really do with KSM’s sons whose lives the USG threatened during KSM’s torture.

Inquiring minds…

eCHAHN: Yes, yes, yes, and yes…did I say yes…

“laws of war, there was an analogous situation during WWII when the military commander of Japan, Yamamoto, was shout out of the air”

If this is a military rather than civil matter, doesn’t that mean that all this talk about having Al Qaeda terrorists tried in criminal – rather than military – court is wrong? We tried Tim McVeigh in criminal court for being a terrorist who blew up a building, so I don’t see what makes the buildings that Al Qaeda blew up any different.

You can feed me the lines, I’ll type them, then you can agree. *g*

I love being called our new name, “Dirty Fucking, Whining, Hippie, Conspiracy Theorists”…sounds edgicated an ‘all.

Check

Yes, OBL was under criminal indictment:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/11/98110602_nlt.html

Or vice versa.

Funny how the OBL thingy has made lefties go all atwitter with bloodlust, confusion over rule of law, quick to make exceptions, hypocritical, etc.

I don’t really care. I wouldn’t waste any breath over OBL as I think he bc irrelevant a decade ago. And the best peeps are hypocrites so I wouldn’t expect superhuman behavior on my side.

But since the majority of the treads are on OBL, I feel free to point out such matters.

Thanks.

BTW, that’s one grand jury I would have loved to be on.

Statements of unlikely justifications like “the fears that bin Laden would be wired with a bomb” seem…well…statements of things that were unlikely.

Bin Laden’s location has apparently been known for some months. I can’t guarantee it, but I think it highly likely that there was extensive surveillance with a variety of men and equipment both from the ground and the air. The rough/general routine of the compound would be known. And they’d have a pretty good idea of what sorts of weapons and countermeasures they were likely to face. This was an operation that was trained for. If Bin Laden was in fact not armed, I can’t see that “fear” is a justification for killing. In a situation like that, everyone is afraid. Always.

It’s the “categorically” that clinches it for me.

The buildings that UBL was charged with blowing up were two US embassies in Africa. He was never charged with 9/11 crimes.

He was under indictment, but that is not an death penalty sentence. He was not indicted for 9/11.

Thanks for pointing all of that out.

The picture of the “helo” that crashed sure do look like a drone.

Oh dear. That makes all the diff in the world and certainty warrants extrajudicial treatment of him.

Heh.

eCAHN, you are on fire tonight.

Guess since he was not already indicted for 9/11, that means he could not ever have been, even if he were captured alive? That seems to be the unspoken implication of your comment & ET’s.

It helps to have seen a lot of material already and to then have time to think about what others have been typing.

Lotta heat, very little light.

I can’t believe there are more comments after this one. You wrapped it all up —- nothing more to say.

Please stop. Osama bin Laden died in 2001, and by continuing to credit this ludicrous psy-op with credibility, you are all making yourselves look ridiculous, giving aid and comfort to the sheeple, and discrediting this once fine blog.

Just stop, listen to this interview I’ve linked to and reflect on Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, WMDs, the 9/11 Commission, the Warren Commission, Gulf of Tonkin…..you get the idea.

Governments LIE. All the time, got it?

Man, I’m getting the same sinking feeling I got with dailykos back in 2007. I can’t believe you’re falling for this total bullshit fairy tale.

Self-appointed paramilitary groups (and al Quaeda itself purported to be this) create a problem defining whether they are subject to criminal law or the law of war. The Bush administration defined them as military when he went to war in Afghanistan and not military, subject to POW treatment, but quasi-military “enemy combatants” when he wanted to torture them. And the Obama administration no doubt naively assumed that they could sort out the guilty from the innocent, release the innocent and try the guilty in court. Until they got into office and discovered the hash that Guantanamo had made of the process of getting evidence. So where do you try them even if you capture them, and where do you release them if the court finds them not guilty (not exactly the same as innocent). And who would Osama bin Laden’s defense counsel be?

The mission that the Navy Seals conducted was a more sophisticated version of a SWAT mission to arrest a very violent criminal. And lots of violent criminals in the US get killed in front of their children. Even when the clear intent of the SWAT team is to capture and detain them.

There was a clear violation of sovereignty (and of an “ally’) by conducting the operation without notification, but I don’t think that the Pakistani government is at all displeased–although elements of the security services, ISI, and military apparently are.

Osama bin Laden’s self-constructed narrative was that he would be a martyr. He could have assumed, probably rightly so, that he would be summarily tried and sentenced in an American court–and like the Blind Sheik not become a martyr but receive life in prison.

But I suspect that the public and Republican hysteria over the prospect of trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a US court made the idea of taking extra precautions to to keep Osama bin Laden alive less attractive. Thus Panetta’s construction of the rules of engagement that permitted capture should there be absolutely no resistance.

The legal fog is in the fact that organizations like al Quaeda fall in the cracks of international law.

The moral fog is in the forced decision of deciding between evil and evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who later was arrested in connection with a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, wrote extensively about this dilemma in his writings on ethics.

Bullpucky.

People under indictment for assaulting and battering their spouses have been killed by SWAT teams domestically–and that is not a death penalty offense.

Good for you.

Please lets get back life and who cares about the shiney little object that’s been in the news. I can’t say thanks enough to all that have covered this, but now on who is going to jail except the leaker. It’s just another game as the repuges and demodogs finish off middle classes Amerika

I’m not sticking up for the premise of David’s post, eCAHNomics.

Bin Laden’s location has apparently been known for some months. I can’t guarantee it, but I think it highly likely that there was extensive surveillance with a variety of men and equipment both from the ground and the air. The rough/general routine of the compound would be known. And they’d have a pretty good idea of what sorts of weapons and countermeasures they were likely to face.

Malcolm Nance former master instructor and chief of training at the Navy`s Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) School laid out a similar scenario on Rachel Maddow’s show last night.

Thanks, Twain. I am heartily sick of these assertions as though they’re fact.

So what did you mean to imply by your comment?

What are you implying? That if SWAT teams do it, it’s OK for everyone to do it?

The Editor of Al Arabiya did walk it back some, Dday…! On the Last Word, he’d said we’re relying solely on her testimony…!

Please stop. Osama bin Laden died in 2001,

Bullpucky. Double bullpucky.

Let’s see….we have birthers and truthers and tenthers (and I’m probably missing a couple). What name shall we give to those who posit all of the conspiracy crap about ObL?

Thank you for your well reasoned comment.

I thought I was responding to someone who seemed to be implying that UBL had been charged for blowing up a building on US territory, as McVeigh had been given as an example of someone who had committed a similar crime to that of UBL.

I like your analysis of this.

For me though, not a lawyer or versed in the arguments here, it was really too simple. Bin Laden most horrendously killed thousands of people on US soil. For that he was a criminal and the leader of a military organization bent on destroying our way of life. Call it how you will: he got what he deserved and many would agree the end was just, as in an eye for an eye.

Some will be arguing the fine points of this for years, maybe me too. But we now live in a world of nuts willing to kill to get their way. Hell, we even have an American over in Yemen who some say may take Osama’s place. Good luck pal.

*aargh* Ed pisses me off…! Obama ‘has definite plusses on National Security… Stepped up drone attacks…!’ Wtf…?

I’d point out that in many cases SWAT teams are a complete overreaction (analogous to overmilitarization) of underlying situation.

So I completely reject the analogy.

Like I reject the burn ‘em out to save the children for the Koresh compound.

The approach went wrong before the SWAT teams, or kill teams, or surround them by huge, disproportional weaponry in most situations in which USG or police use excessive force.

Excessive force, military & police has become the U.S. mantra. It is unnecessary and counterproductive in most applications.

Do you really think this was excessive force used against Osama?

I thought the issue was whether there were already outstanding criminal charges against OBL & whether that meant, if captured, he could be processed thru the courts.

The specific crimes on first capture still leave room for additional charges, like blowing up a building, so didn’t understand why you mentioned he was not already indicted for 9/11.

No, it is possible that he could have been so indicted, but don’t you think that almost 10 years for such a high profile case would have been enough to get it before a grand jury? After all, the taliban in Afghanistan told bush that they would hand him over if bush would show evidence that obl actually did what he was accused of doing. I’m not particularly trying to say that he didn’t do 9/11, I’m saying that supposedly that is the way our laws are supposed to operate. How was timothy mcveigh treated (as someone reminded us)?

I agree 100% and would add: It would have given bin Laden a platform to continue the jihad and become the ultimate martyr.

The subject under discussion is whether O could have been captured rather than killed.

As I mentioned, I really don’t care one way or the other.

However, if he were unarmed and could have been captured, then I would have preferred the former.

We do not know the actual circumstances, so I have no info to opine whether it was excessive force or not.

WRT excessive force, I was pointing out that it is often the first option of both the U.S. federal and lower level govts. That suggests plenty of reason to raise the issue. I do not know whether it was so in this particular case.

It’s why I’ve been watching Ed muted this week. Except when I get tottally disgusted and just turn him off. I’m embarrassed on his behalf.

Exactly. There is no statute of limitations on murder.

So there was still plenty of time to indict him for 9/11, had he been captured.

Oh, and “categorically” always does it for me, too. Though not the way the folks who use that word probably hope.

…Excessive force, military & police has become the U.S. mantra. It is unnecessary and counterproductive in most applications.

Pogo was right… “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

I think the whole idea of capturing Bin Laden is preposterous. He was a dead man walking. Now he’s a just plain dead man. I’ve always just assumed that the mission was to kill the guy. i still think so. if that’s the case, mission accomplished. I cannot see why one of gthe SEALS should have put himself in the least bit of danger by doing anything else but shoot him. try him for murder? you’re joking aren’t you. I don’t think SEALS arrest people. Among other things gthey kill people.

However, if he were unarmed and could have been captured, then I would have preferred the former.

I agree. It seems some folks feel that “excessive force” was impossible in this situation because of his heinous crimes. But if he was shot after capture — or while laying in bed on dialysis, for example — that would seem to constitute “excessive force.”

But, as you note, we don’t know exactly what happened because multiple conflicting stories have been floated. That said, I do find the sentiment of some that it really doesn’t matter how he was killed unsettling.

The big question i’m having is wigth the helicopter crash. from the pictures i’ve seen it looks like a crash, not a “hard landing.”

The helicopter was burned before they left the compound.

Do you have a low level of confidence in USG propaganda efforts, not to mention all the avenues the USG has to muffle defendants?

As for martyrdom, dropping OBL into the ocean without due process seems to be much more fuel for those who want it than allowing him to have his say.

After what he did, what could he possibly say that would sway peeps in his direction that makes you so unwilling to hear him out? Do you think there’s enough truth in his objective complaints (like treatment of Palestinians, U.S. military on scared Saudi soil, etc), that he could have swayed more peeps? In which case, perhaps it’s U.S. foreign policy that should be questioned, like all the U.S. military bases on Saudi soil, rather than OBL, that should be questioned.

there’s a lot of vigilantism going on. are we supposed to aspire to this?

lying in bed getting dialysisis the first scenario i’ve heard where killing him wouldn’t have been appropriate. tyhere’s no way oin god’s green earth i can , knowing what i know (very little) second guess what the SEALS did.

So glad our death squads are doing their extra-judicial thang in this never-ending war.

(((Pogo)))

How about naked — taking a shit?

Here’s the thing. OBL could likely not have been captured without undue risk. Osama was no ordinary criminal. He was a leader of a military organization and unless we have all gone bonkers these last 10 years he did kill people and would do again. When you go after someone like that you bring all you got or all you can get IMO, not half a loaf so to speak. You have no idea how many may be there to protect him or the weapons they have. And if the man does not prostrate himself immediately and surrender, you probably shoot him dead since you likely have no idea what will come next. His wife rushed the soldiers we are told, not an act looking to surrender. Osama, as noted, wanted to be a martyr anyway.

That aside, yeah I am quite happy he is dead and at the bottom of the ocean and not in Gitmo or some such place to incite more violence. I agree the govt does tend to use excessive force, but not in this case. Seemed to have been just about right.

International implications I leave to the lawyers to argue.

Thanks potsdam602.

What if he was already dead? They could have killed him again.

Agree 100%.

in pictures i saw there were parts of it all over.i’m juyst saying this operation may have been fucked up from the beginning. i just have trouble believing, frankly, that all of our people who went in also got out alive.

Picture 7 of 9 could be Osama’s boy. Looks like just a kill operation took place; they’re all in PJ’s.
See the kids toy underneath body on pic #8.

Didn’t they say somewhere they had arrested people and used cable ties?

Do you think U.S. military

have no idea how many may be there to protect him or the weapons they have

?

Then you have an even lower opinion of U.S. military than I do.

I do find all of the stories coming out about this obl thingy to be confusing. It seems that no one can get the story straight: massively fortified compound or just a house, fire fight with obl or was he unarmed, woman shield or no woman shield, Pakistan government knew and cooperated or didn’t know and is upset with us, Pakistan knew he was there or didn’t know it, pictures shown of him or photoshopped, will show pictures of body or won’t. There is more, but it’s too confusing to go on. obama and his people should have gotten their story straight before they put it out or they should have clearly stated that it was preliminary.

Hmm, but what if he reached for a gun?? Shoot him then?? Or he tried to escape? He was a dead man walking, as someone said.

can someone tell me what ((( ))) indicates? thanks. sort of a Luddite here.

It’s a hug.

Except you never know what you don’t know for certain and there was no certainty here.

No.

((((hugs))))

IMHO, “dead man walking” is not an appropriate reference. My understanding is that the term refers to someone who has been tried and convicted, and is awaiting a death sentence.

Me neither.

Somebody got whacked that much is for sure. That UFO looks like a drone to me. Short little wings and weird window/camera whatever…google helicopter drone images.

I agree that the two pics of the dead young men have similar facial traits to the pictures that we have been shown that were supposed to be Bin Laden and maybe they are his relatives, however, there is so much BS surrounding this whole morphing story, which I agree is a “fairy tale”…at least at this point.

I say, prove it to the world Barry. Release your pictures.

You mean he wasn’t waiting his sentence?? /s

thanks. good one to know.

yeah. you’re right. i used it and used it not in that sense-which is the correctr meaning, as i understand it, too. it just seemed an apt way to express my thought– whenever we found him, we would kill him.

He was killed outright, or captured first then killed, or as initially reported, killed while resisting. Crafted/managed messages or just normal for these kinds of things?
Seems to me it’s intended to evoke a “bottom-line” reaction, as in “Well there’s one thing we can agree on.”

The slag that remains of that downed chopper, indicates that WP grenades were used to disable all the Comms/Sensitive gear aboard it…!

Photos show some killed in bin Laden raid…

did anyone really think, for the last 10 years, that when we found bin Laden we were going to do anything else besides kill him?

In the hours following the breaking news, even Chuck Todd said OBL was “captured and killed”. Moments after saying it, and obviously realizing what he’d said, he switched the words to “killed and captured”. Realizing that that, too, made no sense (you should have seen his face and how he tripped over his tongue), he switched gears and changed the subject.

Today, an Al Arabiya journalist was on MSNBC fleshing out the story it published about OBL’s daughter’s statement. He said that OBL had been “captured” and after “10 minutes was executed in front of his wife and children.” Al Arabiya’s printed story had it as “a few minutes”, but this man specifically corrected the interviewer who had repeated the “few minutes” he’d read, and said, “10 minutes”.

That is quite an admission — given that none of us know what actually happened. Which story leads you to that conclusion: the one where he is armed or the one where he is unarmed?

I’m not saying that excessive force was used. I’m saying that it could have been used and we don’t know. That there are circumstances under which killing him would have constituted excessive force.

YMMV

Thanks Donald.

what WP??

Hugs.

Umm if OBL is still alive he can surface out in Vegas along with Elvis and live a long happy afterlife. Or he can stand up say “here I am” and we can play whack a mole with him. I’m only kidding. Stories keep changing but one thing stays constant: He’s dead. That’s enough for me though obviously not for most here. Gotta call it a night.

Either we’re a nation of laws or we’re not. Being a nation of laws means allowing Westboro Babtist their hateful say and people who are charged with destroying buildings with people in them a trial. A real one. And the fact that our paramilitary police all too frequently respond first with deadly violence is not an excuse. It’s a symptom.

Beerfart at 94–kind of like i wanted cheney to take the stand and be questioned, i would have liked Osama to be questioned. rose colored glasses wanting to organize material in a better or more sane way.

I assume white phosphorous

thanks eCAHN

You are correct. It was the Che model. Summary execution followed by a body disappearance. Buy a t-shirt if you want a memory.

I was commenting on whether the size of the force they brought was excessive, not if they went in and tried to kill everyone there, which BTW, they apparently did not do. But in truth we don’t know. I doubt a masacre though since these guys are professional and very focused. The could have killed more if they chose too.

thanks

Do you think he would have told the truth?

White phosporus… Or affectionately known as Wiley Pete…! ;-)

Overwhelmed by that logical refutation of a top military undersecretary of state who worked under Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41. “Bullpucky” Jesus, I’m floored. What to do? (sighs and heads for the fainting couch).

What’s significant about what Chuck Todd said is that Todd and most of these on-air personalities get their talking points directly from the White House communications office. They’re primed with phrases, repeated to them over and over, after which they go on the air to basically just repeat what they’ve been told.

When you consider that we’re being primed for a war with Pakistan, because Pakistan isn’t our ally, that there was no way that OBL could have been living in plain sight without the Pakistan government knowing and aiding him, after all of the lies we’ve been told and all of the rights we’ve given up, no administration gets the benefit of doubt.

Exactly.

My comments about excessive force earlier referred to the frequency with which it is employed: often the first, rather than the last resort.

41 shots at Abner Dialo, for example.

With such a record, who would “trust” (without verification) that there wasn’t excessive force.

I’m not arguing that excessive force will not be used in the U.S. Think the U.S. has gone way too far overboard to rein that camel’s nose back in, or to ride back up that slippery slope.

Just trying to ‘splain to lefties how quickly they drop into wingnut behavior when one of their particular enemies is in the cross hairs.

I used to say (in the quaint days) that Larry Flynt is the man we hate to love. BC if you want to draw a line around all freedom of speech (with rare exceptions) you’ve got to “embrace” someone so outside the norms we would like to admit in our every day lives.

Ditto terriss.

Not only were trials held for much worse crimes wrt Nazis held both right after & long after than OBL’s, but so was Ramzi Youssef tried, with no fanfare & convicted.

Why are some lefties are so bent out of shape by OBL. He was responsible for 3000 deaths. Bad dude for sure, but not larger than life (unless you want to make him so) and could have been well within judicial system, were there still one in U.S.

More pics of the helicopter removal, bodies etc.

This site talks about the kill shots, aimed at the Medulla Oblongata, an apricot sized area in the brain to destroy the central nervous system, the poster congratulates the Seals on the very difficult shots.
If this is true, then they were sent in to kill, not capture.

IMHO I think the orders were to make sure they did not bring him out alive. Their ever-changing versions of how it went down, however, indicates they are searching for the ‘right’ version and will eventually arrive upon a version that is to their liking. What I would really like to know is how they will justify the “bury-at-sea” thing. I don’t buy the “he must be buried within 24 hour by Islamic law” explanation. You would think that his family in Saudi Arabia might want to have a body to bury, even if he was (purportedly) seen as a black sheep in his family.

I agree with you. He’s dead one way or another. Good riddance. I just don’t like being bs’d to death by these other people. Just tell the truth and be done with it.

Twain at 108–I don’t know, but hoping to learn more why so much hatrid toward citizens who did not set policy. And, no tin foil but wanting to know more if any American involvement. It seems too many orders were already or too quickly in place by US gov’t right after morning of 9/11. If anything, like the stories that some in US knew of Pearl Harbour but needed for it to happen for things to play out.

Panetta made it very clear that the orders were ‘shoot to kill’, Shek…! 8-(

Here, here.

or hatred at 116

now in the pictues there are pieces of the chopper here and there that makes it look to me a serious crash. is that wrong? my question is
; is there anything about the chopper crash inconsistent with all our people getting out alive?

;

/

I’m more inclined to believe that OBL has been taken to another of the CIA’s secret prisons and he’s being tortured for the locations of Ayman al Zawahari, et al.

It’s inconceivable to me that if he was killed, his body wasn’t taken to Landstuhl and post mortemed, given the renal failure stories we’ve been fed the past decade. The CIA would be squeezing his remains for every last bit of intelligence they could get, for what they got right and what they got wrong and how to close all loopholes in the future.

i agree.

Excessive force, military & police has become the U.S. mantra. It is unnecessary and counterproductive in most applications.

This I agree with. But the purpose of SWAT teams is not to kill. That is not their orders. And what is at issue here is what the orders were to the Seals sent to Abbotabad. I think the orders used the jargon phrase “capture and kill mission”, which then filtered into news releases and completely fuzzed up what the rules of engagement actually were–which I think Leon Panetta expressed more candidly than anyone else. Too candidly politically or diplomatically for some audiences–so the message machine has to walk it back.

But in this case I don’t think the “Candygram for Osama bin Laden” tactic would have been effective.

Two went in and there were two on standby. One standby then assisted in the pickup of the Seals.

Well now you have hit upon a scenario that gives some pause. If he were captured, held 10 minutes and then executed in front of his children, I will have to retreat to some corner and contemplate this thing some more. In that case they could have taken him away and had some unfortunate accident at sea. So for now I don’t believe it.

We really will never know exactly what happened. I hate all this guessing and theories.

right. but i guess i’m asking 2 things: 1) if that chopper is in pieces, as it appears, isn’t it pretty possible people were killed? and 2) if the mission got off to such a bad start doesn’t that make it more likely some of our people got killed?

Interesting…catch him and flip him…

Something weird went down…they were supposedly all watching it in realtime, so why can’t they get their story straight…they are the one’s causing all of the suspicion of themselves..

No, most of it looks like it had a ‘hard’ landing, but, the body of the chopper was literally melted down by WP…! I saw an intial report that did say 1 KIA and 1 WIA from the intial crash, but, it seems to have evaporated since…!

That orders to capture can often in up in killing under conditions in which the person sought puts up serious resistance.

Sure, there are high-profile cases in which SWAT teams are too ready to kill than capture. I just don’t think this is necessarily and automatically the case here.

don’t believe what? that he was buried at sea. i was surprised. but i’m wiwth isis’s botton line school. he’s dead. it’s good.

The picture of the helicopter is the strangest helicopter…might fit a couple of monkeys or something, but really…it looks like a drone.

From what I’ve read, it made a hard landing because of mechanical failure. That likely means that compound survivors were left behind that otherwise would have been flown out. Osama was the only one taken.

Since it was a heretofore unseen stealth chopper, it was destroyed by team before departure. Only the tail section survived.

i thought that was just the tail and propeller. maybe we’re talking about different pictures

Like I reject the burn ‘em out to save the children for the Koresh compound.

Not every anti-government statement is true. This is one of them that is not true even though it has be propagated for years by right-wing organizations.

Well you are right but this is a highly trained seal team. I just find it hard to believe they did not do exactly what they were told to do and no more. I think the mission was crystal as some say and that was kill him – unless he falls down and screams “I surrender”, armed or not, or unless he is plugged into the dialysis machine. How do you tell that nicely to the public?

really? missed that. you believe that?

I don’t believe he was held for 10 minutes and then executed.

I have no doubt that it was a kill mission. I am neither sad nor glad.

That is probably the disappeared truth. 1KIA, 1WIA

*heh* It actually was the souped up version of the Blackhawk… It was a Pave Hawk…

Pavehawk Down…! ;-)

Is this a tail or a drone? Hmmm…I sure don’t know.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/may/04/osama-bin-laden-compound#/?picture=374256202&index=0

I really don’t know nothin’ bout copters and such.

Some day, maybe even years from now, we will get what one guy called, “the rest of the story.”

I’m disturbed by the casual acceptance of the framing of bin Laden as some superevil mastermind, which allows one to accept nonhuman treatment and, incidentally, gives a “bye” to the people who messed up and let 9/11 happen in the first place.

So he was No 1 terrorist. Guess what? Someone else is today, because that’s the way it works. Are we going to approve extregal treatment for the current No 1?

IMO, 9/11 is/was far too convenient an excuse for far too many people to indulge in hysteria. I’m not denigrating the horror or the heroism, just the near-universal hissy fit that has allowed so much destruction of our Constitution and our society. It’s kind of like TB – the real damage is done by the body’s defenses overreacting to the infecting agent.

Aviation Week will bring you up to date:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2011/05/03/awx_05_03_2011_p0-318248.xml&headline=Bin%20Laden%20Raid%20May%20Have%20Exposed%20Stealth%20Helo&channel=defense

The prop and wing angles are horizontal and are in a horizontal line in the Pakistan picture…not so on this stealth heli.

I think you have either misunderstood my reply or fail to realize how dropping his body in the deep blue deprived bin Laden of martyrdom. The USG propaganda machine is functioning on all cylinders and I, for one, have always realized this; I am the ultimate critic and cynic. Perhaps it is you that has bought into their propaganda; I for one see many more questions than there are answers. I merely point out my opinion that the USG found it a better option to kill bin Laden and dump his body than go through a trial where he could be heard and make whatever pronouncements he desired.

Regards, CaBeachBum

The MSM is all in a tizzy, because they think the Pakistan government now has the super secret info on this new super secret stealth thing…Geez, the dang thing crashed…so, wow, what a find..

me either. 10 minutes is 1/4 the time of the mission. whatever. i don’t believe that.

Whether people approve or disapprove of the result, I would say that those Seals are the bravest men around.

Are there any female Seals?

At the moment, we have not figured out how to deal with extra legal geopolitical para military organizations. Al Queda obeys no one’s laws but their own and so there is no appeal to their judgements. If they decide to blow up a subway, they do so and no one can take them to justice, once they make their getaway. IN fact you don’t even know who to blame. Who shall we blame for the underwear bomber? Or the shoe bomber? Hysteria? yeah they count on it. Until someone figures it out and we all agree there is likely to be more violence against those who do it. That’s just human survival instinct. But it should not be inhuman. Who is the next leader? the fellow in Yemen? Will we send the seals in after him? Yes, we will if he blows up a subway and kills people. extralegal or not. The politics of the situation will demand it.

Good question.

yup. and i approve for what it’s worth. i keep saying it’s time to move on but this is getting to be a kinda fun parlor game— what REALLY happened? i’ll get bored soon enough.

They have a tail section and its rotor and access to stealth coatings, but really, this stuff isn’t ultra tech. There’s nothing left of the electronics/main fuselage. MSM may be going nuts, but DoD won’t lose a lot of sleep. The SEALS did their job on exit. The thing is toast.

I’ve never seen such a conglomeration of conspiracy theories and mis-information in one thread. It reminds me why I have been an infrequent visitor lately. FDL is no longer the place I used to frequent. Empty Wheel and David Dayden would be wise to start their own sites.

Look, my mom and ghe nuns used to tell me— If you don’t have anything good to say…..” You know tne rest, right?

Lemme just say this… although it was probably unintentional, by singling out Marcy and Dave, you insulted a bunch of good people who write here.

I blame the underwear bomber for trying to blow up a planeload of people. I also think that our habit of attacking primarily Muslim countries and doing all kinds of damage to innocent civilians as well as infrastructure might have had a little bit to do with it. There will always be weak-minded or just violent people around. We can’t control that. We can control our actions, and not visiting hell on earth on the Iraqi people because our Prez at the time wanted to show up his Daddy/improve his election chances/whatever would have been a good start.

If someone blows up a subway, I hope we act like the Brits did (or a little better – not shooting an unarmed -and innocent-suspect full of bullets would be an improvement), and apply crime solving techniques, rather than going out and attacking some random country that just happens to have oil. If you get a lot of attacks by people from one particular country, perhaps we should apply this concept quaintly known as “diplomacy.” It takes work and patience to do it right, and doesn’t have that visceral satisfaction that a good explosion has for some, but it’s far less troublesome in the long run. Our problem lately is that we’ve been making enemies far faster than we can kill ‘em, and I’m opposed to killing, anyway.

Sixty Something @ 157–we are conspiracy theorists due to not stepping in line with the unproven statements of those who are known to have not been honest (change we can believe in) in the past? if not this blog, there is always ‘Redstate’ for you to peruse.

US Embassies are considered US territory, so yes, blowing up a federal building on COTUS and blowing up a US embassy are both blowing up buildings on US territory. Actually you helped re-enforce the point on how they are the same thing where Bin Laden was under federal indictment from the federal courts for blowing up buildings just as McVeigh was tried and convicted under the federal court system for blowing up buildings. This was a criminal matter.

If you get a lot of attacks by people from one particular country, perhaps we should apply this concept quaintly known as “diplomacy.” It takes work and patience to do it right, and doesn’t have that visceral satisfaction that a good explosion has for some, but it’s far less troublesome in the long run.

With Obama you get both – diplomacy and explosions. Obama is calling the war on Libya “foreign relations.”

With “relations” like that, I’d get a restraining order. Maybe move out of town, if I could.

Flippancy aside, I’m not sure the diplomacy is being applied, um, wholeheartedly. It’s often difficult to do well, and even the people who are good at it (and are truly interested in succeeding at it) sometimes fail spectacularly anyway. Me, I’m not entirely convinced Obama truly wanted to avoid explosions.

Continuing – it’s easy to fail at something you didn’t really want to do, and we know who’s good at that.

There’s a hospital on the aircraft carrier he was taken to.
If this deed was as planned as it has been said, I’d bet an autopsy was done.

from reading the comments to this post, it’s very clear that none of us knows what actually happened.

all we seem to know are the specific narratives that each of has concoted with or without being abetted by government fabrications.

is OBL really dead?
is he still alive and being tortured?
did he die a long time ago, and this whole thing is sheer fabrication?

we don’t know because we don’t have any verifiable evidence.

the only thing that we can safely assume with some confidence is that the government is lying.

again.

The CIA has a at least a 3000 man army in Pakistan so whatever happens there, they must always be considered as possible culprits because they are the usual suspects. They have already admitted to exporting terror. CIA agents admit to making Al Qaeda up. CIA agent David Headley has been found out as being behind Mumbai where they killed an Indian police chief who was behind the discovery that train explosions originally blamed on Muslims was a false flag operation. After Mumbai, Chertoff was able to guarantee a billion dollar contract for TSA machines. Then there was CIA agent Raymond Davis who Pakistani Intelligence made the claim was found trying to deliver nuclear bomb and hazardous biological material to Al Qaeda. Quite a claim for a country receiving so much aid. There is no reason for them to make this up, risking United States anger and retaliation. The U.S. believes they don’t even have to answer to these allegations. Finding Osama bin Laden may provide convenient cover to distract from this story by Pakistani intelligence. The truth is they have given us no evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death. They have given us no evidence of his guilt. They have given no higher-ups any valid trials. All we have are people in our government with already long criminal histories telling us what to believe. Funny how the Iran Contra drug smugglers have their fingerprints all over 911 and are now in Pakistan as they are going from a place that had eradicated drugs to one that is growing more drugs ever before in their history under American guidance. They parade everybody else’s body around for people to see, why not this man, Osama bin Laden?

This is a very interesting post (reading the morning after). DDayen says:

” Needless to say the entire narrative has to be called into question at this point. This isn’t the fog of war, it’s the pea soup of war.”

It was rather puzzling, to say the least, that the original narrative of Bin Laden with a gun being killed was changed to a less favorable one (from the perspective of propoganda). That had to have occurred out of necessity – somebody was going to reveal otherwise.

To me, that gives some ‘legs’ to the claim that he was captured and then killed. And this pea soup, which extends also to the entire White House ‘front’ on war at present, wherever it may or may not be underway, has for me the aspect of winding down presidencies and winding down wars. I can even imagine Obama, recognizing that he cannot be re-elected in 2012, resigning as Johnson did. Canada is not just a pretty face.

The criminality of Osama bin Laden is not what we should be addressing. We should be addressing the assault on the rule of law which this prominent event represents for us as citizens of a civilized nation in a civilized world. If we indeed cannot be a nation of laws we need to understand this while we are still being permitted to talk about it.

Obama’s question was ‘Are you in?’ I think most of us said ‘No.’

Thank you, Juliania. The refrain I’ve read again and again and again goes something like, “I’m a patriot and would defend my nation’s laws to the death, but in this case….” which is why I had to address David’s somewhat sloppy appreciation of how the law and the facts fit together here.

Too many seem too pleased to surrender a person to the greatest violence the state can mete out without first being tried and convicted. It might seem like a small thing -or “inconvenient”-, but the rule of law is based on No Exceptions. We start accepting the presumption of guilt based on the narrative the state has fed us and it is a very quick trip down a slippery slope.
….that hunting/capturing terrorists should return to being a law enforcement matter rather than a military matter fits squarely in the middle of this, but is for another day.

CNN just reported that according to the CIA there was NO autopsy done on OBL, nor was there any dialysis equipment or medical equipment in the compound to suggest that he had renal failure (or any medical condition).

Curious, isn’t it?