Osama bin Laden dead

[charliebrown]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

very interesting points well laid out. you know the longer OBL is alive and sending out tapes, the longer the milking of the U.S. goes on. Kind of a cozy relationship isn't it. I wonder if the Pakistan gvt was milking the OBL side as well. I guess follow the money works good their too.

[unlucky]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

We in the "internet space" will never be sure if our adding up of "facts" is correct. That is for certain.

No it isn't.

[unlucky]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

changes nothing

Maybe not, but if it kills the murderer of 3000+ innocent people, I'll take it. Congratulations, USA!

[don]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Former Undersecretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, assistant Editor of the Wall Street Journal, etc. Paul Craig Roberts:

Osama bin Laden’s Useful Death

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that “Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday.”



How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the “report” justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture “the terror mastermind” would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001.


How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the “terror mastermind”--who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel’s Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly--has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years? Do Americans really believe that a government’s security system that can so totally fail when confronted with a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters can renew itself to perfection overnight?


How many Americans will notice the resurrection of the long missing bin Laden as “terror mastermind” after his displacement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Guantanamo prisoner who confessed to being the “mastermind of 9/11” after being water-boarded 183 times?


Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.


Americans are so enthralled over the death of bin Laden that they do not wonder why information gleamed years ago would take so long to locate a person who was allegedly living in a million-dollar building equipped with all the latest communication equipment next to the Pakistani Military Academy. Allegedly, the “most wanted criminal” was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. This is the image of the CIA as the new Keystone Cops.


In an immediate follow-up to the announcement that the Navy SEALs and CIA mercenaries acted in an exemplary fashion following the rules of engagement while a cowardly bin Laden hid behind a woman shield when the gunfire erupted, we have from the pressitutes that “U.S. officials conceded the risk of renewed attack. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge bin Laden’s death, CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a memo. . . . Within a few hours, the Department of Homeland Security warned that bin Laden’s death was likely to provide motivation for attacks from ‘homegrown violent extremists’.”


John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser, told reporters that “it was inconceivable that the terrorist fugitive didn’t have support in Pakistan where his hideout had been custom built six years ago in a city with a heavy military presence.”


So the claimed murder of bin Laden by the US in a sovereign foreign country with which the US is not at war, a crime under international law, has set up three more self-serving possibilities:


-Terrorists will avenge bin Laden’s death, says the CIA, setting up another false flag attack to keep the profits flowing into the military/security complex and the power flowing into the unaccountable CIA.


-Homeland Security can extend the domestic police state, abuse of travelers, and arrests of war protestors.


-And Pakistan is under the gun of invasion and takeover (for India, of course) for shielding bin Laden.


The Israel Lobby’s representatives in the US Congress quickly fell in with the agenda. Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency “have a lot of questions to answer, given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this was actually--this facility was actually build for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army.”


The two reporters question nothing in the government’s propaganda. Instead, the reporters join in the celebration. Nevertheless they let slip that “officials were weighing the release of at least one photo taken of bin Laden’s body as part of what Brennan called an effort to make sure ‘nobody has any basis to try and deny the death.’”


As the Guardian and European newspapers have revealed, the photo of the dead bin Laden is a fake. As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections, about yellowcake, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden’s death? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have for a good price.


My initial interpretation of the faked bin Laden death was that Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies made on-demand.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=24603

[Slimprofits]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. " -- FDR

OBL was living in a Pakistani McMansion in the middle of a Pakistani military laden city. Sounds to me like a fruit being cultivated for consumption at an opportune time. Will this lead to the US declaring a "victory" and pulling out? Thereby also reducing the borrowed USD being spent? Sounds like two of the major issues that will come up in the elections next year.

Regardless, I would be so happy to see the boys come back home and collateral damage end.

Lets not forget that KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED was caught in the Westridge neighborhood of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This is where Pakistan military HQ and Pakistan ISI are based. Former President Musharaff lived just a few miles from the location and many retired and current military officers lived in the same neighborhood.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the “report” justifies CIA prisons and torture?

Republicans and cons that I have to talked to love this part.

How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the “terror mastermind”--who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel’s Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly--has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years?

Exactly why the endless war must go on!

[BigBagel]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I was a member of the NYPD on 9/11 and I put my time in at Ground Zero in the aftermath. I went to police funerals of people I knew with empty coffins being buried. I think all our war making is bad and will play a part in our undoing but for me this is very very simple. We had an outstanding blood debt that had to be collected and on Sunday it was collected. It was long overdue.

[jneal3]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I was a member of the NYPD on 9/11 and I put my time in at Ground Zero in the aftermath. I went to police funerals of people I knew with empty coffins being buried. I think all our war making is bad and will play a part in our undoing but for me this is very very simple. We had an outstanding blood debt that had to be collected and on Sunday it was collected. It was long overdue.

Agree w/the sentiment, and that Paul Craig Roberts is a cynical, opportunistic Glenn Beck wannabe; there's dollars in his rants if they generate traffic. Let's not dishonor the SEALS who carried this out with all the nutty conspiracy nonsense. Occam's Razor.

[oddlots]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

A good commentary on the moment, worth reading in full IMO:

http://www.juancole.com/2011/05/obam...-al-qaeda.html

"They were all dictatorships- the Soviet Union, the Communist government of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, and the Taliban. Usama learned to take the law into his own hands because he had no other way to effect change. He wanted to see the region's dictatorship overthrown in favor of his renewed Islamic Caliphate. It was a crackpot, fringe, pipe dream, but he brought to the aspiration all the experiences and training he and his men had learned during the Reagan Jihad against the Soviets. Then he and his number two man, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to the conclusion that the reason they could not overthrow the governments of Egypt (Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship) and Saudi Arabia and so forth was that these were backed by the United States. They decided it had been a mistake to hit the "near enemy" first. They decided to hit the "far enemy" on American soil. Bin Laden thought that if only he could entice the US into the Middle East, he could do to it what he thought he had done to the Soviet Union.
Hence the horrific attacks on the US of September 11, 2001."

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy, but again what little is known seems highly 'odd', at a minimum.

1) Pakistan might well have known that OBL was where he was. Most amusingly, any participation by Pakistan's armed forces or intelligence agencies in this operation was at best, nominal.

2) The contemplation of using a Predator or ship launched missile strike is indicative of both ongoing US violation of Pakistan's sovereignty as well as reinforcement of the ambiguity of OBL's status in Pakistan's government.

3) Why wasn't OBL captured alive for a trial? By all accounts the compound was not heavily guarded. And again the US fails to hold itself up to its supposed high standards of rule of law.

4) As mentioned before: No credible pictures. No video. Curiously fast DNA analysis - you can do DNA analysis that fast, but that type cannot distinguish between cousins/brothers/children.

If anything, I'd guess that Pakistan did in fact know something about OBL's whereabouts and was using that as a chip in offsetting US influence in India. After all, as long as the US is 'fighting terrorism' in Afghanistan, OBL plays the role of Lenin in pre WWI Germany.

The main party in the region to gain from removing OBL as a Pakistan chip would be India.

As always in the world of shadows, only subsequent moves will pare off the false from the unlikely:

1) US declares victory in Afghanistan in the next 6-9 months (in time for Obama candidacy 2012)

2) Escalation of 'terrorist' activities, al Qaeda or otherwise, ramps up in next 6-9 months both in Afghanistan and elsewhere

3) Pakistan becomes the next 'rogue' terrorist state

4) Kashmir conflict flares up again due to Indian aggression

EDIT: In fact, Pakistan's President Zardari explicitly states Pakistan played no role in this raid:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/as...148250187.html

[Chris Coles]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

A good commentary on the moment, worth reading in full IMO:

http://www.juancole.com/2011/05/obam...-al-qaeda.html

"They were all dictatorships- the Soviet Union, the Communist government of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, and the Taliban. Usama learned to take the law into his own hands because he had no other way to effect change. He wanted to see the region's dictatorship overthrown in favor of his renewed Islamic Caliphate. It was a crackpot, fringe, pipe dream, but he brought to the aspiration all the experiences and training he and his men had learned during the Reagan Jihad against the Soviets. Then he and his number two man, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to the conclusion that the reason they could not overthrow the governments of Egypt (Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship) and Saudi Arabia and so forth was that these were backed by the United States. They decided it had been a mistake to hit the "near enemy" first. They decided to hit the "far enemy" on American soil. Bin Laden thought that if only he could entice the US into the Middle East, he could do to it what he thought he had done to the Soviet Union.
Hence the horrific attacks on the US of September 11, 2001."

Thank you Oddlots, everyone should read this. Particularly the ending paragraphs:

The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields. The new generation of young Arabs in Egypt and Tunisia has a shot at a decent life. Obama has put the US on the right side of history in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya (where I see crowds for the first time in my life waving American flags). People might want a little help from a distance, but they don’t want to see Western troops deployed in fighting units on their soil.

If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

[D-Mack]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Lets not forget that KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED was caught in the Westridge neighborhood of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This is where Pakistan military HQ and Pakistan ISI are based. Former President Musharaff lived just a few miles from the location and many retired and current military officers lived in the same neighborhood.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda's military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.

Certainly, another senior al-Qaeda figure, Ramzi Binalshibh, widely attributed as being the coordinator of the September 11 attacks on the United States a year earlier, was taken alive and handed over to the US. The latest information is that he is on a US warship somewhere in the Gulf.

Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.

Sources close to Pakistani intelligence agents say that the wife, under intense interrogation, has revealed information that is likely to lead to a new crackdown in Pakistan, as well as in Southeast Asia.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html

Khalid died once too, now he is confessing in secret to everything in Guantanamo.


The Osama compound was built six years ago and a copy at an Air Force base in Afghanistan

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8490...e-picture.html

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

What a nice commentary which talks about the 'Arab Spring' in Egypt - one which the figurehead of Mubarak is removed but the army which propped him up remains in control.

One in which the promulgators of 9/11 - a group of young men from Saudi Arabia - and the regime which produced them is not mentioned.

Similarly no mention of Bahrain where yet more democratic sentiment, but sentiment at odds with a comfortable allied and minority regime, is being systematically suppressed even to the point of charging medical personnel with treason for administering medical treatment to 'enemies of the state'.

Equally amusing is how the Obamatopians still seek some way to find redemption for this sad caricature of a leader.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy, but again what little is known seems highly 'odd', at a minimum.

1) Pakistan might well have known that OBL was where he was. Most amusingly, any participation by Pakistan's armed forces or intelligence agencies in this operation was at best, nominal.

There seems to be greatly increased clarity from an official level that Pakistan had no real involvement in this operation. And I think it's safe to say Pakistan's knowledge and likely harboring of Bin Laden extends well beyond "might" to practically inconceivable that they didn't know.

2) The contemplation of using a Predator or ship launched missile strike is indicative of both ongoing US violation of Pakistan's sovereignty as well as reinforcement of the ambiguity of OBL's status in Pakistan's government.

How exactly? Predator drones cannot be operating over Pakistan with the real or tacit approval of Pakistan. They are pretty bloody easy to shoot down if Pakistan doesn't want them there. I'm of the belief that armed drones over Pakistan are a compromise BOTH sides do not want, but accept. It's worth taking into consideration that what Pakistan releases for domestic consumption doesn't necessarily match what they agree to do with the US officially. Drones keep fewer infidel boots on Pakistani ground.

3) Why wasn't OBL captured alive for a trial? By all accounts the compound was not heavily guarded. And again the US fails to hold itself up to its supposed high standards of rule of law.

Why capture him when it suits the US FAR better to kill him. OBL and AQ have declared unconventional war against the US and West(and others). Why do you think fighting it was a law enforcement response is anything but a recipe for catastrophic failure? OBL is dead for the same reasons why Che Guevara is dead......it makes sense to permanently eliminate the considerable value in the media war that his trial and incarceration would provide aid and comfort to the enemy.

4) As mentioned before: No credible pictures. No video. Curiously fast DNA analysis - you can do DNA analysis that fast, but that type cannot distinguish between cousins/brothers/children.

Is it better to release a bit too soon or a bit too late? I'd go with a bit too late......The US killed him in a military operation, not a law enforcement operation. According to the Laws of Armed Conflict I believe it's illegal to distribute photos of dead enemy......OBL as an unlawful enemy combatant may allow this.....but the US only gets one chance to get this right or wrong....better to take too long than to shoot from the hip in regards the release of photos. There's a lot of forces at play...some of the more important considerations is to mitigate any revenge threats...releasing photos straight away may not have accomplished that objection. Also, from the political angle(President Obama is going to Ground Zero shortly for example) there's a need to milk this for everything possible to get approval ratings to tick higher.

There's HEAPS of photos and videos of this op.....individual helmet cams, helicopter FLIR/Thermal, C4I surveillance assets, and probably a bunch of intelligence nerds with all kinds of means to quickly document the dead, the house, etc...and that's all before a NASCAR pit crew full of forensic specialist folks would have quickly documented everything once his body was removed to a secure location.

I suspect we will be drip fed a couple things stretching it out as long as possible to try and help with the 2012 election as well as once local anger has subsided a bit.

Don't forget..the Pakistanis have a history of getting all ragey, burny. and stabby...they have burnt the US Embassy to the ground before.....with Pakistani authorities watching.


If anything, I'd guess that Pakistan did in fact know something about OBL's whereabouts and was using that as a chip in offsetting US influence in India. After all, as long as the US is 'fighting terrorism' in Afghanistan, OBL plays the role of Lenin in pre WWI Germany.

The main party in the region to gain from removing OBL as a Pakistan chip would be India.

As always in the world of shadows, only subsequent moves will pare off the false from the unlikely:

1) US declares victory in Afghanistan in the next 6-9 months (in time for Obama candidacy 2012)

I fear a repeat of "Mission Accomplished!". I think the risk of a cut and run from Afghanistan has just spiked off the chart.

2) Escalation of 'terrorist' activities, al Qaeda or otherwise, ramps up in next 6-9 months both in Afghanistan and elsewhere

Definitely increased risk in the short-term.....but the longer term could seriously depend on both the intelligence take from exploitation from the raid as well as additional pressure on Pakistan to actually get in the game for real.

3) Pakistan becomes the next 'rogue' terrorist state

I think if the US cuts from Afghanistan quickly, which is a distinct possibility with the looming 2012 election.....the US will no longer be beholden to Pakistan for logistical access to Afghanistan which Pakistan has raped the US over.....that ends...and I think the serious shift towards a far more natural ally in India will cement sides of Cold War 2.

Swapping players and sides isn't unknown....look at Somalia/Ethiopia in the 70's/80's...superpowers swapped proxies.....

4) Kashmir conflict flares up again due to Indian aggression

If Kashmir flares up...I actually think it would play strongly to the US.....the US traditionally steps in to de-escalate tensions between India/Pakistan....what if next time the US didn't...or was intentionally slow?

From a Machiavellian perspective....a SERIOUS conflict in Kashmir could quickly suck Pakistan/India/China into an abyss the US may be able to keep at arms length due to it's military capabilities. And allow the US to maintain it's relative position of political/military/economic advantage and call the shots.

From a coldly clinical perspective I believe a Kashmir conflict could kneecap China and eventually commodity prices if China/India take a serious hit(and Pakistan dissolves) and allow the opportunity for the US to make substantial structural changes and reindustrialize using events as a convenient excuse.


EDIT: In fact, Pakistan's President Zardari explicitly states Pakistan played no role in this raid:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/as...148250187.html

Pakistan IS the hub/fulcrum of this regional problem

Things are very exciting in LOTS of places across North Africa, Middle East, Africa......but I think Pakistan is where the biggest likely spark which lights the FIRE will come from.

Just my 0.02c

[Slimprofits]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...ck-terrorists/

The initial DNA analysis appears to have been done far from the scene, by “CIA and other specialists in the intelligence community” on Monday, according to an intelligence official who briefed Pentagon reporters, and it returned a “virtually 100 percent DNA match.”

Press reports say the DNA used to identify bin Laden may have come from one of his sisters, who allegedly died at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. (However, hospital spokeswoman Katie Marquedant wouldn’t confirm this, telling Danger Room, “We have no information at all.”)

But according to a senior Defense Department official, chances are they used the tool pictured above to verify his biometric information. The device is called a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK, a handheld biometrics recorder that takes iris scans, fingerprints and facial scans and ports them back to an FBI database in West Virginia in seconds.

cont. at link