Some Final (For Now) Thoughts on the Past 24 Hours

UPDATED May 4th–Caroline heard a news report that bin Laden had been killed by SEALS. She was intrigued by the notion and asked whether they bit him to death or just hit him with their tails repeatedly. Perhaps bounced him back and forth on their noses until he couldn’t take it anymore. Personally I think leopard seals would have been the best seals for the job. You ever see the teeth on those things? Vicious.

1) White House counterterror chief John Brennan called Obama’s decision to green-light the raid “one of the most gutsiest calls of any President in recent memory.” Now while I agree that Obama was showing incredible nerve going all-in on his presidency with this attack (had it crashed and burned, the parallels to Carter’s failed rescue attempt would have been instantaneous and endless fodder for opponents and Fox), when I read that statement all I could think was: We don’t use proper grammar anymore? “Most gutsiest?” Really? You can say that Obama is a superlative president, but in this country we don’t use double superlatives, Comrade Brennan. It was either one of the most gutsy calls or, preferably, simply one of the gutsiest calls. How are we going to teach kids to speak properly if our leaders don’t know the basics?

2) One of the three people Obama called after the attack (along with W. and Bill Clinton) was Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari to explain why the US had violated Pakistan’s airspace. I would have loved to hear that conversation. “Hi, Asif. It’s Barack. We just shot the šhìŧ out of bin Laden in a mansion that we both know your people must have known about, and if you say so much as one word right now, we’re going to fire an ICBM up your ášš and then go out for ice cream. Nice talking to you.”

3) Even better was Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani’s attempt to claim they had no knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts by contending, “Mafia figures manage to do this sort of thing in Brooklyn.” No. They don’t. Sure, maybe low-level wiseguys keep a low profile, but the major players? EVERYONE knows where they are. The government, the Feds. Little Jimmy down the street knows where the big guys live, for God’s sake. They’re wiretapped 24/7. For the most part, the only Mafia figures in hiding are the ones that the government has in witness relocation. Or, to put it another way: Yo, Husain? Your excuse? Fuggedaboutit.

4) A suggestion to the Navy. You know when your guys showed up, folded flag in hand, at the door of one of the Navy SEAL’s parents to inform them of their son’s great accomplishment? Yeah, uhm…you should have called first. As it was, they naturally assumed that your guys were there to tell them that their son was dead and the parents burst into tears upon seeing you. So next time ring ’em up and say, “Hi, this is the Navy and we’re calling with GOOD NEWS.” Say that fast and up front to avoid scaring the crap out of the people you want to honor.

5) It’s nice that this happened this time of year. Just think: This summer if, while you’re splashing around in the surf at the beach, you suddenly realize your bladder’s full and the tide’s going out, then feel free to empty it because it means you’re pìššìņg on bin Laden’s grave.

PAD

149 comments on “Some Final (For Now) Thoughts on the Past 24 Hours

  1. Good read Peter! Especially the last one!

    I am glad he was gone, but would have liked to have seen a more somber tone. I thought the President did a good job and was somber and serious about the matter, I just wish the media would have been a little better at it.

    The hooting and hollering by the media should have been tempered by the realization that this is what it has come to, sneaking around and taking these guys out. Just a sorry statement about the world we live in.

  2. Re: #4 — Are you sure this happened? Sounds like an instant urban legend to me for two reasons: First, in all of my years associated with the military, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in the past for a living military member. Second, military people publicizing such an event in any fashion puts both the Seal and his family at risk for possible future terrorist repercussions. That said, in this day and age of Facebook, twitter, YouTube, et al, nothing surprises me. The release of military stuff that would have been unthinkable from an OPSEC standpoint 30 years ago seems to be posted online every day — an alarming reality which I’m sure our potential adversaries no doubt take advantage of with unbridaled glee.

    1. Reported in NY Daily News today:

      “…(I)n Los Angeles, officials carrying an American flag knocked on the door of Ruben Mejia’s parents.
      .
      “The Mexican immigrants burst into tears, fearing their Nay son had been lost. Hurriedly they were assured their son was very much alive and was a hero of the Bin Laden raid.
      .
      “‘It was one of the biggest scares,’ Martin Mejia, a machine operator, told La Raza Spanish radio in Los Angeles.
      .
      “‘When they saw us begin to cry, they clarified that bringing the flag was an expression of honor because our son carried out a great mission for our nation.'”
      .
      Now I suppose it’s possible that that’s entirely fabricated. If the News subsequently publishes a retraction, I’ll be happy to pull it.
      .
      PAD

      1. Un-freakin’-believable! Why not go the whole route and also list their address, where they work, their schedule, if they are gun owners, and in which dresser drawer they keep they valuables? If this report is true, then we have some real, real, real (did I say real?) stupid “officials” running around out there — — but, hey, I guess I already knew that.

      2. It’s actually very much possible that it was the family itself that called the media (or told some friends who then did it). It certainly sounds that way from the article quotes above. If that’s the case, then the officials biggest “mistake” was in not impressing strongly enough on the family the importance of keeping this quiet, for they own safety
        .
        What I like about this is the fact that the Seal is a son of Mexican immigrants (maybe even an immigrant himself), so I really want to see this thrown in the face of all those xenophobe “they contribute nothing to society” people and groups.
        .
        Raphy

      3. I mean, aside from the way in which they delivered the news. That could have been done better.
        .
        Raphy

      4. Ralph — The reason I seriously doubt this story is because I worked on classified equipment for more than a dozen years (eight of which involved a “black program” — the SR-71), and no one — not even my wife — really knew anything about the equipment I worked on. And my parents and siblings knew even less about my job than did my wife. What Navy Seals sometimes do is even more secret than anything I ever did, and I just can’t believe such a security lapse like this is acceptable today. Then again, I still can’t believe some private downloaded thousands of classified documents and passed them on to Wikileaks either.

      5. This story seems very hard to believe…I’ve tried to find some other sources and I can’t even find it on the Daily News Website-no hits on that name. Think Progress has the story but seem to be quoting a fairly unreliable source. Theres the additional odd note that this original story claims that the soldier in question might be splitting the 50 million dollar reward with his fellow soldiers, which flies in the face of reality.
        .
        If this is a fake I hope it’s not some poor soldier whose parents are telling tales that are going to make things tough for him.

      6. R. Maheras –

        You worked on the SR-71? My grandfather was involved in working on the electrical systems for it, as memory serves. It remains the only thing we’ll ever know about what he did while they lived in Nevada (in the 1960s, I believe).

      7. Harostar — Much of the SR-71 stuff has been declassified since its retirement. For example, the SR-71 Flight Manual (the “dash one”), which used to be classified Secret-SAR (Special Access Required), is now declassified and posted on line. It was a special aircraft and those of us who had the privilege of working on it and seeing it fly on a regular basis feel pretty dámņ lucky. It’s nice to see its resurgence in popular culture recently. First, it made an appearance in the mega-hit video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” whose SR-71 level I was asked to screen and provide feedback for during a visit to Treyarch six months before its release. Second, based on what I’ve seen in the trailers, it has a significant role in the upcoming film, “X-Men: First Class.”

      8. some pushback on the Ruben Mejia story–http://storify.com/g5member/hero-or-hoax-the-ruben-mejia-story?awesm=sfy.co_7ba&utm_campaign=g5member&utm_content=storify-share&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_source=direct-sfy.co
        .
        The lack of any attention from the mainstream media may or may not be telling–if Ruben Mejia is a member of the SEALS he is probably wanting to throttle his father about now, but Occam’s razor demands that we assume the whole story is most likely fictional.
        .
        I’m a little surprised that The Daily news seems to have scrubbed the story–I can’t find any record of it there. Embarrassment or national security?

      9. From what I could glean, the whole story apparently originated from a listener who allegedly called in to a Spanish radio station in Los Angeles — not the most reliable source, eh wot? Yet the radio station’s Web site has no transcript or even a mention of the caller (something that one would think would be there for a newsworthy tid-bit like this). News-wise, sometimes I think the Internet is like a proverbial fan getting crap thrown into it — even when the crap is fake.

      10. News-wise, sometimes I think the Internet is like a proverbial fan getting crap thrown into it — even when the crap is fake.
        .
        You DO remember that I got it out of an actual physical copy of the NY Daily News, right? Not off the Internet?
        .
        PAD

      11. Yeah, but where did “The Daily News” get the story from? From the looks of it, a hispanic wire service that got it from a blog post that got it from a guy who called into some radio station in Los Angeles. That’s reliable sourcing? God help the news business!

      12. If this foolishness is representative of typical reportage, is it any wonder why the electorate is so utterly misinformed?

  3. Regarding point 4: That, on a national (or at least, citywide) scale, was one of Jon Stewart’s points last night. Modified to remove humor: “When the President calls a sudden and unanticipated press conference on 10:30 on a Sunday night, you think the worst. And then we waited about two hours from the announcement of the speech to the actual speech. Next time, could you at least say ‘but it’s good news’ first?”

    1. That was what was freaking me out, myself. The lid was on, and then the President calls a last minute speech? I thought it was one of three things:

      1. We were in a 4th war.
      2. The Vice President or another high official had died.
      3. An asteroid was hurtling towards Earth.

      I’m glad it was good news, but from the announcement to the leak, I was worried there.

      1. I wonder if Obama was a little disappointed that the actual news, along with several of the details, were revealed before he got to the podium. Watching CNN, it started with “We don’t know what the conference is about” then went to “…but it’s not about Libya” to “…but it is about national security” to “Osama bin Laden has been killed” to “”Osama bin Laden has been killed in a compound in Pakistan.” After that Obama made the announcement.

        I suspect it’s like a guy planning to ask his fiance to marry him while at a dinner with friends and family, but half an hour before everyone starts speculating why they’re there, then they start with clues he’s planning to pop the question, then they’re all in agreement he’s going to pop the question — then he gets to “surprise” her with the proposal.

        Still, Obama is the *only* U.S. president who will EVER get to announce that bin Laden has been killed on his watch. And you thought being the first African-American president was something…

      2. I turned on Fox, I know, I know, and Geraldo had the whole thing happening a week prior and that it took this long to match his DNA with, I think, his sisters that we, for some reason, had laying around for this exact circumstance because we had killed him with a Predator drone and there was not much of him left to identify. I’m surprised he had the right country.

  4. Great piece, Peter. That second bit was echoed last night by Brian Williams, and like you, I’d love have been listening to that convo. And I agree with you about the first part, too. Apparently grammar isn’t much taught in school these days; I sure as hëll don’t recall words like “funnest” popping up in Webster’s when I was a kid. And a double superlative like that, if I’d used it aloud or in print, would’ve gotten Emma Mauldin’s ruler laid upside my head, and that was solid hickory. The ruler, not the head, although she’d have contended otherwise… I dunno who Brennan had for an English teacher, but she obviously wasn’t it.

  5. You realize, of course, that since all rivers lead to the sea, I now am honor bound to go and piss in the Cumberland.

  6. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad bin Laden’s out of the picture. However, I can’t help but wish that they had taken him in for some sort of international war crimes trial instead of killing him in the field. There’s no way he would have gotten off anyway (it’s freakin’ bin Laden, he practically bragged about his crimes). An execution would have been inevitable. Still, I think it would have gone a long way to show the world’s stance on acts of extremism and also that we don’t just go out there and kill people who do them without trial.

    Of course, I’ve been told I’m too much of an idealist for my own good.

    1. Yeah, I’ve been pondering that one. Especially since we’ve learned that bin Laden was unarmed when he was gunned down. That basically means he was executed in the field when he could have been taken alive. They gave him no chance to survive.
      .
      And then I think about how much chance bin Laden gave the people in those planes he crashed, and how much chance he gave the people in the Twin Towers.
      .
      It may not be real justice, but it’s poetic justice. I weigh the notion of giving him a worldwide forum to spout his hate for the next year or so, and the news cycles turning into all bin Laden, all the time, versus what happened in that room.
      .
      They made the right call. To hëll with him, in every sense.
      .
      And if that makes me sound like I’m contradicting myself since I’m on record as opposing capital punishment, then very well. I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes.
      .
      PAD

      1. To each their own. You responded to my opinion much better and more intelligently than some people I worked with did.

        However, as a rather strict idealist and pacifist and someone very much against the concept of “revenge”, I’m getting used to people disagreeing with me quite vehemently. Especially when it comes to these matters.

        Also, looking at my own opinions, I’m starting to think that being an idealist is kind of like being an artist. You’re never quite satisfied with anything.

      2. I’m not disagreeing with you in particular, Adam. I think your opinion is perfectly valid. In fact, I think you’ve taken the moral high ground that I have willingly abrogated.
        .
        PAD

      3. There’s also a pragmatic element to killing him. While I have no military training, I suspect it’s a *lot* harder to transport a live, presumably struggling person out of a country covertly and quickly than to haul a corpse out.

        Plus, with respect to those against capital punishment, who would *really* want to be the person who had the perfect opportunity to kill bin Laden — and didn’t? There’s no question of his guilt, no mitigating circumstances or wrongful identification. I’m just sorry he didn’t suffer more before he died.

      4. .
        “Plus, with respect to those against capital punishment, who would *really* want to be the person who had the perfect opportunity to kill bin Laden — and didn’t?”
        .
        Bruce Willis.

      5. The rightness and wrongness of executing someone like bin Laden reminds me of something Leo said in the episode “Game On” from “West Wing”…
        .
        You think the President’s afraid that if he admitted complicity in Shareef’s death, he would lose votes in this country? To sweep all fifty states, the President would only need to do two things– blow the Sultan’s brains out in Times Square, then walk across the street to Nathan’s and buy a hot dog.
        .
        Really, you can just drop in bin Laden’s name where it says “Sultan,” and that’s more or less accurate.
        .
        PAD

      6. …bin Laden was unarmed when he was gunned down. That basically means he was executed in the field when he could have been taken alive. They gave him no chance to survive.

        Not having been there, i’m not second-guessing the guys on the ground; they may well have wanted to take him alive, but when there’s a lot of crap flying around, it gets real easy to make a mistake and (FreakAngels to the contrary notwithstanding) it’s pretty hard to put the bullet back in the gun once you pull the trigger…

      7. Was it Thoreau or Emerson who said that a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds?
        Anyhow, I thought I had read that Bin Laden had been given the order to freeze, or stand down, or what have you, and elected to bolt, whereupon the SEALS capped him. As in all things, however, I could be mistaken…

      8. I’m against the death penalty as well, but when it comes to “Hitlers” (people who have committed Genocide, or something very close, in Bin Laden’s case), I’m all for it.

        There are just some crimes so huge and horrible that this is fitting punishment.

  7. Peter, we live in a world where a teacher got fired for using the word ‘ņìggárdlÿ’ and Sarah Palin compared herself to Shakespeare because she accidentally mashed two words together.And yes, I would have loved to hear the telephone conversation in question although it’s probably just as well that the mission was over at that point. I suspect this whole affair could have gone very badly, in all sorts of different ways. I’m a bit surprised that Bin Laden didn’t have a giant red panic button on the wall that would have summoned quite a large number of Pakistani troops within minutes but I should think getting shot in the eye might make such things problematic.
    .
    I just hope Bin Laden’s corpse doesn’t come in contact with all the irradiated water flowing out from Japan. The prospect of a vengeful irradiated terrorist zombie fills me with dread. I can’t think of anything worser.

    1. Colbert actually had something worse: That sharks eat his body which is infected by irradiated water and he becomes Fin Laden.
      .
      PAD

      1. I still chuckle when I think about his comment: “Seth Myers did a good job at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but Obama made a killing this weekend.”

  8. Regarding #3 (and #2 I guess)…
    .
    Not a Fan by all means of the last few Pakistani goverments and I find very plausible that elements of their intelligence services have been colaborating with extremists. But extremism and terrorism is a problem for them too. I mean, just a few months ago they regained control of a huge chunk of territory that pashtun (that is, taliban-friendly) guerrillas had conquered. They have had blasts in their main cities nearly every month and lets not forguet about that nice incident in the Red Mosque. While its true that Pakistan is home to many muslim extremists who favour terrorism, too often I read people using that as a reason to target the country and its goverment, hold them responsible, regardless of them actually waging war against those extremists. I’ve read similar comments about Yemen.
    .
    Lets just hope that if a basque terrorist ever do anything in the USA you guys dont paint the whole Spain (or the basque country for that matter) with the same thick brush.

    1. As long as we can keep Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, I doubt we’ll have an issue with Spain.
      .
      PAD

    2. I think if Basque terrorists ever do anything in the US, the overwhelming reaction will be “What the hëll are Basques?” It would likely be the first time the average American had ever heard of them.

  9. Hello, Asif? Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?… Oh-ho, that’s much better… yeah… huh… yes… Fine, I can hear you now, Asif. Clear and plain and coming through fine… I’m coming through fine, too, eh?… Good, then… well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine… Good… Well, it’s good that you’re fine and… and I’m fine… I agree with you, it’s great to be fine… a-ha-ha-ha-ha… So hey, guess what? Turns out Osama’s been hanging out in Abbottabad. Abbottabad. ABBOTTABAD. Yes. Yes, I understand the golfing’s great there. What? Yes, perhaps that IS why he was there. Anyway, he’s not there anymore. He took a funny little bullet to the head….

      1. I KNEW that eventually that’d get used on one of the more clever sites. I mean, if even I thought of it, surely someone with more active brain cells would.

        And I apologize for calling you Shirley. Say hi to Laverne.

      2. Mr. David, what you may not know is that our intelligence was not exactly right… the Seals checked out a military base where bin Laden was supposed to be and he wasn’t there.
        .
        They next checked out a terrorist base they had reports on, but again, no bin Laden.
        .
        So where did they find him?
        .
        THIRD BASE.

  10. .
    “For the most part, the only Mafia figures in hiding are the ones that the government has in witness relocation.”
    .
    Maybe that’s exactly what he was talking about.
    .
    “Just think: This summer if, while you’re splashing around in the surf at the beach, you suddenly realize your bladder’s full and the tide’s going out, then feel free to empty it because it means you’re pìššìņg on bin Laden’s grave.”
    .
    Been reading my Facebook comments have you?
    🙂

      1. Good post Pete.

        I Laughed at the Barack and Asif part

        Úšhølë osama got far more than he deserved.

    1. Jerry,
      Found out a few details in the past hour or so:
      1.)Obama invited Bush to Ground Zero to acknowledge his role in combating terrot in general and Osama in paricular
      2.) Nancy Pelosy telephoned Bush to thank him
      3.) Bush declined the invitation

      If the current president and NANCY FREAKING PELOSI can acknowledge Bush’s efforts, why can’t you? I’m not Darin. I’m not minimizing Obama’s contributions to the point where they don’t exist. That would be insane. But to not give the 43rd president at least SOME credit seems to me to not only be petty, but ridiculous.

      1. That was a class move by all concerned. I’m surprised by Pelosi doing so and give her full props for it.
        .
        Not stealing any of Obama’s spotlight is also the right thing for Bush to do–not that his critics will acknowledge it but he has set a high standard for behavior a former president should display toward his successor.

      2. I credit him with failing to track down bin Laden and then talking dismissively about him even while families of 9/11 victims were suffering because of his actions. I credit him and his administration with saying they couldn’t possibly have expected bin Laden to attack the US when there was an intelligence report on their desks that stated exactly that. I credit him with hauling us into a war that was fabricated solely to foster a political agenda. I credit him with destroying the economy and plunging us into debt. I credit him and his supporters with finding innovative ways to blame Clinton or his policies for absolutely everything that went wrong during his administration and taking no blame.
        .
        And yet Obama’s critics, while willing to lay the current economic mess wholly and completely at Obama’s feet, are now demanding to know where Bush’s slice of the credit pie is for info that was reportedly garnered in 2006. Info that failed to lead him to bin Laden. And there’s no guarantee that, even if he had managed to make use of it, he would have done so in a remotely effective fashion.
        .
        And most repulsively, his supporters then declare that the means through which the intel was garnered justifies every inhumane action that was taken, every abrogation of human rights, every innocent person who was caught up in the net and held indefinitely. All of that is okay because Obama was able to use the information that Bush didn’t because he was busy not thinking about bin Laden very much.
        .
        Why don’t I acknowledge it? Because we both know that if the timeline shifted forward a couple of years–if 9/11 had happened on Clinton’s watch–then people like you and all the Fox talking heads, rather than insisting that we need to line up behind the president, would have used it as proof positive that we needed a Republican in office. And if years down the line, Bush had gotten bin Laden using intel gathered by Clinton, not a single shred of credit would he or his followers be giving to his predecessor.
        .
        Obama and Pelosi acknowledge it because from a political point of view, they have to. They don’t have the luxury of calling out Bush’s supporters on their attempted credit-grab. I do.
        .
        Hypocrisy? You’re soaking in it.
        .
        PAD

      3. Not stealing any of Obama’s spotlight is also the right thing for Bush to do–not that his critics will acknowledge it but he has set a high standard for behavior a former president should display toward his successor.
        .

      4. Oops.
        .
        Bill, Obama not only gave credit to Bush in his speech, but also directly invited him to Ground Zero. Bush showing up uninvited would be attempting to steal the spotlight.
        .
        As for any sort of behavioral standard, Republican presidents haven’t exactly kept themselves in the light after their times in office (excusing Reagan for obvious reasons), so it’s not as if Bush is having to make a real effort to stay out of the way. I stated years ago that George W would, like his father, more or less disappear from public life, and that has been the case.

      5. I guess anyone would look good compared to how Jimmy Carter has annoyed all of his successors, from both parties.
        .
        Clinton was actually pretty good about this as well, with the understandable exception of the things he had to say to help his wife in her quest for the nomination. Carter is just…well, Carter.

      6. I am not sure the invitations and phone calls were just about sharing the credit. 9/11 happened when Bush was President. So Obama is a bit like the policeman that calls a father to tell him “We finally got the bášŧárd that killed your daughter.”

      7. By offering Bush a share of the credit, Obama is actually strengthening his claim for the lion share of the credit — since he’s the one offering the share — while at the same time appearing magnanimous.
        .
        And this is exactly the reason why Bush could not have accepted the invitation, since it would help Obama look even more presidential.
        .
        Cynical. But that’s politics.

      8. I don’t know, Micha, since we can’t know what’s on people’s minds I don’t see why we should assume the worst.
        .
        I feel the same way when PAD tells us what Jerome (or at least, “people like him”) would do in some alternate reality. It’s not really a compelling argument since it isn’t falsifiable. Like calling people racist, it’s easy to do and impossible to successfully argue against since we cannot know what is in another person’s mind. Lacking any proof otherwise, assuming the worst about people may tell us more about ourselves than about them.

      9. Although Bush has been a decent ex-president, I think we call all agree that as an ex-vice president, Cheney has been a total dìçk.

  11. This whole situation with Paskistan reminds me of “24” Season 2, don’t you think?

  12. I loved this post. I laughed….I cried, okay not really, after I was done laughing, I just laughed some more.

  13. #5 is posted on my Facebook page (with attribution to you, Peter.) And while someone else may also have come up with it, I read it here first. My other favorite comment (which I’ve also seen in a few places is that on Friday a prince married his princess and on Sunday a bad guy was killed. It was a Disney weekend!

    Pascal, the picture of the president, Secretary of State Clinton, Vice-President Biden and other (I assume) cabinet and military leaders looked EXACTLY like a scene from the second season of “24.” I wonder if Dennis Haysbert is feeling a sense of deja-vu.

    And I also wonder if, when the Seals received their final instructions, the last words were,”if any of you are captured or killed the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

    1. On the other hand, William and Kate now share their wedding anniversary with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, and Osama’s death was announced on the anniversary that Hitler’s death was announced.

  14. nice post Pete, made me laugh with the Barack and asif šhìŧ

    áššhølë osama got far more than he deserved with a double tap and being turned into fish bait

  15. They trained dolphins to plant bombs on ships. So imagine some vicious attack seals sneaking up on someone while they were at the beach, and attacking them. That’d be so cool. And hey, it wasn’t us, it was the seals! Mother nature is angry! It is the will of God and all your followers using the religious angle as an excuse for your own vicious agenda, will now have to admit that God is not on your side.

    If they already have mind control devices to move mice around(really does exist), why not just have a bird fly over, spot the target, and peck them with a poison beak?

    “We didn’t invade your airspace! It was the birds! They migrate across borders all the time, and no one ever arrest them at immigration.”

  16. Hopefully it will work out better than when we tried to defeat Hitler with bomb laden bats. True story.

  17. .
    UPDATED May 4th–Caroline heard a news report that bin Laden had been killed by SEALS. She was intrigued by the notion and asked whether they bit him to death or just hit him with their tails repeatedly. Perhaps bounced him back and forth on their noses until he couldn’t take it anymore. Personally I think leopard seals would have been the best seals for the job. You ever see the teeth on those things? Vicious.
    .
    .
    🙂 Big LOL 🙂

    1. That thought crossed my mind for some strange reason. But I was thinking that they already made some kid movie involving militarized seals. I couldn’t find anything on the internet except for Andre and now I can only imagine hijinks that ensue when a rag tag team of seals hunt terrorists (this also invovles blowing many raspberries).

      Cute?

  18. Well, the very latest is that Obama has decided to not release the photos of bin Laden’s body. Considering that the folks who have seen them have all agreed that they’re gruesome, this is for the best.
    .
    Not to mention, their release won’t stop the conspiracy nuts any more than the release of the long form of Obama’s birth certificate shut up the birthers. They’ll just double down regardless.

    1. Man, I just don’t know…nothing can take away from the pleasure of having OBL shuffling off this mortal coil but the handling since they took him out has been pretty slipshod. I’m willing to forgive a lot but the story seems to change by the hour and while it’s true that nothing will convince the doubters that Bin laden is well and truly dead, this lack of a single message from the administration will probably increase their number. Nothing we do or don’t do will calm those who are determined to make us the bad guys so this consideration for the sensibilities of fundamentalists is a wasted effort and makes us look like we are ashamed of what we did. We shot him like the rabid dog he was so let the world see him as he is.
      .
      But for gods sake lets get everyone on the same page here. This was a great kill but it doesn’t mean that every single member of the team needs to be out there giving their version of events, especially when it’s clear that they don’t know all the facts. Obama needs to put his foot down before the meme goes from America F*** Yeah! to The Neverending Story. I didn’t mind when it turned out that ok, maybe he wasn’t killed with his gins drawn, hiding behind a girl but at the rate this is going I’m half expecting it to turn out he was putting a band-aid on a bunny rabbit. Why does this keep happening? has anyone in this town ever heard of the phrases “No comment.” “I don’t know.” or “We’ll get back to you on that when we know more.”?

      1. I think to a degree the fault is the media and us, the consumer.
        .
        We are so desperate for information, and the media will print just about anything anybody says.
        .
        Why wait for the facts when you can have the scoop and then watch as everybody retweets it to their friends?
        .
        I don’t know how the government competes with that.

      2. They’re afraid the picture of Obama’s ruined body will be used as fundamentalist propaganda. But really, I’d rather have this picture circulating than the usual ones you see, with Obama posing as some wise man of the mountain, looking all smug and smirking.
        .
        War and violence are ugly. And whenever people want to hide this fact, it makes me suspicious.

      3. .
        “Why does this keep happening? has anyone in this town ever heard of the phrases “No comment.” “I don’t know.” or “We’ll get back to you on that when we know more.”?”
        .
        Bill, it’s not even the people in “this town” that are saying some of the stuff that’s out there. What we’re seeing right now is exactly what we’ve discussed for years now about so many other things that the modern media has covered. There is no fact checking when a story is hot and everyone is running to get the scoop or be the one to get the biggest ratings/readership figures.
        .
        As you yourself pointed out about the story where the Navy visited the parents and scared them spitless; There is no credible source for that and the “facts” being discussed in the story fly in the face of reality. It doesn’t stop the modern press from running with it anyway.

      4. No argument from me on how the press can bølløx things up but lets give some credit to the politicos for a lot of the trouble we are seeing with this story. John Brennan said Bin Laden was killed in a firefight,living in this million dollar-plus compound, hiding behind his wife who was used as a shield. A lot of that is now being denied by officials. Panetta said the pictures would be released. Now they won’t be. Panetta also said that torture–or as he puts it “enhanced interrogation techniques”–was used to get some of the information that led to Osama, something others deny. And there were others who did not want their names used, who were also giving out false info (unless one believes the media just made stuff up out of whole cloth).
        .
        They need to SHUT UP, especially Brennan, who has really been Chatty Cathy.
        .
        Again. I don’t care if it turns out that the reports by Osama’s daughter are true and we caught him alive and then shot him dead. (Some are reading way too much into the exact wording Obama used–“After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden ” does not necessarily mean he wasn’t killed during a firefight and “an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden.” does not necessarily mean he was captured and then killed). But lets get a story and stick to it and hey, why not make it the truth since that is less likely to bite you on the ášš later. Anything held back will eventually come out–if loose lips sank ships we’d need a glass bottom boat to see the fleet with THESE guys running things–and the constant drip drip drip of new and modified info looks needlessly bad. This was a great victory, let’s act like it.

      5. .
        I’m not sure that at least the photo thing is really as much as some are making it out to be. Panetta then told NBC News only that the photos would come out eventually.
        .
        “The government obviously has been talking about how best to do this, but I don’t think there’s – there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public. The bottom line is that, you know, we got bin Laden, and I think we have to reveal to the rest of the world the fact that we were able to get him and kill him.”
        .
        That was worded in such an all over the map way that I didn’t take it as meaning we’d see a photo any time soon when I first heard it. Yeah, he should have kept his yap shut, but there you go.

      6. It is interesting to see that the debate over releasing the photo(s) has split not only the White House, but also Republicans.
        .
        For example, Rep. Rogers and Sen. McCain both see no point in releasing the photos, but Sen. Graham calls it a mistake not to.
        .
        Of course, the situation becomes somewhat depressing: 3 others Republican senators claimed to have seen a photo, but it’s the fake one, as apparently no one from Congress has been shown the real photos yet.

      7. Welcome to war in the post-modern age.
        .
        It’s not enough to have good intel, training, equipment. You also need to have a good and consistent story to tell. And you have to have it the minute the story breaks.
        .
        It’s not enough to have good soldiers, you also need good storytellers, and you need visuals.
        .
        The story is sometimes as important as the operation itself. You need to control the story, or someone else will, usually your enemy. The story that comes out first will be the story most people are familiar with, so you want it to be your story with your visuals that people find in google and youtube, and which they show on CNN and Al-Gazera.

    1. .
      “Made for TV or Feature Film?”
      .
      Like every other war, disaster and like event…
      .
      All of the above plus VOD, direct to DVD, books, comics, etc., etc., etc…

      1. Well, they were already in the pipeline. They just have happier endings now. Finally, some Hollywood War on Terror movies that might actually make money.

  19. May 4th–Caroline heard a news report that bin Laden had been killed by SEALS. She was intrigued by the notion and asked whether they bit him to death or just hit him with their tails repeatedly. Perhaps bounced him back and forth on their noses until he couldn’t take it anymore. Personally I think leopard seals would have been the best seals for the job. You ever see the teeth on those things? Vicious.

    Actually, it was with letter seals. A gruesome way to go.
    .
    I also heard OBL fell victim to a poison liplock, i.e., he was SEALed with a kiss.

  20. .
    Jerry,
    Found out a few details in the past hour or so:
    1.)Obama invited Bush to Ground Zero to acknowledge his role in combating terrot in general and Osama in paricular
    2.) Nancy Pelosy telephoned Bush to thank him
    3.) Bush declined the invitation
    If the current president and NANCY FREAKING PELOSI can acknowledge Bush’s efforts, why can’t you? I’m not Darin. I’m not minimizing Obama’s contributions to the point where they don’t exist. That would be insane. But to not give the 43rd president at least SOME credit seems to me to not only be petty, but ridiculous.

    .
    For one thing, I’m not in a position where I have to play politics and play nice-nice for political reasons. For another, I’m just calling it like I see it.
    .
    I thought I was fairly clear about this the other day (and for the last seven plus years.) Bush flushed any right to having his fans claiming that he deserves credit right down the drain with five years of both his words and his actions.
    .
    We were attacked on 9/11 and the face of that attack was and always will be bin Laden. And Bush went to New York and stood on the smoldering ruins of those buildings and bodies and, bullhorn in hand, declared that we would track down those responsible. He went on TV and got his little line out to be played by the conservative media over and over again about how they had this cute little saying in Texas about people being wanted dead or alive. And dámņëd near everybody, dámņëd near every person from any side of the isle, got behind him and behind the war to go after the bášŧárdš who did that to us.
    .
    Of course, that lasted for about six months before bin Laden was someone who we didn’t think about very much anymore.
    .
    And then, after almost six years of pushing for a war with Iraq and Saddam based on any provocation or massive event in the Middle East that could be used as an excuse to go in there, we got the “Mushroom Cloud” road show. We got the morphing of Public Enemy #1 Osama into Public Enemy #1 Saddam.
    .
    Bush pulled soldiers away from the war in Afghanistan and away from the hunt for bin Laden to handle his personal little crusade in Iraq. Bush pulled equipment and resources away from the war in Afghanistan and away from the hunt for bin Laden to handle his personal little crusade in Iraq. Bush pulled funding away from the war in Afghanistan and away from the hunt for bin Laden to handle his personal little crusade in Iraq. Bush gave the orders to dismantle CIA groups who were put together with the specific goal of hunting down bin Laden. We got to watch Bush and crew essentially turn Afghanistan, the war that was more about bin Laden and the bášŧárdš that hit us on 9/11, into the “Forgotten War” while their #1 focus became implementing their plans for their long standing obsessions; Iraq and Saddam.
    .
    Of course, Bush and Crew and their many supporters didn’t completely forget about bin Laden. He was a great bogyman and talking point to bring up for election campaigns. Hëll, Kerry actually made refocusing some of our efforts back onto bin Laden one of his campaign pieces and the Bush re-election campaign actually made fun of him for that.
    .
    Petty? No, petty would be saying that we got bin Laden as early as we did in the administration that succeeded Bush’s in spite of Bush’s actions. That would be petty. I’m just saying that Bush deserves no more than a thimbleful of credit for this after he did so much in the last five years of his administration to de-prioritize bin Laden and Afghanistan.
    .
    There are a lot of things that I disagreed with Bush about in his eight years of mismanaging this country, but there is only one thing that I will flat tell you in all honesty that I hate the man for and that is his misguided, bungling campaign into Iraq and the massive levels of stupidity that he showed in so many areas in his handling of that and neglecting Afghanistan and the real focus of the war on terror.
    .
    And you know what? I would take a little more seriously if most of the voices demanding Bush get “his due credit” for this weren’t the same voices who have been saying some of the most vile, partisan garbage about Obama and the Democrats over the last two plus years in regards bin Laden and terrorism in general. And it didn’t matter to these various voices, whether they belonged to professional pundits or amateur bloggers, whether there was a shred of truth in the “facts” the presented or in the bases for the opinions they presented.
    .
    Hey, after all, if Obama managed to accidently catch bin Laden he would just apologize to him personally for catching him, put him up some place nice and comfortable and make sure that Osama had access to the best ACLU lawyers that taxpayer money could provide.
    .
    And Obama, pandering to the Left and the terrorists, won’t even use the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” in speeches about acts of terrorism (despite the fact that he did and does use those words in every speech that they said he didn’t.)
    .
    Obama won’t call it “The War on Terror” or say that we are at war with terrorism (despite the fact that he did and has.)
    .
    Obama is making use more vulnerable to attack and making us appear weaker to the terrorist around the world by his actions of appeasement (despite the fact that he had stepped up actions against terrorist organizations, stepped up targeted drone attacks against high value targets and increased the number of dead terrorist leaders at a rate higher than what Bush did.)
    .
    Obama and Osama’s talking points and POV on America and its place in the world are virtually identical.
    .
    These are also the same voices who declared, on day one of Obama’s term as POTUS, that any attack on U.S. soil by terrorists was 110% solely the responsibility and fault of Barack Obama. These are also the same voices who declared, on day one of Obama’s term as POTUS, that an economic collapse that took years of economic mishandling to create and that economists on both sides of the political isle said would take years to turn around was 110% solely the responsibility and fault of Barack Obama because he’s in office now and nothing that happens now can be attributed to Bush and his time in office.
    .
    I could take some of these voices more seriously if they weren’t the ones on Fox News that are right now spinning this for all it’s worth to declare that Obama illegally murdered a man by issuing an unconstitutional, illegal assassination order. I could take some of them more seriously if they (Rush, Beck, Mark Levin, Hannity and others at the top of the list)weren’t today spoon feeding the mindless faithful “questions” about what happened that are basically designed to delegitimize any due credit to Obama in this or the actual action itself. I might be able to take some of the voices clamoring for Bush’s “due credit” if some of those voices (like conservative darling and massive airhead Sarah Palin) can bring herself to give credit to everyone involved I the mission while specifically excluding even mentioning Obama.
    .
    I could maybe take some of those voices and what they had to say more seriously if they weren’t (despite the contradictory statements of the people who would actually have the first hand knowledge on the matter) the same mindless idiots twisting this into an excuse for torturing people for information.
    .
    Should Bush be getting more credit from people like me? No, not when I can look back at five wasted years of Bush’s time in office on this matter and when the cacophony of voices declaring that Bush is due his “credit” are many of the same who haven’t had one honest or factual thing to say about Obama insofar as matters like this are concerned. You want me to give Bush his due credit? Fine, then I’ll credit him with not screwing things up even worse than he actually did and causing this to have been delayed any longer than it was.

    1. I’m going to note that the Bush Administration had a habit of stovepiping intelligence in the early years of the first term; i.e., they took raw information and fed it directly to the top, without much checking or analysis. They didn’t trust mid and upper level analysis. That’s probably not a good way to run an intelligence operation; there’s a reason why those folks are there (to analyze, to put into context, to double and triple check).
      .
      There’s some evidence that in the later years they walked back on this habit, but I think the damage may have been done, and that useful data may have been there, but the ability to turn it into useful intelligence was damaged.

    2. Iraq is stable, Jerry and, if you note, I am giving Obama all the praise he deserves on this despite my misgivings over his handling of Egypt, Yemen, Syria, etc.
      .
      Yet you can’t give him the credit Nancy Pelosi does. What a world.
      .
      He even has the class to decline the invitation Obama gave him and allow Obama to reap all the glory. Why equally not begracious?

      1. .
        Iraq is barely stable and whether it is or not changes not one wit the fact that we did not have to go in there, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and the fact channeling the money, manpower, supplies, resources, focus and intensity of our efforts away from Afghanistan and bin Laden and towards Iraq and Saddam so that Bush and the main power players in his administration could chase after the Iraq regime change hard on that they were nursing for years before they came into office likely hurt our efforts get bin Laden sooner.
        .
        Whether or not Iraq is doing fine and dandy or not doesn’t change the fact that stretching our military thin and stretching our resources thin to go into unnecessarily go into Iraq in the first place took away from our fight against the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 and killed almost 3000 of our countrymen in one single day.
        .
        The condition of Iraq (which is not as great as some would like to promote it as) does not change the fact that not only did Bush and crew take their eyes off of the ball, but that they themselves actively picked the ball up and kicked it as far out of sight as they possibly could in order to chase their own little agenda that was completely unrelated to the task at hand.
        .
        Iraq did not have to happen. Getting Saddam in 2003 changed nothing. Killing Al Qaeda “leaders” in Iraq that weren’t even a part of Al Qaeda until they declared themselves “Al Qaeda in Iraq” meant nothing while the figurehead for Al Qaeda’s greatest victory was free and able to go on about his life.
        .
        And you know what else? Despite Bill’s above stated dislike of theoretical examples in things like this, I’m pretty sure I can state one theoretical that I’m more than 100% sure would play out exactly like I’m about to describe it. Obama took about a day to decide to sign on on this once he got the intel. That was in part because the information was not 100% and that they would be sending a team into a supposed ally country without that country’s knowledge. Had this gone bad, had the problems with the chopper been worse and other things had gone wrong or, even better, had bin Laden not been there when we went in and things went wrong…
        .
        There wouldn’t be a dámņëd soul demanding that Bush get partial credit for it. It would all be laid on Obama by the Right. There would be no talk about the intelligence structure that was there under Bush, there would be no talk about Obama building on the foundations that Bush started and there wouldn’t even be talk about the team that was carrying out the mission. No, this would be all about “Bama” screwing it up, emboldening the terrorists and getting our proud boys in service killed. The talking point on the Right would be about how (quite truthfully) Obama has changed some things about how we’re doing the intelligence gathering and the fighting of the war on terror. This would just be week #1 of the GOP campaign ramp up for 2012 with their shiny new toy and their new talking points against Obama.
        .
        And if anyone on the Left said anything about the some of the system that was in place being even 1% at fault for the failings of Obama’s Black Hawk Down moment, the Right would go ballistic on them for even daring to think that any part of the mess could be laid on Bush and the system that he helped screw up.
        .
        This would be just like the economy in that case. It wouldn’t matter if you could point to a small book’s worth of everything Bush did to screw it up before Obama took office, it would still be all Obama’s fault according to the same people that want Bush to get credit now. Kind of like how the Right keeps slagging on Obama for any new problem that pops up in Afghanistan and playing it up as, despite years of neglect by an indifferent Bush Administration, all the fault of “weak on terrorism” and “weak on defense” Obama.

      2. .
        “Uh, that’s: Why not be equally gracious”
        .
        Because, again, I’m not in a position where I have to play bs political games and play nice-nice for bs political reasons.

      3. .
        “He even has the class to decline the invitation Obama gave him and allow Obama to reap all the glory.”
        .
        See, that’s the presentation of an opinion, of a POV, as a fact. Who said that Bush was just so classy that he decided to decline so that Obama could “reap all the glory.”
        .
        It’s equally likely that Bush doesn’t want to go so as not to validate what Obama did in the eyes of the conservative faithful. It could also be insecurity that’s keeping him away. He might after all see going and standing beside the man who got bin Laden as diminishing his legacy a bit with him being the man who talked the tough game for about a cup of coffee before forgetting about bin Laden and squandering the resources needed to get him.
        .
        All we actually know is that Bush declined to attend. No one but W. knows why he’s not going. Hëll, it could easily be something as mundane as a bad stomach bug and the inability to safely venture more than twenty yards from a bathroom.

      4. I’m not totally disagreeing with you here but I’m not so sure that if the mission had failed it would have been so catastrophic to Obama.
        .
        Why would we even know about it?
        .
        If word got out that a helicopter went down in Pakistan and American soldiers were killed…so what? we routinely bomb Pakistan with drones. We’ve accidentally killed civilians with strikes that I assume were intended to kill high level Al Queda operatives and we either had bad intel, some technical snafu or there were bad guys in the wedding party and they were worth the terrible civilian toll. Nobody was calling for the president’s head when those things happened. This would have just been another in a long line of events that we have limited knowledge of. Unless word got out which is certainly possible with all these blabbermouths.
        .
        You would have to come up with a pretty incredible scenario where Obama had solid intel that Obama was there and waffled and waffled and insisted on an armed mission when everyone else wanted a bombing raid and then it goes horribly wrong and Obama gets away and it all gets leaked to the press.
        .
        In which case why would Bush or Clinton deserve any blame?
        .
        But look at how unlikely that scenario is. For starters, does anyone doubt that if both copters had gone down we would not have immediately gone to plan B- Operation Really Big Crater In Abbottabad?
        .
        Osama was gonna die Sunday. No way out.

      5. Why would we even know about it?
        .
        Well, to quote from the text at your below link: “but some photos of the operation have been leaked.”
        .
        I believe the first person who leaked the news that bin Laden was dead was somebody who works for Rumsfeld – apparently after Rumsfeld was informed.
        .
        We *shouldn’t* know about it if it failed, but it just doesn’t seem likely that it would stay quiet.

      6. .
        “Why would we even know about it?”
        .
        What, would we have found out rather quickly about a SEAL Team attacking a home in an affluent neighborhood (relatively speaking) in a city that far into the country without that country’s permission or knowledge? Yeah, I think the international stink that Pakistan would raise would likely have had us knowing about it by the end of the week.

      7. Why would we even know about it?
        .
        You’re kidding, right?
        .
        If bin Laden hadn’t been there? If the Pakistani soldiers had shown up? If the copters had crashed and the American soldiers hadn’t managed to get out?
        .
        Bill, seriously: that’s incredibly naive.
        .
        American soldiers making an unannounced assault on a private home where bin Laden supposedly was, except he turns out not to be there. Perhaps women and children get killed. The Pakistani government goes batshit because of the direct attack on their sovereign soil. The soldiers are captured or killed, videos with the captured SEALS being trotted around like the soldiers during the Pueblo incident, or the corpses of those killed in the firefight being dragged around the town square while the Pakistanis fire guns in the air and decry America.
        .
        How would we know about it? If it had gone badly wrong, the Pakistanis would make us eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And every right wing talking head would be talking about what a complete and total dunderhead Obama was.
        .
        How would we know. Jesus.
        .
        PAD

      8. Why would we even know about it?

        Because, assuming that OBL survived such a debacle, he’d be crowing about having escaped in short order, bugging out immediately after the bungle and avoiding Operation Crater.

      9. How would we know about it? If it had gone badly wrong, the Pakistanis would make us eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
        .
        I guess I am being incredibly naive here because my perception is that we have had something like 200+ drone attacks within Pakistan’s borders, with at least one adviser to general Petraeus estimating that we had killed 14 mid-level or lower level al-Qaeda leaders and over 700 civilians…and the Pakistani response was muted. Sometimes they have protested and given the ambassador a stern talking too but they knew and we knew that was all for show. Didn’t stop the bombings.
        .
        Why would this attack, if it had failed to kill Bin Laden, be any different from the one in march that killed some civilians and police (and some miltants who were not Bin Laden)? The Pakistani’s would protest, we would shrug and say “Sorry. We’ll try to do better.” Status quo. Unless we are imagining a pretty unlikely scenario of unmitigated catastrophe I do not see this as having possibly been a presidency killing mission.
        .
        The only thing that would have crushed Obama would be if he had chosen inaction and THAT came out. Obviously, that was not on the table.
        .
        Why would this have been treated so differently by the Pakistani government? If they are looking for a reason to turn on us they have ample opportunity every time an airstrike accidentally kills some innocent people.
        .
        This is not like the Israelis running into Argentina to grab Eichmann. We have tacit approval from the Pakistani government to do this, whatever their weak “Hey, next time tell us, ok?” response may be. I don’t see where there would be much likelihood of another Black hawk Down situation. Let’ say somehow the mission failed and Osama got away–would the Pakistani government really want everyone to know that? they seem pretty embarrassed by the fact that he was there.
        .
        Could it have gone catastrophically Carter-level wrong? Of course. Bombing the compound was by far the safer choice but would probably have made it near impossible to confirm Bin Laden’s death, so the raid was a gutsy choice.
        .
        I disagree with those who think it likely that, even if the raid had failed, Osama would have escaped. Now who’s being naive? I doubt very much that Obama put all his chickens in one basket. If the place had turned out to be swarming with Taliban fighters the equal of the Seals (boy, THERE’S a fantasy scenario!) I’m pretty sure there were alternate ways of settling the issue.
        .
        So A- I don’t think Bin laden would have escaped, so that possibility of failure is off the table (But Obama could not be sure of that so gutsiness still applies) and B- I do not see the Pakistani government suddenly reversing itself in expressing outrage over our routine violation of the sovereignty.
        .
        But ok, let’s assume it failed; the helicopters crash and burn and, having failed to provide any contingency plans, we see Osama flee into the night. Would we have found out about it and would Obama have gotten blamed?
        .
        I guess it depends on whether the person who took that picture of everyone watching the TV (or whatever they are doing) blabbed about it. There’s not much reason any of them would have rushed out to announce they’d failed. It’s not surprising that the success leaked but failure is something best kept to oneself.
        .
        If it did leak out then Obama would get blamed. And deservedly so–if some jerk school teacher behind his computer knows enough to have Plan b ready I fully expect the President and his advisers to do the same. And I have 0.0 doubt that they did. I’d be equally angry and astonished if that were not the case. Wouldn’t you be?

      10. .
        Sasha, that is complete and utter rubbish.
        .
        Palin would have called them “lamestream media” and not “mainstream media” as they wrote her saying.
        .
        Really.

      11. Bill, there have been occasional Predator strikes that have “strayed over the border”, to use the official parlance. However, near the edges, Pakistan’s border is more conceptual than actual – Pakistan isn’t really a “nation” the way we usually think of them. Instead, Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan is kind of blurry, ruled by local tribes, not any sort of central government. Those can be brushed off with a mere official protest.
        .
        Bin Laden’s compound was in a military garrison town, home to their military academy, and an hour’s drive from the capitol. An unmanned strike there would have been difficult to brush off. Armed men landing there was a major provocation – and if we hadn’t found bin Laden there, there would have been no acceptable excuse. The Pakistani government is happy to take our money, and to claim to our faces that they’re our “allies” in the WoT – but they’re also happy to play up the anti-American angle to their own people. This would have been just too good an opportunity for them to pass up, realistically. I mean, getting to tweak the nose of a superpower over their “incompetence”? They could demand that if our intel was so bad, we needed to leave their border provinces alone, securing even more support back home. And they would be secure in the knowledge that we would never retaliate.
        .
        Heck, they might have tried to use international embarrassment to force the US to back off on the Kashmir question. Since we’ve avoided openly backing India on that, it would have given Pakistan a stronger position in that region.

      12. It’s a right wing site, but they got a point. Assuming that Obama is a smart guy, a cerebral President, a more meticulous planner than Dubya, a guy that knows the importance of having allies, and all that stuff, then it makes sense to assume that he secured, if not the cooperation, then the promise of non-interference by the Pakistanis.
        .
        Of course, I still agree that the Conservatives wouldn’t be eager to share credit if the mission were a failure, for whatever reason.

      13. I guess I am being incredibly naive here because my perception is that we have had something like 200+ drone attacks within Pakistan’s borders, with at least one adviser to general Petraeus estimating that we had killed 14 mid-level or lower level al-Qaeda leaders and over 700 civilians…and the Pakistani response was muted.
        .
        Why would this have been treated so differently by the Pakistani government?
        .
        Did you even read what I wrote? I already answered this. I’ll try to be more succinct the second time:
        .
        Boots on the ground. Captured SEALS. Hostages. Videos. Corpses dragged through the streets.
        .
        The drones come buzzing through; they’re here, they’re gone. You can’t capture a drone, you can’t make hay of a drone. A sustained firefight between American soldiers and Pakistani military, captivity, etc. That’s a whole different thing. And it would have ALL been blamed on Obama.
        .
        You’re a smart guy, Bill. You should know that. So why are you even disputing this?
        .
        PAD

      14. Oy, I’m really not trying to be a pain in the ášš here and i don’t think what I’m saying is nearly as contentious as you seem to think it is.
        .
        I think I underestimated what you meant by “badly wrong”. So, in the interest of putting this to rest, if Bin Laden was not at the compound and we attacked an empty building and our copters crashed and they all got killed by the Pakistani army and then their bodies were propped up for photos, yes, Obama would have taken one hëll of a hit, possibly a fatal one (though I think the economy will almost solely determine whether he gets re-elected, for better or worse).
        .
        i was focusing more on the idea that Osama might have escaped, which, for reasons I’ve given, I think is incredibly unlikely. And as long as Osama dies I think the mission is a success, no matter what else happens.
        .
        Imagine things go wrong, the copters crash, or the Pakistanis get into a firefight with our troops. Americans die, civilians die, pakistani soldiers die.
        .
        Also, Osama dies. If anyone thinks Obama did not have an alternate plan to ensure osama’s death in the event of mission failure, I will have to respectfully disagree and leave it at that, until the full and final account of this comes out, if it ever does.
        .
        I think–and we will never know–that a public that has put up with 1500+ american fatalities in the pursuit of Bin Laden will not now react badly at the prospect of a few score more in the actual success of that goal. They would be lauded as heroes. And I don'[t know how eager the Pakistanis would be to make hay out of the fact that they killed Americans who were getting the wanted terrorist who was living apparently unmolested in their territory. I mean, they might, but it would not exactly keep the average American up at night.
        .
        Any scenario that ends with a dead Osama is a win for Obama and every realistic scenario I can come up with ends with a dead Osama.
        .
        Of course, the president could not have known that. They were pretty sure Osama was in the compound but pretty sure is not definitely sure. he could not have known that the mission, one way or another, was going to succeed. THAT’S why it took guts to go with the riskier plan.
        .
        I think we are arguing about two different realities. In yours the question “If bin Laden hadn’t been there?” is a legit one. In mine it isn’t because he was there. So yeah, in an alternate reality (but one that Obama could not know was not true) Osama is not there, copters go down, our troops are killed and paraded through the streets by the Pakistani army (I’m a little dubious on the likelihood of that one but ok). Since the truth is that Osama WAS there and was therefore going to die, I think my points are valid–the mission was going to succeed unless one imagines an almost cosmic level of screwups.
        .
        I’m not taking anything away from Obama, who deserves great credit for this victory. I’m just saying that his entire presidency did not hang on a thread here. reality was on his side. I’m not even sure it’s all that great a compliment to any president to portray them as a gambler willing to risk it all for a big payoff. I mean, we love it when they win but can you imagine how big Nixon would have won if Kennedy had run on the “I’ll bring us to the brink of nuclear war but in the end the Russians will blink” platform.

      15. I think–and we will never know–that a public that has put up with 1500+ american fatalities in the pursuit of Bin Laden will not now react badly at the prospect of a few score more in the actual success of that goal.
        .
        And how many of those 1500+ American fatalities have Americans actually seen?
        .
        Americans are a lot more tolerant of military endeavors when they don’t see the outcome. Governments know that; they learned about it when news broadcasts started showing actual fighting in Vietnam and the public turned against it. It’s why the government didn’t want returning coffins being seen on television.
        .
        I’m not assuming bin Laden wasn’t there. I’m saying, what if the mission wasn’t a success? What if both choppers had crashed? What if the Pakistani army had intercepted them? What if bin Laden had managed to slip away? Assuming the Pakistani government was in on it, they’d have covered for him. Then the story becomes, “American soldiers killed women and children in pursuit of bin Laden who wasn’t even there. We killed a bunch of the soldiers, and the ones we captured, we’re going to put on trial, condemn to death and execute them.”
        .
        And don’t tell me I’m making up alternate world hypotheticals because you’re the one who asked how anyone would have known if the mission had failed. I’ve answered that question more than amply, I think.
        .
        PAD

      16. I get it, I really do. But my position is that it is so highly improbably that Bin Laden would survive this mission that it is just not worth speculating on. Unless the Pakistanis got word of the failed mission crashing in the desert and alerted him before the missiles struck–and that seems unlikely since they were apparently not even aware that the SEALS were right down the street. Either their intelligence gathering is very weak or they were in on it, despite what they say now.
        .
        Once you take Bin laden surviving off the table the mission is a success. Even if Americans die doing it. Even if we see their bodies.
        .
        Americans are a lot more tolerant of military endeavors when they don’t see the outcome.
        .
        Americans are a lot more tolerant of military endeavors that succeed. Bin Laden dead = success. No American casualties is icing on the cake but people were not celebrating the fact that no Americans were killed, they were celebrating Bin laden’s death.
        .
        Yes, you have explained a scenario where we would have known that Plan A of the mission had failed, I will happily concede the point. I don’t think that would have made any difference, for all the reasons I’ve given. In fact, I’m sure anyone who tried to diminish the significance of Bin Laden’s death by focusing on American losses in the operation would be (rightly) accused of trying to steal the president’s thunder. If anything, I should think the president would have been praised for having a back up plan.
        .
        Am I the only one who thinks he had one?

  21. There are some VERY graphic photos at http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/141342/20110504/osama-dead-new-photos-inside-the-compound.htm
    .
    They are not of Osama but some of the others who were killed. Again, very graphic and gory.
    .
    If you of a mind to, check out photos 3 and 4. I think I know why the Seals sustained no casualties; the dead guy seems to be lying on a Nerf Gun. Just like a Taliban to bring a Nerf gun to a M4A1 Carbine fight.
    .
    what a wonderful world it would be if that idiot, upon hearing Seal team 6 burst in, reached for the nearest weapon and accidentally grabbed the Nerf Dart Tag Hyperfire Blaster. There followed a furious firefight, which lasted almost 0.7 seconds.

    1. .
      I suspect that the truly scary thing about that Nerf gun being there is that it’s a sign of children being there on a regular basis. The next generation of suicide bombers and Al Qaeda leaders in training regularly visiting Uncle Osama.

      1. Maybe. If I were stuck in a compound the evidence would suggest that the place was inhabited by a bunch of kids. Really, really immature ones at that.

      2. .
        If you were stuck in a compound like that for that long the photographic evidence would indicate that you had had been dismembering hundreds of people over the years and keeping the only ever so slightly preserved remains of your torture victims on display as trophies.

      3. True that. I occasionally hope a burglar would break into my workroom and, upon turning on his flashlight, come face to face with my bucky skeleton with the new carpet latex/gelatin corpsing effect.
        .
        Then he screams, trips on a cat, breaks his neck, and I have some really cool stuff to work with.

  22. .
    Jerome, there are political issues that I will happily and freely discuss with anyone at any time and I will try my best to remain neutral, calm and unbiased (even if I have to be kicked in the head a couple of times when my bias gets stuck.)
    .
    This ain’t one of ’em.
    .
    I an usually separate the policy from the politician and the job from the man and disagree with the policy, hëll be angry with the policy, but not be boiling blood angry at the man or men. There are a lot of issues that politicians from both sides of the isle have that I dislike and disagree with where, while I might not like the person, I don’t hate the person like I hate the policy.
    .
    This ain’t one of ’em
    .
    Ðìçk Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard L. Armitage, R. James Woolsey, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, William Schneider, Jr., Robert B. Zoellick, Elliott Abrams, Eliot A. Cohen, I. Lewis Libby and Henry S. Rowen.
    .
    Any of those names look familiar? Every single one of them was a member of the Bush Administration at some point or another and were all people who had Bush’s ear pretty much from day one. Every single one of them together as a group are on record as petitioning our government to attack Iraq, overthrow the government there and put into place a government that we could better manage since as far back as January 26, 1998. Every single one of them was a part of a group that wanted to start a war with Iraq, was planning out ways to start a war with Iraq and were advocating using any incident of instability in/from the Middle East as an excuse to go into Iraq.
    .
    Another member of that group? Some guy named Jeb Bush. You may have heard of him too.
    .
    I have no idea if or how badly Bush truly wanted to go into Iraq from the first day of his Presidency, but I know dámņëd well how badly some of his family wanted it and how insanely badly most of his circle of ear benders, advisors and administration officials wanted it. And that’s a kind of important thing to me.
    .
    See, when we got hit on 9/11, I and others put aside the dislikes we had for Bush and Bush’s policies and got behind him. No one sane wants a war, but going after the people that killed almost 3000 Americans in a single morning and forever changed the way some people saw their city and their world in one cowardly attack and then celebrated it with unrestrained glee seemed like a pretty worthy cause to get behind a war for. And I had friends in the military and friends joining the military who wanted nothing more in the world than to go over to Afghanistan and personally hunt down the bášŧárdš who did that to us that morning. I fully agreed with their feelings.
    .
    And then, after gearing us up for war and getting all the pieces in place, Bush and crew decided that Afghanistan and bin Laden were things that they were truly “not that concerned about” and they decided that they “just don’t spend that much time on.” But Iraq, the war they had wanted for years was what they were going to prioritize whether there was any true need to go there or not. And so, we got the giant push for Iraq and Afghanistan was treated like an afterthought for almost six years. Bin Laden, other than when being used as a political campaign talking point, was seemingly relegated to being an afterthought for almost six years.
    .
    And it didn’t matter what anyone said to them. Bush fired generals who refused to be yes men and tell him that we had more than enough men and resources to do the job and that it was a good idea. Facts no longer mattered. Intelligence was often stove-piped past the system put into place to verify and fully authenticate and used even the people that were being bypassed said that it was poor or questionable in nature. And, of course, if anyone said that keeping the focus on Afghanistan, The Taliban and Al Qaeda… Well, they were being weak on terrorism and defense and emboldening or being sympathetic to Saddam and/or the terrorists.
    .
    The pushed and told lies and got their private little crusade that they had been pining for since before they had gotten (in some cases back) into office. And we almost broke our military, we’ve almost lost Afghanistan thanks to the six years of neglect, we violated treaties and laws and excused those violations as being “post 9/11 thinking” and actually made some things worse for us in a lot of ways.
    .
    And all because a group of men wanted their ginned up war with Iraq and would get it at any cost no matter what. And Bush, whether he was one of the men or puppet to his handlers, went along with it. And Bush signed off on an unnecessary war that cost us thousands of soldiers’ lives and killed or turned into refuges hundreds of thousands or millions of people (depending on where the count comes from) from that region. And in the pursuit of “winning” that war, Bush and crew signed off on things that completely violated everything we are supposed to stand for.
    .
    And for that, I am angry with Bush and will likely always be angry with Bush. Do not expect me to be a reasonable debater on this matter. Bush betrayed this country, this country’s people and the things we are supposed to stand for and started a war that was unnecessary and that ate up resources left and right that would have been far better served being used to do exactly what Obama just used them for.
    .
    Give Bush credit? Fûçk Bush.

    1. My most honest opinion about Bush and his handling of the GWOT is not one I care to share because it is particularly harsh and likely to be willfully misconstrued.
      .
      That said, you’ve pretty much hit all the marks. There are a few things I can give Bush props for, but his handling of terrorism and the fallout of 9/11 is most decidedly not one of them.

    2. Wow, Jerry. Tell me how you REALLY feel. here’s how I really feel.
      .
      After attacking us on 9/11 because he believed us to be a “paper tiger”, bin laden boasted that “America would crumble”.
      .
      We did not. Under the Commander-In-Chief you despise so much, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was dismantled, to the point that Mulah Omar had to leave on a motorcycle and bin laden himself had to escape to Pakistan.
      .
      bin Laden then poured everything he had into Iraq (gee, i wonder why?) seeking to overturn the American liberation – and was roundly defeated as Iraqis took up arms to kick out al Qaeda.
      .
      bin Laden’s other war, in his homeland of saudi Arabia – who Bush was criticized for being too cozy with – produced no better results. The saudis have decimated and defeated al Qaeda.
      .
      And methods which you say don’t work have been proven effective – and a facility people wanted closed served an important purpose. And that’s because of both Bush and Obama.

      1. After attacking us on 9/11 because he believed us to be a “paper tiger”, bin laden boasted that “America would crumble”.

        Not quite. OBL attacked hoping to drag the US into a bankrupting war (like the USSR in Afghanistan) that would polarize the Muslim world against the West.
        .
        And Bush, accommodating soul that he was, after cleaning taking care of the Taliban in Afghanistan obliged OBL by invading Iraq.

      2. (gee, i wonder why?)
        .
        Because Bush had dragged us kicking and screaming into Iraq.

      3. .
        Jerome, have you ever heard of a musical group that went by the name of The Coasters? Okay to really good group (at times) with kind of an irritating twist when you would hear a song of theirs you liked and you wanted to track it down.
        .
        See, The Coasters had a very… weird… membership policy. If you ever officially in The Coasters, you could leave the group you were in, go a few cities or states over, get a few of your more musically inclined friends and go on tour as The Coasters. And it got even more convoluted after that. You see, if I was in the first group, left and recruited you, Bill, Sean, Micha and David the Bold to be “The Coasters,” that meant that you were now officially a member of The Coasters.
        .
        Why is that even stranger than just the first bit I explained? Because you, Bill, Sean, Micha and David the Bold could all decide that you’d had it with my ideas for the band and go your own separate ways and create your own groups. And all of those groups could be called The Coasters. At one point, I saw a musical historian trying to track the number of versions of The Coasters that existed. It was an impressive number and the guy discussing them flat out said that he knew he was missing versions at that point in his list.
        .
        That made it a bit of a pain in the ášš in later years for people who wanted buy a song they heard that tickled their musical fancy. Each version of The Coasters could put out records under that name. There were awesome versions of songs by The Coasters that would pop up on those ”As Seen on TV” type of collections that you just couldn’t find on any other album of theirs even if the song was on it. It might be the right song, it was just the wrong version of the group and the wrong version of the song.
        .
        Why am I telling you this?
        .
        ” bin Laden then poured everything he had into Iraq (gee, i wonder why?) seeking to overturn the American liberation – and was roundly defeated as Iraqis took up arms to kick out al Qaeda.”
        .
        No, they really didn’t. That’s a very popular talking point on the Right, but it’s not much more accurate than some of the bogus “facts” that I mentioned in the previous thread about Obama not using certain words or addressing certain facts when every shred of evidence available showed otherwise.
        .
        After we went into Iraq, groups formed in Iraq calling themselves Al Qaeda that had no affiliation to Al Qaeda prior to declaring themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq. Most of the “Al Qaeda” leaders and members we killed in Iraq were not Al Qaeda leaders or members before we went into Iraq. That was their little way of begging for help from Al Qaeda and The Taliban and what they got wasn’t all that much.
        .
        In meantime, the people who you describe as having “then poured everything he had into Iraq (gee, i wonder why?) seeking to overturn the American liberation” spent time and resources in other countries. Now, should we just call the Al Qaeda and agree that the fact that they called themselves that trumps all facts on the matter? Sure, why not. You might not want to do that though. Why? Because you would then be saying that George W. Bush had the worst record imaginable for defending us here at home.
        .
        Do you have any clue how many little wannabe “Al Qaeda” cells of various sizes law enforcement officers got briefings on in between 2002 and 2008? I could put together a book with those briefings and alerts that would make War and Peace look like a quick afternoon’s read. And easily 95% of them, like the guys in Iraq, had no relation to Al Qaeda or the Taliban in anything other than the name that they chose to give themselves.
        .
        Oh, and there’s one other fly in you ointment here. Al Qaeda and bin Laden wouldn’t have been focusing any of their attention to trying to stop what we were doing in Iraq if we had not, and everyone say it with me now, not gone in to Iraq, an unnecessary and needless distraction and drain on our resources, in the first place. We did not need to go into Iraq. We had no real reason to pull resources out of Afghanistan and move them to Iraq for bin Laden to supposedly focus “everything he had” into that country.
        .
        We
        Did
        Not
        Need
        To
        Be
        There.
        Period.

        .
        And the fact that we were doing this dámņëd foolish thing affects another of the things you brought up.
        .
        ” Under the Commander-In-Chief you despise so much, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was dismantled, to the point that Mulah Omar had to leave on a motorcycle and bin laden himself had to escape to Pakistan.”
        .
        Yeah. You know what? We started breaking them. We started scattering them. And then, rather than using the resources we had to finish the dámņëd job we got to watch the Commander-In-Chief pull resources away from Afghanistan to fight the trophy war he and his cronies had been pushing for since before W. was even in office. We got to see Afghanistan begin to fall apart and fall back into the state it was in because it wasn’t a priority for Bush the way being able to say he got Saddam and being able to hang one of Saddam’s side arms in his office.
        .
        What we did was the equivalent of a fighter getting in a series of solid combos that rock the other fighter and send them into the ropes and then, without the guy actually going down or getting so much as a count, putting his hands in the air and turning to the guy he would rather be fighting and making threats. Fight wasn’t over and Bush’s neglect of Afghanistan let the terrorists start regrouping and reorganizing. There is a reason after all why we have so many more targets for the increased drone attacks and operations than there were in 2004 and 2005.
        .
        And nothing you say about our dear Commander-In-Chief changes the fact that he publicly stated, less than a year after 9/11, that bin Laden wasn’t that important to him and the bin Laden wasn’t someone he really thought about (because he was too busy thinking about the Iraq folly at the time) and went on to dismantle groups and units meant to find bin Laden and hunt down bin Laden and high ranking Al Qaeda officials. But, dámņ, we sure killed five or six hundred “#2” men in Al Qaeda that no one had ever heard of and who were about as important to their operations as a mole on bin Laden’s ášš. I guess that was enough for Bush and crew since he wasn’t interested in the real thing.
        .
        ” bin Laden’s other war, in his homeland of saudi Arabia – who Bush was criticized for being too cozy with – produced no better results. The saudis have decimated and defeated al Qaeda.”
        .
        And that really has anything to do with Bush and crew distorting intelligence, pushing us into an unnecessary war and pulling our resources away from the people that his us on 9/11… how?
        .
        ” And methods which you say don’t work have been proven effective – and a facility people wanted closed served an important purpose. And that’s because of both Bush and Obama.”
        .
        Uhm… No. First of all, it’s documented fact that we got lots of false leads and inaccurate information by torturing people until they told our people what they wanted to hear rather than actual facts. You may have noticed the number of guys who we went “oops” with and released since we tortured them into confessing to crimes that they were never even remotely aware of. It’s also documented fact, by the military and the intelligence community, that the illegal torture techniques employed by the U.S. were effectively used as recruiting propaganda by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to recruit the young in large numbers against the vile, evil Americans. And, hey, Bush and crew released a number of the very same people that they claimed where the worst of the worst and those very same people went home and talked about what was done to them.
        .
        Yeah, that’s efficiency for you.
        .
        But you want to talk about the Right’s talking point from the last week about the intel used to go after bin Laden? Okay, let’s do that.
        .
        The talking point bit of info that the Right it spewing about has several minor problems with it. The first being that there are as many sources right now saying that we didn’t get it via illegally torturing someone into talking… I’m sorry… by using “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The jury is still out on that.
        .
        Another problem is that, well, you tell me when exactly the liars of the Bush Administration were telling lies about this. The info was supposedly obtained in 2006 or 2007. So, were they telling lies back when they said that they weren’t still illegally torturing people that late into Bush’s time in office or were they telling lies this week when they said that they were? Hey, here’s a concept for you. They’re liars. It’s what they did for eight years and continue to do now. How about option #3 being that they were telling lies about it both back then and this last week?
        .
        I’d certainly opt for #3. I’d opt for #3 especially after the performance I heard tonight by one of the few people in that administration I had thought got out of it with at least some level of integrity left. But, hey, I guess I was wrong about Rice. She’s about as low, pathetic and disingenuous as the rest of them even after getting out of that atmosphere for 2+ years.
        .
        Earlier tonight I channeled surfed the XM into an interview with Rice that was (I believe) on MSNBC. It’s hard to tell which show it was right now. XM just changed its channel lineup and numbering and I was hitting wrong channels all night. By tomorrow the transcripts will be out and I’ll find it and post it.
        .
        The short version: Rice was being questioned and then challenged on the Bush Administrations deliberate “misinterpreting” and misrepresenting of intelligence when trying to lie us into a war in Iraq. She protested that this was untrue and that they told the American people what the intelligence said with complete honesty. The interviewer then pointed out that they had documented quotes at their disposal where Rice and others said in interview after interview and in several speeches that the intelligence community had told them that Saddam was acquiring specialized piping that could only be used exclusively for enriching uranium and producing nuclear based WMDs. The interviewer pointed out that since the intelligence briefings have come out, they showed that the intelligence community told them that the pipes could be used for such things, but that they also had other uses and some uses that Iraq was actually using them for that were completely unrelated to enriching uranium.
        .
        He pointed out the obvious fact here. Stating that our intelligence showed that Saddam was using them exclusively for enriching uranium and manufacturing WMDs when that’s not what the intelligence said at all was in fact lying to the American people about what the intelligence community said. What Rice said next had my jaw hitting the floor.
        .
        She claimed that they didn’t lie and that they didn’t “misinterpret” the intelligence and misrepresent it to the American people. See, what they did was get the intelligence and then decide that what they in the Administration felt was the most likely use for such things was the use for such things (actual intelligence be dámņëd) and telling the American people that the intelligence community was telling them things were being exclusively used in WMD programs when the intelligence community told them that the items only could be used for things WMD related but were being used for other things wasn’t FÙÇKÍNG TELLING LIES ABOUT WHAT THE INTELLEGENCE COMMUNITY ACTUALLY SAID.
        .
        Let’s recap. Rice said that that weren’t telling lies, admitted when confronted on it that what the intelligence community actually told them wasn’t what they were telling the American people the intelligence community was telling them and that they were in fact telling the American people what the administration felt was the most likely interpretation of what the intelligence said (i.e. what they wished was said) to get support for going into Iraq and that this wasn’t actually telling lies. So, in Bush World, telling lies is telling the truth.
        .
        And you expect anyone to believe these áššhølëš and anything they claim when they have been caught in lie after lie on these subjects or happily admitted in their tell all books that they lied their áššëš off back when in office? Yeah, right…
        .
        Oh, and as a bit of a digression… Mrs. Rice, I still had some respect left for you, but after hearing the garbage you were spewing tonight to claim that an admitted lie was actually the truth… Fûçk you too, Mrs. Rice.
        .
        The other issue with the bit of info that’s being held up by the Right is that once you learn what it actually was it loses some of its impressive nature. It wasn’t a name that they got back in 2006. It was a nickname for a job position. It was the equivalent of calling a construction worker a “woodworker” because he dealt almost exclusively with wooden framework houses. The “name” we got was basically the equivalent of calling a courier “Delivery Guy” rather than a proper name. The rest of the intel we got and the years (especially the last 2+ years) of putting the pieces together? Not so much illegal torture tactics and renditions and a lot more traditional, legal methods. That’s also (as has been backed with link after link whenever this discussion comes up on this blog) how they sifted through the mountain of crap and false confessions they tortured out of people to find what was actually useful knowledge. They went ahead and dug through the traditional and legal means of gathering intelligence before acting on anything. Hëll, as, again, has been pointed out here with links before, most of what the Bush crew claimed back when they were still in office was intel they got through illegal torture was information we had before they claimed we got it through torturing people half to death or that the “solid information” they got that was garbage.
        .
        Hey, remember the fun we all had laughing at the “solid information” that the Bush Crew presented that they tortured out of people that had them confessing to plotting attacks on targets that weren’t even around when they were captured?
        .
        It boils down to this. We did not have to go into Iraq. We went into Iraq based on exaggerations and flat out lies told by an administration full of liars. Claiming that we’re “winning” in Iraq or that it’s shaping up to be a successful venture (so long as you don’t really look at it in any great detail) does not change one bit the fact that we did not have to go into Iraq to begin with.
        .
        Let me ask you this. A guy puts out a house fire where he also rescued two people from the raging inferno. Now, three people died in the blaze, but he still put it out and rescued the two people. What a hero.
        .
        Of course, it becomes public knowledge that he went into town, bought 20 gallons of gas (he’s obviously wealthy) and poured the gas over the house before throwing a match on the whole thing. He started the fire. Sure, he put it out and saved two of the five people in the house, but he still set the fire to begin with. A house burned down and three people died because he deliberately set the house on fire. But, hey, at least he started building a new house, right? Still a hero in your book? Still a good guy in your book?
        .
        You would have to say yes he is. Bush is that guy and the house he set on fire was Iraq. Declaring the lies and the stupidity as okay in your book because it looks like things might turn out well one day doesn’t change the fact that they were lies and stupidity to begin with and, in the case of Iraq, an unnecessary war that cost thousands of American’s their lives, many more thousands their health and physical well being and created a refugee crisis that sent millions fleeing into danger and creating problems with the countries around Iraq.
        .
        I’ll give you this much credit, Mr. Bush. You fûçkëd up our country, you fûçkëd up our standing in the world, you fûçkëd our economy, you fûçkëd up our military and you fûçkëd up Job #1 that we all said we would back you on when you stood on the shouldering remains of the Twin Towers with a bullhorn in your hand talking up hollow rhetoric that you had no real intention of following through on.
        .
        Great job, Mr. Bush. Now go fûçk yourself, Mr. Bush.
        .
        And if anyone thinks I’m not living up to the high standards of the various Democratic politicians they’ve mentioned above…
        .
        Hey, you Righties, I’m just following the high standards of giving credit where credit is due that your darling Sarah Palin is out there setting the example for. Why don’t you go and badmouth her a bit before coming back and saying anything to me about it.

      4. Jerry,
        well thought out, food for thought as always. I will just say this for now:
        When i heard Sarah Palin had credited everyone EXCEPT Obama for killing Obama, I hit the ceiling.
        .
        I don’t give a dámņ your party affiliation, etc. you give the man who is the Commander-in-Chief credit when the mission goes well, just as you would blast him if it turned into another Carteresque fiasco.
        .
        Even if you are a rabid enough Rightie to give Bush MORE credit than Obama to not mention Obama AT ALL is absurd.
        .
        And this is me saying this. I think Palin will pay for this in a huge way.

      5. What worries me now is that not only is bin Laden’s death being used to prop up Gitmo and torture (the latter of which has yet to have been shown to actually have made a difference in actually finding bin Laden), it might also be used to prop up the Patriot Act (when there’s no evidence that it made a difference), which was another one of Bush’s great blunders. And while I’m rambling: TSA needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, as well.

      6. I too have no problem saying that Plain’s not giving Obama enough credit is idiotic, petty, and not an indication of someone who has what it takes to aspire to higher office.
        .
        Now…though I am loath to do so because I think it was weasily the way she did it, I don’t think that it can be truthfully said that she did not credit Obama at all. She did not mention him by name but she said this–“we thank our president.” She then immediately also thanks Bush by name.
        .
        Some newsites got it right about her not mentioning Obama by name but others got sloppy and turned it into she won’t give him ANY credit at all. Which is typical–Palin makes a stupid comment and then they try to make something even bigger out of it, making her look like she is being picked on. Dumb.
        .
        At any rate, if being as classy as Palin is something worth aspiring to, one could give Bush credit but not by name…say, “the previous administration”. They you can be like Sarah. Me, I’d aim a bit higher.

      7. .
        “And we thank our president. We thank president Bush.”
        .
        At this point I think it could be taken either way. Reading the statement, it can be more easily argued that she was referencing Obama in that first bit. Hearing her say it in an audio broadcast or watching the video of her saying it opens it up to other interpretations. The way she said it, it sounded like she was telling the assembled crowd conservatives and Republicans that “we” were thanking “our president” and then clarifying/emphasizing the point that “our president” meant W. Bush.
        .
        Time and possible future clarifications will tell.

      8. .
        Jerome,
        .
        (And Pat to a degree since his post was right under yours.)
        .
        Just to make one thing clear, There was a wee bit of noticeable anger in that post. It’s not directed at you. Like I said, there’s a lot about what Bush and his administration did in regards to Iraq that infuriated me and that will likely make it quite a few more years before I can keep that out of discussions on the topic. But there was also some added frustration in that last post because I honestly had some respect left for Rice and hearing her say that convoluted garbage last night… I was more than a little pìššëd at her.
        .
        And the interview was with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. Not my first guess by a longshot. Haven’t seen a video or transcript yet, but there should be one floating around somewhere out the soon enough.

      9. I haven’t seen the whole interview but the part that got put up made O’Donnel look like he was being smacked silly by Rice. She came off way better than I would have guessed.
        .
        that’s one problem with today’s talking heads–they substitute internet style snarky soundbites for real journalism and often get their áššëš handed to them by someone who actually went to debate class.

      10. .
        “I haven’t seen the whole interview but the part that got put up made O’Donnel look like he was being smacked silly by Rice. She came off way better than I would have guessed.”
        .
        For a good chunk of the interview she was getting the better of him and he was coming off, as per usual with him, like an idiot. He would ask a question and immediately start talking over her answer with his opinion and at one point she (metaphorically) slapped the stupid out of him for substituting talking points for facts. He made some comment about having no one in the coalition with us when we went into Iraq and she had him spinning like mad to backtrack and extricate himself from his stupidity for a minute there.
        .
        But, dámņ, he totally delivered a KO punch to her credibility and integrity with the question about the intelligence issues. And the stupid thing was that most of the damage to her on the matter was self inflicted by her. It was the equivalent of a fighter throwing a weak jab and knocking their opponent out because their opponent dove in for a takedown and plowed face first into the jab.
        .
        (Sorry. I’m fighting off a summer bug right now that started coming on strong last night. I’m basically being lazy, laying around in bed and watching about a years worth of UFC events in marathon fashion. I’m going to be speaking in fighting metaphors for about a week.)

  23. And on tonight’s Colbert Report at the 15 minute mark:

    “With genetic engineering, think how bad ášš our Navy SEALs would be if they were actually part seal.” [photoshop of a commando type with a seal bottom half holding a machine gun with flippers]

    Oddly enough, this wrapped up a bit on the Captain America movie pointing out the steroid and master race connotations of Cap’s origin.

    1. I am going to have to agree with Jon Stewart on one of his points there. Though I may have thought there were better and more legally just ways of doing it, I am glad that bin Laden is off the world stage. To too many people he was the face of the Muslim and Arab world, and that just wasn’t right. It’s a part of the world that definitely deserves better than to be associated with an ideological lunatic in people’s minds.

  24. “I disagree with those who think it likely that, even if the raid had failed, Osama would have escaped. Now who’s being naive?”

    He managed just that years back when he got wind of an incoming cruise missila attack on one of his compound and thus was long gone when they hit.

    1. But the point is, he WASN’T long gone when we got there this time and it’s hard to see how any scenario would have given him the chance to be long gone.
      .
      Look, let’s play the following possibility: all the helicopters crash and burn on their way to the compound. The possibility exists that news of this will get out and we won’t be able to claim it was an accident, like all the many other times we have lost lives in crashes and malfunctions. the possibility exists that osama will here of this and think it best to get the heck out of dodge. How do you think the president would have handled that contingency? I say–bombs away. Osama=dead.
      .
      Or we get there and his guards are better fighters than the SEALS. I chuckle as I type that but ok, let’s go with it. Unable to fight their way in against the fearsome prowess of the nerf-armed taliban we then…I’m guessing we reduce the compound to rubble. Anyone doubt we had the firepower on those helicopters to do so? Osama=dead.
      .
      Or…Osama has time to blow himself up. Osama=dead, along with some of our men.
      .
      It was a gutsy call, no doubt about it, but not because it could have resulted in osama getting away. That was not in the cards. It was gutsy because it took a risk of high casualties in exchange for gathering some potential intell and the propaganda coup of an actual dead body, as opposed to the far less closure inducing ending of an unidentifiable wet smear.
      .
      Which is why I’m a bit puzzled over how we rushed the disposal of the body. If showing everyone a dead Osama was not worth doing then we might as well have killed him as he slept. So maybe the REAL reason for the manned operation was the information we got. If it’s true that Osama was still more active in the organization than had been thought we might have reaped a motherload of useful stuff.

      1. I still disagree that OBL’s fate was sealed. There was, at most, an 80% confidence he was at the compound; if he was merely nearby, he could have skedaddled tout suite. It’s also reasonable to assume he had a viable quick-getaway protocol in the event of an assault (which would have been very likely to succeed if the very plausible alternate scenario I linked to, wherein US and Pakistani forces engaged each other, occurred) but the speed and proficiency of the operation — as well as good luck — prevented it.
        .
        It was a gutsy call, no question. The high possibility of collateral damage/casualties and really embarrassing PR would have deterred most men. The very clean and effective operation also helps rehab the reputation of the CIA and the US armed forces. The apparent fact that OBL wasn’t merely a figurehead, but a continuing active leader in jihad, means that the crapload of potential intel scooped up from the compound will be anti-al-Qaida gold.
        .
        I don’t see anything especially rushed in disposing OBL’s body. There was no point in needed to show a corpse when OBL’s death was confirmed via alternate means, particularly with al Qaida now confirming his demise. Getting OBL was, IMHO, most definitely the primary objective of the mission; scoring a treasure trove of intel was a very close (and possibly, merely opportune) second.
        .
        Related digression: Apparently, members of the bin Laden household were avid drinkers of Coke and Pepsi. RC Cola really needs to take advantage of this potential PR coup.

      2. The high possibility of collateral damage/casualties and really embarrassing PR would have deterred most men.
        .
        I have to disagree here. If he had not acted, with all this intell, I would expect there would have been a mass exodus of angry officials happy to report they had handed OBL on a silver platter and been overruled. THAT would have hurt him , maybe destroyed his presidency. I can’t imagine any president being deterred enough to ignore such good information.
        .
        The how they did it was gutsy. Doing something was never in doubt.
        .
        The very clean and effective operation also helps rehab the reputation of the CIA and the US armed forces.
        .
        The armed forces don’t need any rehab, they are the one part of the government that gets high marks (which would be an alarming thing in most countries). definitely a feather in the CIA’s cap. Most of the successes the CIA has have probably in the nature of things that were prevented so it must feel great to have a trophy, literal or figurative.
        .
        I agree that killing OBL was the main goal…but the expected intell grab must have been considerable or it would have been foolish to not just bomb the building. Doing so would put no Americans at risk, eliminate any potential clash with Pakistani forces, etc. Now, if there was no risk of the Pakistanis getting involved, as that article i linked to stated, that changes things (and also sharply reduces the risks involved).
        .
        Without assurances that the Pakistanis would not be a factor, I would have bombed the place. Obama’s decision, if he had no such promise, was far chancier and, as it turned out, the correct one.

        I still disagree that OBL’s fate was sealed. There was, at most, an 80% confidence he was at the compound; if he was merely nearby, he could have skedaddled tout suite. It’s also reasonable to assume he had a viable quick-getaway protocol in the event of an assault (which would have been very likely to succeed if the very plausible alternate scenario I linked to, wherein US and Pakistani forces engaged each other, occurred) but the speed and proficiency of the operation — as well as good luck — prevented it.
        .
        It doesn’t look like that was the case. he apparently never left the compound or even his room very much (at least that’s today’s story, which is likely to be amended I guess). So there was a 100% chance he was there in reality. My presumed Plan B (Operation Whistling Death) would have ensured his end.
        .
        I don’t think there was much luck involved in this. There’s talk now–for what it’s worth–that the CIA had a building rented near the compound and were monitoring it. I assume we were keeping tabs on the place from recognizance planes day and night. I don;t expect to ever know the fullextent of the operation but I have little doubt that Obama did not send the team in there without some backup plans.
        .
        But if Quentin Tarantino ever wants to make an alternate reality movie where the mission goes wrong, Osama flees into the night and it turns into a mad clustermess of SEALS vs Taliban vs Pakistani forces loyal to Obma vs Pakistani forces who want the 25 million dollars, I’m there!

      3. The high possibility of collateral damage/casualties and really embarrassing PR would have deterred most men.
        .
        [snip]
        .
        The how they did it was gutsy. Doing something was never in doubt.

        D’oh! Got my thoughts crossed and incomplete when I was writing this. You’re right: Doing something was not in doubt. I’ll elaborate what I meant to say below.

        I agree that killing OBL was the main goal…but the expected intell grab must have been considerable or it would have been foolish to not just bomb the building. Doing so would put no Americans at risk, eliminate any potential clash with Pakistani forces, etc. Now, if there was no risk of the Pakistanis getting involved, as that article i linked to stated, that changes things (and also sharply reduces the risks involved).
        .
        Without assurances that the Pakistanis would not be a factor, I would have bombed the place. Obama’s decision, if he had no such promise, was far chancier and, as it turned out, the correct one.

        This is the train-track of thought where I got my lines crossed …
        .
        Besides scoring intel, there are a number of other reasons to not simply bomb the building: absolute confirmation that OBL was tagged, thereby preventing Al-Qaida from having “Osama bin Laden” continue to rally jihadi and issue threats; the very real possibility of collateral damage and casualties; the PR problem of not only blasting a bunch of children and noncombatant women into red paste but of also of having the US, unilaterally and without warning, bomb a populated suburb in Pakistan that was generally insulated from the war and is home to the Pakistani version of West Point; an awesome propaganda victory showing off America’s military puissance; a dramatic warning to other “untouchable” targets, reminding them that they too are vulnerable, etc.
        .
        However, despite the theoretical rewards and benefits of a manned assault, the potential disaster would still have been daunting. A bombing would have remained a much safer and easier call.
        .
        Most people would have gone with the safe bet. Obama risked much and the payoff was proportional.
        .

        But if Quentin Tarantino ever wants to make an alternate reality movie where the mission goes wrong, Osama flees into the night and it turns into a mad clustermess of SEALS vs Taliban vs Pakistani forces loyal to Obma vs Pakistani forces who want the 25 million dollars, I’m there!

        Right there with you. After hearing about Tarantino’s next project, DJANGO UNCHAINED (essentially INGLORIOUS BÃSTÊRÐS but with plantation owners and slave overseers instead of Nazis), I’m champing at the bit to see RUMBLE IN ABBOTTABAD.

    1. The people who insisted that Al Queda had nothing to do with 9/11 (“It was the Jewwwwwws!!!”) but simultaneously celebrated Osama for bringing the towers down will have no problem with the mental gymnastics of denying his death and blaming us for it.

  25. Makes one wonder about all those rumours we were hearing years back about his lieutenants being under strict orders to shoot him if it looked as thougth he was on the verge of being captured.

  26. So, we Kill bin Laden, we claim responsibility, we pìšš øff the Pakistani Military and Political leaders because we didn’t tell them anything until the SEALS were flying away from the compound and Al Qaeda sets out to “avenge the death of Osama Bin Laden” by bombing a Pakistani paramilitary academy.
    .
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13385597
    .
    Yeah… That makes even less sense than usual for them.

    1. They blame Pakistan for not stopping the raid.
      .
      I would love to know exactly how they expected Pakistan to stop such a raid if (supposedly) Pakistan had nfc that bin Laden was living a stone’s throw away from one of their military academies.

      1. While finding plausible that a state like Pakistan and specially its secret service could have dealings with al Queda (corruption and tribal links abounding)… I think the amount of šhìŧ they’ve had to deal with kind of disproves the theory. Bombs, outright rebellions and the military having to reclaim chunks of the country from talibans… I am sure some (or even many) officials must be in the extremists payroll, but as a state, Pakistan doesnt seem to be too complacient.

Comments are closed.