Bin Laden Dead?

lol, terror is like the one thing Obama is unambiguously firm on

Well.

The President’s Speech
May 2, 2011 9:16 A.M.
By Mark Steyn

I know, I know, if you can’t blog anything real nice it’s better not to blog at all, that’s my advice. Nevertheless:

Personally, I would have liked bin Laden’s death to have been announced by whatever lowest-level official was manning the night desk at the Department of Nondescript Bureaucrats, preferably reading it off the back of an envelope. But, if you’re going to put the head of state on TV to announce it himself, it would have been better to have been all brisk and businesslike – “At 0800 hours American military assets entered an address at 27b Jihadist Gardens, etc” – and finish off with a bit of Churchillian sober uplift about it not being the end or the beginning of the end but maybe the end of the beginning.

Instead, as Stephen Hunter, the novelist and Washington Post film critic, writes:

Any joy one might feel in the intelligence of our analysts and the bravery of our door kickers was significantly diminished by Obama’s malignant narcissism. The first part of the announcement, evoking 9/11, was vulgarly overwritten as per Obama’s view of himself as some kind of gifted orator. The adjective bloated compote was unworthy of the subject, banal and self-indulgent.

I was, I confess, a little stunned by the first part of the President’s speech. It was, as Mr Hunter says, overwritten. It managed to be both overwrought and generic – all that telepromptered overload about cloudless Tuesday mornings was not only tackily over-prettified but came over as unfelt and hand-me-down, like a course exercise in some third-rate creative-writing school’s Soaring Oratory class. Or, at any rate, as if they’d loaded up a first draft of September’s tenth anniversary speech into the machine. The official announcement was delayed for all this? If ever there was a moment for the commander-in-chief to be real, plainspoken and off his glassy-eyed follow-the-bouncing-ball routine, this was it. It’s as if nobody around him knows how to write except in the one tinny key.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to rally round the flag, and rally round the President, but rally round this speech? No thanks.

I almost called the local Cuban right wing station to correct a geriatric who said this happened "in spite of" Obama's "elimination" of the military. I was going to remind her about Afghanistan and drone rockets but I think she died while talking to the talk show host, so I shut up.

TELEPROMPTURD

heres the powerline blog steyn quotes:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/05/028948.php

with the very, uh, telling last line:

That said, God bless the commandos! Man, I would have like to have been on that entry team!

How does Obama know the area Osama was hiding in so well? Makes you think.

I would have like to have been on that entry team!

is that gay slash fic?

it is now

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten

Previous #11 not yet added to the list.

i keep replying "Bin Laden IS dead" to this thread title, Linguo style

he was 'living in a dope secret mansion'

foresee the Michael Mann film

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjE4OTMxMDQ2NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDgxMTQ3._V1._SX485_SY323_.jpg

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth saying US strike force shot into empty house, buried marionette at sea

Any joy one might feel in the intelligence of our analysts and the bravery of our door kickers was significantly diminished by Obama’s malignant narcissism.

Sure he prefers the modesty of the former White House occupant.

http://schizoamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/bush_hero_flight_suit.jpg

my wife went to bed before the news broke last night. i seriously had a debate with myself about whether to do something in the morning like go "so you know who died last night? Obama! [wait a few seconds for her to react, ask questions] ohhhh no wait sorry I mean Osama, Osama Bin Laden is the one that died."

couldn't go through with it, though.

Clearly you value your life.

Countdown to the cries of "THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF NOT FOR WATERBOARDING" begin now.

I suggest we replace waterboarding with boogieboarding

ha Yeah, they're already crediting the intelligence they got from Gitmo prisoners

these fuckin guys with their "the speech was overwritten" constant ad-hom shit

graceless, racist, juvenile sons of bitches

h8 them h8 them h8 them all day

Graceless and juvenile, definitely. But how is it racist?

Oh the sons of bitches you mean, n/m

Stephen Hunter, the novelist and Washington Post film critic

Thankfully Hunter's prose re movies is not in the Washington Post much these days. Hunter's had his own share of embarrassing incidents that suggest his writing should not be given much credence.

Also, there's no evidence confirming that waterboarding of detainees is what got some of the intelligence

One courier in particular had our constant attention," the official said. He declined to give that courier's name but said he was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a "trusted assistant" of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a former senior al Qaeda officer who was captured in 2005.

"Detainees also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden," the official said. The U.S. intelligence community uncovered the identity of this courier four years ago, and two years ago, the U.S. discovered the area of Pakistan this courier and his brother were working in.

In August 2010, the intelligence agencies found the exact compound where this courier was living, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The neighborhood is affluent and many retired Pakistani military officials live there.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/01/the_timeline_of_the_mission_to_kill_osama_bin_laden

two interesting things:

1) it seems like they waited good and long before deciding to attack this compound

2) it doesn't seem they were 100% sure they'd find OBL there

or even 90% sure

Great for Pakistan that OBL was basically caught in their iteration of West Point.

2) it doesn't seem they were 100% sure they'd find OBL there

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, May 2, 2011 10:54 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is kinda troubling isnt it? not surprising tho. they sent a big ol helicopter to a mansion with no real intent of seizing their target alive. this couldve turned out way worse!

wasn't waterboarding off limits by 2005?

What will Pakistan's explanation be for how a compound right near their West Point somehow went under the radar?

it really is "you are black; I will find fault with everything you do." I know that if you're black this is like an obvious daily reality but I'm naive and have this deep need to believe that people aren't as awful as they are, so when it's as obvious as it is in a time like the commander in chief of your country just got the guy you spent the last ten years making a big deal about getting & all you can do is "'he's reading from a teleprompter!' 'he's making it all about himself!' 'He didn't credit the white guy who failed for eight consecutive years, where's the credit for the white guy?'" fuckin...h8 h8 h8

i thought his speech was, you know, presidential. i've read that people like that sort of thing from their president.

aerosmith once again otm...its the same old story, same old song and dance...

at least one conservative Facebook friend of mine posted "the jubilation is kind of sickening; we shouldn't really be rejoicing in someone's death regardless of how they've harmed us" and, in the ensuing conversation with her fellow conservatives, managed to get to "I'm not even convinced they got him, anyway; I'd feel a lot better if they'd shown us the body"

so it's bad form to say "yay he's dead" but a-ok to parade his body around in front of citizens? do you not see why that might not make much sense?

I don't think it's necessarily 'racist' I just think we're at the point w/ these people literally anything any democrat will do is gonna be 'wrong' - it'd be the same if this happened under any other democratic pres. at this point they'd find something wrong with him renaming monday 'reagan day'.

hahaha @ whoever wrote a "review" of the compound's location of google maps: "should have upgraded to orbital command"

there has got to be a way to criticize obama's speechmaking w/o being called a racist. maybe i'm missing the context.

xp xp i think this situation is bringing out a lot of confused/contradictory reactions because it seems so outside the ordinary--his crimes, the sheer length of the pursuit, etc. i'd give everyone a few days' reprieve from jumping on their statements about it.

I don't think it's necessarily 'racist' I just think we're at the point w/ these people literally anything any democrat will do is gonna be 'wrong' - it'd be the same if this happened under any other democratic pres. at this point they'd find something wrong with him renaming monday 'reagan day'

True. I still think the vitriol pales beside what Clinton endured in the nineties.

exactly

this makes sense:

The initial circumstantial evidence suggests the opposite is more likely—that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control. Pakistan will deny this, it seems safe to predict, and perhaps no convincing evidence will ever surface to prove the case. If I were a prosecutor at the United States Department of Justice, however, I would be tempted to call a grand jury. Who owned the land on which the house was constructed? How was the land acquired, and from whom? Who designed the house, which seems to have been purpose-built to secure bin Laden? Who was the general contractor? Who installed the security systems? Who worked there? Are there witnesses who will now testify as to who visited the house, how often, and for what purpose? These questions are not relevant only to the full realization of justice for the victims of September 11th. They are also relevant to the victims of terrorist attacks conducted or inspired by bin Laden while he lived in the house, and these include many Pakistanis as well as Afghans, Indians, Jordanians, and Britons. They are rightly subjects of American criminal law.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/notes-on-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html#ixzz1LCxz48VC

I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.

George Bush quote that the Republican world has to rationalize

There are some calling out libs for their reaction to Saddams capture but the two aren't even remotely comparable

2) it doesn't seem they were 100% sure they'd find OBL there

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, May 2, 2011 10:54 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is kinda troubling isnt it? not surprising tho. they sent a big ol helicopter to a mansion with no real intent of seizing their target alive. this couldve turned out way worse!

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Monday, May 2, 2011 10:58 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well i mean...he'd evaded them for 9 years so even if they had an idea he might be there i can see why they weren't totally sure. i'm guessing they at least knew there was some al qaeda guys in there if not the big cheese and that they weren't just storming in on some innocent bystanders.

Partisan people are partisan. People spouted as much shit about GWB and Clinton. I'm sure lots of people are racist too but I don't think it's fair to stick that label on any conservative who criticises Obama, no matter how stupidly.

It's racist. These are the kind of people who delude themselves through virtual micromanagement that they're superior to any black person and I would invite every single one of them to bend over and kiss Barack Obama's butt. But I was kind of inviting them to do that before this news.

I still think the vitriol pales beside what Clinton endured in the nineties.

― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 2, 2011 10:10 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i was in HS at the time, but, really?

also wrong to excuse racism as just partisanship, there are cases the other way too

both this and Saddam's capture seem to buy into the Darth Vader/single-evil-lord paradigm. The beat goes on.

also plz kick Pakistan to the curb.

anyway, dare i say it, but steyn sorta otm! that speech was a little odd. obama's in the middle of a poetic retread of sept. 11 imagery and there's a weird gleam in his eye like he just wants to jump around and kick the podium over.

No, Clinton abuse was mostly partisan with maybe a touch of classism thrown in.

i was in HS at the time, but, really?

Oh yeah -- it only seems worse NOW cuz of the internets. But right wing radio and the Beltway press (our friend the late David Broder: "He trashed the place and it's not his place") hounded him for years over HRC's lesbianism, her involvement in Vince Foster's suicide, the ring of drug murders in Arkansas, the Travel Office files, Arkansas State Troops, etc.

There are some calling out libs for their reaction to Saddams capture but the two aren't even remotely comparable

I have honestly forgotten what the liberal reaction to Saddam's capture was. And I'm a liberal! How did we react?