Bin Laden Dead?

as was mentioned before, the ppl celebrating were probably just college kids looking for an excuse to party

― That Dunkster! (absolutely clean glasses), Monday, May 2, 2011 5:51 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this

so now we need to find out (I don't think we ever will) whether KSM shared the information after a few Marlboros and a Coke or he was tortured.

btw I'm not going to lecture a relative of someone killed in the attacks about the proper way to celebrate or mourn.

yes this was quite obvious -- but no one on TV was going to ruin their footage by saying that

Dr. Phibes was just holding court on ABC. Couldn't bring himself to say Obama's name: the administration deserves credit, and we owe "him" the same sense of satisfaction we all feel. Whatever that means.

fuck any sympathy for a belligerent murderer like Bin Laden, what makes me sad is more the notion that the end of level boss has been beat and the game has been won

― bell hops (Noodle Vague)

bush and bin laden kickin it

http://ui32.gamespot.com/1535/bushbowser.jpg

btw I'm not going to lecture a relative of someone killed in the attacks about the proper way to celebrate or mourn.

i wouldn't lecture either but that doesn't mean i don't have an opinion about what's civilized or useful

Our long national nightmare is over: love Lee Ann Womack, but I don't wanna hear "I Hope We Dance" again.

btw I found most offensive the enthusiasm with which Facebook posters and the bottom run of right wing websites wrote a variation on "I hope the SEALS stuffed pork in this a-hole's mouth!" You could almost hear the sixth grade giggling and smirking.

*bottom rung

don't mean to derail thread but looking at the GWB photo made me think again about how it's not entirely clear to me how he is any less moraly culpable for the deaths of 1,000s than OBL. yet he's living high on the hog in texas.

well he's less morally culpable to the extent that he didn't say "let's go and deliberately kill 1000s of random people"

He's "morally culpable" of something by approving torture and the invasion of a sovereign country, if that's what you mean.

'a sovereign country' to quote michael moore

said more or less the same thing in the US politics thread last night, but though i'm a card-carrying bleeding heart, i find it difficult to be weirded out or repulsed by the celebrations and juvenile trash-talk. it all seems pretty tame and predictable, honestly. people celebrate when their enemies die, especially the officially-sanctioned, level boss boogeymen. they always have and probably always will. to tell the truth, i'm more weirded out by my own indifference.

^^^ absolutely

there's been general agreement since sep 12 2001 that killing bin laden would put the lid back on the hotpot of american anxiety that the attacks had stirred up - i don't think it will, but the fact that so many have believed it, for so long, will actually go some distance towards it - and the length of time involved strangely aids this i think

A confession: beyond relief that my uncle and a few friends were not in the kill zone on 9-11, I didn't feel much at all, other than recoil from the horror of paralysis: we had to Do Something, so Something Was Done.

Erm--admin releases more details: didn't fire a shot, may not have picked up a weapon. (They said, I just didn't catch all of it.) Discussions of which will tie in with deaths of Khadaffi's son (the youngest and apparently most harmless, BBC says; plus grandchildren). But still.

Reagan's attack on Libya also resulted in the death of a Qaddafi child (his adopted daughter).

Yes. Have they said what happened to the woman Bin Laden reportedly used as a human shield?

Was the mission to capture Bin Laden or to kill him?

It was "kill or capture"

maybe this feels different in america, but this seems from here like a clear case of a bad guy getting his just deserts. will it stop terrorism? no. to call it an anticlimax would suggest people were anticipating a climax, which they haven't been for a long-ass time. wonder if he was even involved in terrorism in a significant way at this point.

i had heard the mission was just to kill.

http://www.ajc.com/multimedia/dynamic/00921/bin_laden_2_921003c.jpg

http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/02/official-bin-laden-mission-was-kill-or-capture-not-just-kill/

ah it was kill or capture with a strong assumption that it would be the former. capture with extreme prejudice.

I wouldn't have minded a trial, but because this White House has proven itself incompetent when it comes to dealing with the intricacies of criminal prosecution of terrorists, I'm glad this problem is now gone.

In addition, think of Hannah Arendt's fictionalized fantasia of what she would have wanted Eichmann's judge to say before his execution. I'll post it if I can find it.

haha, best part is the AJC's caption "Osama bin Laden’s death is a “touchdown” for America, said VFW Post 5408 Cmdr. Steve Grillo in Acworth."

Kinda surprised there wasn't more calls for them to post his head on a pike at GZ or the WH like he was fucking Cromwell or something.

kill doesn't feel like the naturally best option to me, but was almost certainly the inevitable option

nothing is more dangerous than a herd of 10-12 Americans occupying the same space simultaneously

Said they were prepared to capture, if no resistance, but considered that a remote possibility. Having him provide actionable intelligence might also have been a remote possibility, but retaliatory hostage-taking might well have been less remote (I'm thinkin)

"Kill or capture" sounds like a fudge to me. They must have been planning to do one or the other when it came to it. "Kill if there's a danger to our forces", as in a police raid, is one thing. But I'm not sure that's what we're talking about, is it?

don't agree at all, i feel like if they could've viably took him alive for questioning or trial or whatever then they would've preferred that

Just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations--as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world--we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to share the world with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang

^^^^ Hannah Arendt

there was no way they were going to capture him -- it would just give the right more of an excuse to call Obama 'soft', and sad to say the average American generally wants blood.

the PR would never have allowed it

u don't think an eventual prosecution would've been better PR for the Obama admin than this vaguely murky disposal? not that i believe this was any kind of consideration

haha, best part is the AJC's caption "Osama bin Laden’s death is a “touchdown” for America, said VFW Post 5408 Cmdr. Steve Grillo in Acworth."

― del griffith, Monday, May 2, 2011 7:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

lmao, was saddam a field goal for america

idk a trial would seem kind of... hypocritical. dressing up the foretold end result with the appropriate legal justifications and so on. i don't know where he could have been tried, how the probably 'completely illegal' nature of his capture could be smoothed over, etc.

i mean i suspect as much as anything there was a genuine fear that a taken alive Bin Laden would issue coded instructions to Al Q operatives

Noodle -- not really, I could already hear people saying "AHH, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, WE KNOW HE DID IT, KILL HIM!!! SCREW THESE 'TRIALS'!"

I'm with mayne on this. It would have been a show trial. Remember when Eric Holder all but promised a guilty verdict in the KSM trial?

Think they shot him in the head one extra time just to make sure he stayed down, like a horror movie? (or a certain Tsar?)

lmao, was saddam a field goal for america

― cum dude (Princess TamTam), Monday, May 2, 2011 7:28 PM (59 seconds ago)

nah, Saddam was a rouge at best

maybe if I'm feeling generous, a safety

I don't see how assassination is somehow morally superior to a flawed trial.

i think Bin Laden cd reasonably have been tried for crimes against humanity, tho that wd involve the US handing him over. this is all "balance of possibilities" stuff but i dunno that killing him was a clear bonus over taking him alive

I don't see how assassination is somehow morally superior to a flawed trial.

It isn't. They were taking fire and returned fire, from what I've read.