Bin Laden Dead?

For some reason every time I see "Northern Alliance" I get confused and think it has something to do with Ireland.

The Taliban are a high quality enemy, to be sure.

I remember thinking in 2001 that fighting with the Northern Alliance made it sound like we were in Star Wars

God I woulda killed to hear Dubya tell someone they were part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor

I hope they don't end up showing this picture they keep talking about.

me too. I really have no desire to see it, it's grotesque

and it's not like it's gonna allay any of the conspiracy theorist's doubts

"SHOPPED! LOOK, THOSE BULLET HOLES IN HIS LEFT CHEEK LOOK TOTALLY DIGITAL, FUCK THE GOV'T"

if they release the photo i hope they do it during my shift

can't stand "Right Here, Right Now"

nothing to me is more annoying than people putting words in the mouth of dead figureheads.

yeah esp when we know King would've been all WAY TO GO, TRIAL-AVERSE DOGGS

It seems likely that nobody "put words" in MLK's mouth, it just got conflated with the first sentence in endless pasting. But you have your fun demonizing due-process monkeys.

i'm glad we've exhausted all the other related topics that we can now fight about whether the mlb misattribution on fb status messages was intentional or not.

mlk*

well, it is the end of history

http://people.missouristate.edu/WilliamBurling/612%20Drama/Adorno%20Endgame.pdf

yea I've seen the error of my ways, Morbs, I'm going ahead and quoting Cat Stevens as saying "Peace is groovy dude", I mean he didn't say it or nothin but I know he feels that way

Nothing to gain from releasing the photo beyond a new image nutters (western or otherwise) will affix to placards at protests. The best proof of Bin Laden's death will be the absence of Bin Laden.

considering I saw a few images with the first non-mlk statement attached next to his portrait, I'm pretty sure people were in fact putting words in his mouth, although not in a matter to intentionally deceive.

matter? manner. it's getting late for me.

History is excluded, because it itself has dehydrated the power of consciousness to think history, the power of remembrance.

xpost yea, all it was was some goofball fuckign up the quote at some point in time, someone copying, then re-copying, and so on, and so forth....

"Real Real Real" >>>>> "Right Here Right Now"

"Real Real Real (Osama's Dead)"

"Osama's Dead" -- bauhaus

I remember thinking in 2001 that fighting with the Northern Alliance made it sound like we were in Star Wars

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, May 3, 2011 9:40 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^exactly my thoughts as well

when if not now does a death cease to be "pointless"

I was referring to the death of civilians, not the death of Osama bin Laden

if i never hear one more person say "so there was collateral damage, it's their fault for not fleeing the country/not overthrowing their government" I'll be a happy man

gonna go out on a limb here and say that you will not be a happy man

thread got real confusing until i realized you guys WEREN'T referring to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZoOiWoaFtg

special envoy Staffan de Mistura otm

wish ppl would err on the side of being big softies for whom one pointless death is an outrage instead of realistic men of the world

are you calling my wife a realistic man of the world

cheerin-OBL disaster

Let's not fallout about it.

how is sesame street going to handle explaining this sensitive issue to the kids

sockmuppets

*cue Muppet Show theme in internal jukebox*

pretty much agree with herculean party pooper glenn greenwald here:

It was striking to note in yesterday's New York Times the obituary of Moshe Landau, the Israeli judge who presided over the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. It's a reminder that when even the most heinous Nazi war criminals were hunted down by the Israelis, they weren't shot in the head and then dumped into the ocean, but rather were apprehended, tried in a court of law, confronted with the evidence against them for all the world to see, and then punished in accordance with due process. The same was done to leading Nazis found by Allied powers and tried at Nuremberg. It's true that those trials took place after the war was over, but whether Al Qaeda should be treated as active warriors or mere criminals was once one of the few ostensible differences between the two parties on the question of Terrorism.

(though it does ignore the hundreds, probably thousands of nazis who were in fact hunted down post-armistice and unceremoniously whacked by both military and civilians)

I don't want to unequivocally call bullshit on that passage bc I don't really remember ppl saying or not saying that Al Qaeda should be treated as mere criminals, but I certainly never believed that Bin Laden was a mere criminal (not sure I'd give him the kinda honorific of being an 'active warrior' either). But what Greenwald waves away with a few words ("It's true that those trials took place after the war was over...") completely invalidates his argument. Yes, that's the major difference between the examples.

Has Greenwald complained yet that we violated Pakistan's sovereignty to kill Bin Laden?

i definitely think al qaeda should be treated as "mere" criminals. and i'm afraid i agree with the left-wing consensus that the notion that the united states is "at war" with al qaeda is a bullshit rationale for continuing military spending and expanded executive authority

Greenwald seems to overlook that the complexities of underlings "just following orders" are myriad. Whereas the acknowledged and admitted figurehead and leader of a global terrorist initiative who repeatedly took (videotaped!) credit for the most heinous of acts (that evidence had already implicated him in even before he explicitly conceded his complicity lacks a certain, shall we say, flexibility, moral or otherwise. I'm truly unsure what a trial would have proven or elicited that would have been beneficial to anyone. Just a lot of noise before we inevitably killed him anyway. And then we would have been compelled to give him a proper burial, thus giving the felled martyr eternal life (symbolically) as an impetus for future villainy.

eichmann had no sizeable constituency to preach to in his trial, which had an elucidatory value beyond its judicial purpose (cf arendt et al, his blunted articulation of his own actuarial sociopathy)

a bin laden trial in america/the hague would likely resemble the milosevic farrago x1000 - a rejection of the court's validity, incessant rambling self-justification, acting-out and grandstanding, likely yielding negligible insight into his criminal enterprise while churning up wahabbist sympathy and martyrdom imagery

'combat death' or veiled summary execution seems the most sensible outcome, and in a utilitarian sense the most just

to which could be adduced further rationales -- the need for certainty (botched pullout could have let him escape), the extraterritorial location, and the inevitable ecstatic and inflammatory execution if tried under american sovereignty (unconscionable to much of the civilized world and a dangerous incitement to much of the rest)

these same people don't want due process or trials for the guys in guantanamo; the level of self righteous bullshit being served up here is silly even by the standards of the day

Which same ppl? I want trials and justice for the prisoners of guantanamo. What does one thing have to do with another?

Basically neither the US or Pakistan has its hard-of-thinking fundies under control and it actually shames me, at least on the American side, that adult babies baying incoherently for justice are the world's take-away of who we are. I would also like jury trials for Guantanamo people, and a pony, please.

Tony Blair on R4 making me want to vom but at least I can't see the Botox this way.

that adult babies baying incoherently for justice are the world's take-away of who we are.

I don't get this at all. Who is baying?

The people who are all 'I wanna see his head on a stick' etc...

guantanamo xp

Are ppl saying that here?

I don't think anyone is talking about people on this thread.

the extraterritorial location

well yeah - as goole suggests upthread it would be a bit rich getting all habeas corpus after flouting every rule in the book to raid the dude

but in a utilitarian sense the most just is not really the precedent i'd like to see the united states set. that's the justification every killer gives.

sure you don't want the trial to serve as a pulpit to preach from but, well, yes - he would "have his say" if given half a chance. but if we're afraid of that then jeez.

ha yeah, shudder to think a defendant could confront his accusers