Bin Laden Dead?

I don't know this Schwarz guy, but he looks ace:

Lots of Americans were mad it took ten years for the government to kill bin Laden, but I think it was worth being extra careful to make sure no one else got hurt.

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

Pretty sure Bin Laden had been confronting his accusers for years. Explicitly. On tape. Broadcast around the world. You think he had some fresh bromides in store for his show trial? I doubt OBL would have even defended his actions. But, oh, now we'll never know!

It is understandably of our most popular assassinations ever, I'm guessing it'll be #1 when VH1 does a countdown show.

only if you join Starship and sing "We Built This City."

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.

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 4, 2011 12:51 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

it's this kind of thing that makes greenwald's high standing hysterical to me.

but you know, mussolini never had his day in court and the war kinda was over (in italy) at that point.

shame on you, italy. shame on you.

nrq shd def move to the US and be a smug pundit

Yes, that's the major difference between the examples.

Terrorism is not warfare, because in warfare we wave away the butchery of civilians as fair game

Saw this in ... Poitico?

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) has drafted legislation that would require Pakistan to prove it didn’t know bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad to get U.S. funds.

Make a run for it, Pakistan! It's a trap!

how exactly is that one gonna work

like, if the country of Pakistan ever comes to the US, it will be required to divulge this info before it clears customs...?

lol maybe I should the entirety of things before I comment on them

Proving a negative, eh. Clever.

Not sure I would allow Mr Poe to drive a car or own a gun w/that level of intelligence.

Is that like a MadLibs post, Dan? "Maybe I should ________ the entriety..."

haha what the hell

I can blame missing letters on my crappy keyboard but entire missing WORDS = me needing sleep

I should READ the entirety blah blah

xp If MadLibs still works the way it did when I was a kid, the answer is either "boogers" or "butt," neither of which makes any sense.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) has drafted legislation that would require Pakistan to prove it didn’t know bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad to get U.S. funds.

has the senate always been like this? it seems like there's so much of this dumbass, infeasible, hot-topic legislation proposed recently.

There have always been some idiots in the house, and a handful in the senate for good measure.

Senate = platform for LCD posturing, legislation very infrequently

(that is, legislation that is the object of any thought)

ted poe is not in the senate

Mr. Poe would evidently prefer to (like many in his party) score cheap political points than to positively affect the extremely complicated and touchy foregin policy wrt Pakistan. He is thus a knave and a fool. Well done.

are there any experts on the icc or us law who could say whether either allow trials of defendants who have been kidnapped from other countries?

― lloyd banks knew my father (history mayne), Wednesday, May 4, 2011 2:01 PM (41 minutes ago)

US does iirc - I'm not in aposition to research right now, but try googling 'Alvarez-Machain', this I think is the case that puts it beyond doubt.

ICC doesn't do anything as far as I can tell. Logically, though, the kidnapping thing makes less sense there as it's based essentially on universal jurisdiction.

but he doesn't know that a ref has to be 100 percent certain to give a peno, ladies and gentlemen, this is yr supposed 'expert'

Pretty sure masterminding a plan to fly planes into skyscrapers is a straight red, darraghmac.

ted poe is not in the senate

I am confident this will be corrected by the good people of Texas.
I entirely support saying get-fucked to Pakistan if it had the remotest possibility of happening.

Obama's "This proves we can do anything we set are minds to" is maybe his biggest rhetorical brainfart ever, unless Navy SEALs are his new economic team.

I entirely support saying get-fucked to Pakistan if it had the remotest possibility of happening.

For the most part, trying to micromanage foreign policy from the House is a mug's game.

I assume he is just waiting for ppl to flood the White House w/ calls in support of his bold initiative

I entirely support saying get-fucked to Pakistan if it had the remotest possibility of happening.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly? The few Pakistanis I know are often in despair at their own country (and constantly worried about their relatives there) but hope for more engagement with the rest of the world not less.

This is serious shit, though. Remember 'you're either with us or against us'? The left went nuts on W for that but I thought he was talking directly to Musharraf and the Pakistani military and with good reason; they've been treating Afghanistan as a kind of client state for years. 170,000 million ppl of wide variety of ethnic and liguistic backgrounds, a quarter of whom live in poverty. A 60 year old republic with a terrible legacy of democratic continuity. Paranoid and resentful of India. Oh, and has nuclear weapons and a boatload of fundamentalists.

Yeah, let's make snap judgments based on emotion. That should lead to the best outcome.

so

​After more than two days of speculation and an ever-evolving account of what really happened, it is starting to become clear that Osama Bin Laden was never going to make it out of his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound alive, despite U.S. counterterrorism expert John Brennan's claim that, "If we had the opportunity to take him alive, we would have done that." Brennan is the same official whose initial reports of Bin Laden's wife being used as a human shield or that Bin Laden was firing a weapon when he was killed have since been explained as untrue. Using bits and pieces from various reports, and explanation from a wide range of experts and officials, it appears that Bin Laden was probably executed -- "After a firefight," as Politico points out were Obama's words in his initial speech, emphasis on "after" -- an idea corroborated by President Obama again in a speech Monday night in which he described "an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden." Bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter tells the story of an execution too.
"Senior Pakistani security officials said Osama bin Laden's daughter had confirmed her father was captured alive and shot dead by the US Special Forces during the first few minutes of the operation," Al Arabiya reports. And later in the same article: "The daughter has reportedly told her Pakistani investigators that the US forces captured her father alive but shot him dead in front of family members."

The Los Angeles Times adds that U.S. forces "were operating under rules of engagement that all but assured the Al Qaeda leader would be killed, officials have acknowledged, backing away from an initial account that Bin Laden was armed and used a woman as a shield."

Orders were to accept Bin Laden's surrender "if he did not pose any type of threat whatsoever," Brennan said on Fox News, and if troops "were confident of that in terms of his not having an IED [improvised explosives device] on his body, his not having some type of hidden weapon or whatever."

In other words: "He would have had to have been naked for them to allow him to surrender," according to one anonymous congressional aide.

I don't know what I mean exactly either, what am I, Undersecretary of something? Perhaps some good ol' manipulation of regime change. xp

never really like that brennan guy

ie, let's undermine authoritarians everywhere (change you can believe in TM) xp

I stumbled upon Brennan on C-SPAN on Monday and he reminded me of Bill Casey immediately.

Brennan and his warboner can do one, basically. NOT HELPING.

My best Pakistani (well uh Anglo-Pakistani) friend of yore is in Abbottabad with Al-J, waiting on his turn to enter the compound itself to do a report - when he files I will link it.

. . .

Perhaps some good ol' manipulation of regime change. xp

Careful, the place is unstable already and the only meaningful regime change that could happen would involve the highly implausible removal of the military as the lynchpin in politics and 'stability'. Musharraf's hero? Ataturk. Which considering the role of the military in maintaining secularism in Turkey is not so deplorable considering the alternatives are both regionaism and religious fanatacism.

Anyone else slightly disturbed that the US once again murdered an unarmed man of color?

you may wish to start at the top of the thread

this is like the only unarmed man of color that most ppl whose murder would not overly upset most of the people bothered by that tendency

maybe Mugabe too

jospeh kony

there might be a small difference between head of global terrorist organization responsible for worst attack on american soil and random dude on subway platform, yeah

i think thirdalternative is "taking the piss"

pretty sure he's "being himself" iirc

Anyone else slightly disturbed that the US once again murdered an unarmed man of color?

― thirdalternative, Wednesday, May 4, 2011 3:20 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you for real? xposts.

Sorry, I was just trying to rouse Max, my bad, carry on.

maybe Mugabe too

Am I a dick for thinking he really deserves it more than OBL?

cool pop culture reference, cutty. are you called cutty because you're so cutting edge?

― thirdalternative, Wednesday, May 7, 2008 3:27 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anyone else slightly disturbed that the US once again murdered an unarmed man of color?

― thirdalternative, Wednesday, May 4, 2011 11:20 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm assuming this is humor.

Hipster girls wish they were lesbians.

― thirdalternative, Wednesday, May 7, 2008 4:25 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sorry, xxxxposts