Bin Laden Dead?

So useless when they report "Al Qaeda's No. 2 Killed in Pakistan." How many Al Qaeda No. 2s have there been? A dozen by now?

http://www.new-video.de/da/612.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Rm7w8hnso

This is what the Obama administration does over and over. It’s a flagrant abuse of its secrecy powers. It uses anonymous leaks to selectively boast about what it does and thus shape media narratives and public understanding of its conduct (also called “domestic propaganda”). But it then simultaneously insists that the whole matter is classified — Top Secret — when it comes time to be subjected to any form of legal accountability or have its assertions publicly tested....

The corpse of Osama bin Laden will be one of the most featured props used by Democrats to venerate the President as a Tough, Strong Warrior and to argue that he deserves re-election (it will probably be the second-most invoked tactic, right after progressive celebrations over how “cool” Obama is, in contrast to the nerdy and awkward Romney: courtesy of the same political faction still so angry (and rightfully so) that the 2000 election became a referendum on the candidate with whom one would prefer to have a beer). Not that many people are interested in them, but there are still lingering questions over what happened in that raid. Either all of that information is classified, in which case the President’s aides should be barred from leaking unverifiable, politically beneficial snippets about it and should be criminally investigated on equal terms with other leakers when they do; or — despite John Kerry’s decree that everyone should simply “shut up and move on” – there should be real disclosure of the relevant information, which means not only on the campaign trail but in courts and media outlets.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/selective_bin_laden_leaking/

What lingering questions does he want answered? Whether or not there were orders to shoot on sight?

question: when will the manufactured outrage mill will shut down?

What lingering questions does he want answered? Whether or not there were orders to shoot on sight?

I assume he's referring to the conflicting reports about whether Bin Laden was armed, how much he resisted, etc.

I know GG's whole thing is pretty much entirely 'ethics in the face of countervailing opinions' but this seems like a losing issue for him. how many ppl care about whether bin ladin was resisting or not?

yeah and did they mirandize him first?

Very few. What else is new? xp

ah, enjoy the slippery slope to the United Soviets.

lol did you just call Obama a communist

who is the late great? He's still way too early imo.

c'mon, the USSR was ACTUALLY right wing. Authoritarian, whatev ya wanna call it.

yes compared to the last 200 years when our gov't showed great deference to constitutionality and transparency during wartime

sorry morbs i'm too busy thinking about matters of substance to enjoy this slippery slope

you keep fighting the good fight though

ethan?

no, but i'm flattered :-)

vahid yo

afaic i don't care if he was resisting or not. but even if I thought it mattered the State was going to kill him whether on the day and in the place they found him or later back in custody. I won't say that a charade of legality is meaningless, but gg wants to thread a needle so small that it might as well mean nothing.

the USSR was ACTUALLY right wing

this is a weird way to characterize the USSR

It's like Jonah calling Nazis socialists

how about actual legality instead of a charade of legality? I don't know if youve heard, Mordy, but another world is possible.

...except it's not possible of course, given Savage Mules like you lot.

lol @ "you lot"

"the rabble"

c'mon, the USSR was ACTUALLY right wing. Authoritarian, whatev ya wanna call it.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), F

I wanna go back to how odd this comment is.

hey Mordy, yr first-name pal Jonah is expecting u for dinner

I actually do not give a flying fuck about poli-sci and its attendant pedantry, Alfred, so let's not do it.

you brought it up!

how about actual legality instead of a charade of legality? I don't know if youve heard, Mordy, but another world is possible.

what is the real difference between killing obama on the spot or dragging him home and pretend to try him in a military tribunal and then execute him? are you so infatuated with the glamour of 'legality' that you don't realize that a state execution is a state execution no matter what veneer you put on it?

fwiw I would have preferred to see Bin Laden arrested & tried in a court of law, and imprisoned for life but frankly there was no way that was ever going to happen so while I do not like being party to a nation that wantonly assassinates people I'm not really surprised/outraged about this particular instance.

xp

It was an "attempted capture," Mordy, don't go off script! The comparative truth-tests you guys apply to Mittens 24/7 vs the O-Man are hilarious.

saying that the US will likely resemble the USSR in 40 (10?) years does not mean it will be "Communist," any more than the USSR was a Marxist state once the Bolshies became the new tsarist assholes.

i assume morbs is just using 'right-wing' as a synonym for pro-authoritarian but the USSR was not really right-wing at all in any meaningful way -- they didn't support existing hierarchies, they wiped them out en masse. it'd be like calling the post-1789 revolutionary french gov't 'right-wing' just because they killed lots of ppl.

re: slippery slope i think killing al awlaki is somewhat troubling, arizona immigration crackdown is quite troubling and the case of tareq mehanna is EXTREMELY troubling

but mordy otm re: bin laden

tbf to Morbz Mordy there is such a thing as the "moral high ground" in these kinds of cases (see also the Nuremburg Trials etc) and we definitely did not take it.

xp

morbz, i know that when you say 'you guys' you're just defaulting to a fantasized ILX boogieman that you're constantly in dialogue with but i'm pretty sure my thing is not applying comparative truth-tests to Mittens v. the O-Man.

never forget "traditional Muslim burial at sea"

I'll take the blame for inducing Morbs to replace Perrin with Greenwald.

All that interests me in today's post is Bradley Manning, and, yes, what's happening IS shameful. But I don't remember any libs in this here joint giving the prez credit for killing OSL. That's for Kevin Drum and the Beltway apparatchiks who design TIME cover stories.

the USSR was not really right-wing at all in any meaningful way -- they didn't support existing hierarchies, they wiped them out en mass

I was gonna say this very thing but Morbz kiboshed it... but yeah the USSR in a way was beyond ideology together. It was just gangsters and the naked exercise of power, with a thin veneer of "leftist" rhetoric.

xp

even if you get into the 'state capitalist' critiques of the USSR, right wing isn't the right term

but hey, Morbs wasn't wrong on the first usage. If you want to use a random pejorative to denote hostility to civil rights and liberties, the Soviets are as good as any.

i give the prez a ton of credit for killing OSL, but i wouldn't consider my positions on foreign affairs or OSL to be traditional ilx-lib opinion

saying that the US will likely resemble the USSR in 40 (10?) years does not mean it will be "Communist,"

USSR didn't have corporations so um no

it's just such an outlier though - warrantless wiretapping and arrest is scary because it can happen to anybody and on a large scale. teams of navy seals busting down our doors or drone strikes on us citizens not so much

I don't think OBL getting whacked is actually the point here - the secrecy on something like this, something so popular around the world that it was celebrated, is representative of the Obama White House's general hostility to openness and furtherance of Bush-era civil liberties abuses

"compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military" - gee, can't believe phrases like this get a strict civil libertarian like GG het up

by any definition "right wing" denotes embrace of property, tradition, and at its cleverest an appropriation of leftist discourse to hide reactionary tendencies (e.g. Reagan quoting Thomas Paine again and again). The USSR um didn't do any of this.

I don't think OBL getting whacked is actually the point here - the secrecy on something like this, something so popular around the world that it was celebrated, is representative of the Obama White House's general hostility to openness and furtherance of Bush-era civil liberties abuses

otm

corporations are our Central Committee, Shakes

well again what are they being secretive about in this particular case...? seems like tons of details leaked

don't we have more important things to be doing, like clamoring for the release of j edgar's fbi files?