QuoteNo. There was a reason why Obama faced the cameras late last Sunday night. It's not for effect.
No need for haste; the story as to what apparently occurred in the compound is still in the process of being refined. You would agree though that a healthy dose of scepticism is warranted whenever the US alleges anything about matters such as these?Originally Posted by mypost
No. There was a reason why Obama faced the cameras late last Sunday night. It's not for effect.
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...6576648647371# (from about 3.30mins)
I'd believe her over the yanks. He's dead, but the Americans didn't kill him.
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Nobody was disputing there was a reason behind it.
There are suggestions she might well have misspoken.
There's an interesting chronology of statements and events detailed here.
I love how the story of his demise keeps changing by the minute. Yesterday morning he was armed but cowered behind his wife and used her as a shield.........now he wasn't armed but still resisted arrest so they shot him anyway. The wife was only shot in the leg and will recover.
Thought this was an interesting read. Especially point 10.
The 10 key myths about Osama (Guardian)
1. Osama bin Laden was 'created' by the CIA
He did not receive any direct funding or training from the US during the 1980s. Nor did his followers. The Afghan mujahideen, via Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, received large amounts of both. Some bled to the Arabs fighting the Soviets but nothing significant.
2. He had a huge personal fortune
Bin Laden was forced to leave any cash he had when he in effect fled Saudi Arabia in 1991 for Pakistan and then Sudan. His family cut him off. Nor would the inheritance from his hugely wealthy father have been divided into equal parts anyway. What Bin Laden did have was contacts, which allowed him to raise money with ease.
3. He was responsible for 1993 bombing of World Trade Centre
Ramzi Yousef, who was the main perpetrator of the attack, was probably working for Khaled Sheikh Mohammed who was an independent operator at the time. Mohammed only started working with al-Qaida in 1996 and even then kept his distance from Bin Laden.
4. He got money from drug running
No evidence for this whatsoever despite repeated claims – such as in the post 9/11 British government dossier on al-Qaida.
5. He never exposed himself to any danger
He did not single-handedly seize a short-barrelled AK-47 from a dying Soviet general as he sometimes claimed but numerous witnesses report that he was in the thick of fighting in Jaji in 1987 and again at the battle of Jalalabad in 1989.
6. He spent a lot of time in caves
In the late 1990s, for propaganda purposes, Bin Laden invited select journalists to meet him in caves near Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. However he lived in a much more comfortable compound a short drive away, near the former Soviet collective farm of Hadda owned by a local warlord. By 1999 he had moved to a complex of houses near Kandahar. When he was killed, he was living in a relatively comfortable detached house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In between, there is no evidence that he spent any time living in caves. The rest of al-Qaida's senior militants appear to have lived in the semi-fortified houses that are common in the tribal zones.
7. He was a tearaway teenager who partied in Beirut before becoming religious.
There is no evidence for this either. Bin Laden appears to have been an intense, shy and pious youth who married young and spent an inordinate amount of time studying scripture.
8. He was near to dying of a kidney disease.
There are some reports – not least in the Guantánamo files – of renal problems but certainly not serious enough to kill him. It is more likely he had back problems caused by his height (around 6ft 5in) and relatively sedentary lifestyle.
9. He hid in Kashmir, was the leader of Chechen groups, was responsible for violence in the Philippines and in Indonesia, organised the Madrid 2004 attack and had an extensive network in Paraguay, sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa.
All these claims, made by various governments or intelligence services over the last decade have proved totally without foundation.
10. Bin Laden was an Arsenal fan
Despite fans reportedly chanting "Osama, woah-woah, Osama, woah-waoh, he's hiding in Kabul, he loves the Arsenal", Bin Laden was not a faithful of the north London club.
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^To add on to the above.
Surprising the BBC allowed him to publish this, normally they rarely criticise the White House. I'm still quite sceptical of it all, there's definitely something funny about how it's all emerged.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereport...e_has_had.html
The White House has had to correct its facts about the killing of Bin Laden, and for some that has diminished the glow of success that has surrounded all those involved in the operation.
Bin Laden wasn't armed when he was shot. It raises suspicions that this was indeed a deliberate shoot to kill operation.
Here are the inaccuracies in the first version. The woman killed was not his wife. No woman was used as a human shield. And he was not armed.
The president's press secretary Jay Carney suggested this was the result of trying to provide a great deal of information in a great deal of haste.
I can largely accept that. There is no mileage in misleading people and then correcting yourself. But the president's assistant national security advisor John Brennan had used the facts he was giving out to add a moral message - this was the sort of man Bin Laden was, cowering behind his wife, using her as a shield. Nice narrative. Not true. In fact, according to Carney this unarmed woman tried to attack the heavily armed Navy Seal. In another circumstance that might even be described as brave.
Jay Carney said that Bin Laden didn't have to have a gun to be resisting. He said there was a great deal of resistance in general and a highly volatile fire fight. The latest version says Bin Laden's wife charged at the US commando and was shot in the leg, but not killed. The two brothers, the couriers and owners of the compound, and a woman were killed on the ground floor of the main building. This version doesn't mention Bin Laden's son, who also died.
By this count only three men, at the most, were armed. I do wonder how much fight they could put up against two helicopters' worth of Navy Seals.
Does any of this matter? Well, getting the fact right is always important. You can't make judgement without them. We all make mistakes, and journalists hate doing so because it makes people trust us less. For those involved an operation like this, time must go past in a confused and noisy instant, and they aren't taking notes. Confusion is very understandable. But you start to wonder how much the facts are being massaged now, to gloss over the less appealing parts of the operation.
And of course there is the suspicion that the US never wanted to take Bin Laden alive. Here at least many see a trial as inconvenient, awkward - a chance for terrorists to grandstand. Look at all the fuss about the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the confusion of a raid it's hard to see how the Seals could be sure that Bin Laden wasn't armed, didn't have his finger on the trigger of a bomb, wasn't about to pull a nasty surprise. If he had his hands in the air shouting "don't shoot" he might have lived, but anything short of that seems to have ensured his death.
I suspect there will be more worry about this in Britain nd Europe than in the US. That doesn't mean we are right or wrong. It is a cultural difference. We are less comfortable about frontier justice, less forgiving about even police shooting people who turn out to be unarmed, perhaps less inculcated with the Dirty Harry message that arresting villains is for wimps, and real justice grows from the barrel of a gun. Many in America won't be in the slightest bit bothered that a mass murderer got what was coming to him swiftly, whether he was trying to kill any one in that instant or not.
"My friend's auntie met your brother's budgie in 2007, and collected a sample of its DNA. With that DNA, I'm 99% certain you have herpes."
^^^ That's about as believable as the US claim. The people that claim to have killed him, who have a huge investment in being right, are the people claiming the proof, using facial recognition software that's widely accepted as inaccurate, and DNA from un-named relations.
Again, I don't care whether he's dead or alive, and I don't think it makes one jot of a difference to the world today either way. However I won't believe anything the americans say until I see independent evidence from a respected third-party. Conventiently, they forgot to bring one along, so let's just leave it there.
Excellent points on the bizarrely undirected celebrations in New York - idiots holding up their camera phones to point at... what? - and the guff coming out of the US administration about the operation; although TBH I'd be as quick to blame Twitter as the Whitehouse for that.
Also, I have to admit to having giggled a little at the "direct US funding" line in the Guardian. It's so naive a child could have written it.
Last edited by dahamsta; 04/05/2011 at 10:12 AM.
'Tis the tried and test Fianna Fail and Fine Gael route...
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Ask Captain John Riley what he thought of the US justice system? Hasn't really progressed that much!
Saying that Bin laden attack nearly killed my cousin in manhatten (only few blocks away). A very good schoolmate of mine who volunteered for the 9/11 clean up told me some horrific stories!
There are no winners in war, as the celibrating people of manhatten could find out again.
Last edited by Hurt Locker; 04/05/2011 at 6:10 PM.
To be fair to the author Jason Burke he is a bit of an expert on Al Qaeda. According to Wiki....In 2003, Burke authored Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, which was later updated and republished as Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. Noam Chomsky described it as the "best book there is" on the Al-Qaeda.
"If God had meant football to be played in the air, he'd have put grass in the sky." Brian Clough.
You'll NEVER beat the Irish.......you'll just draw with us instead!!!
Anyone can be an expert on something that doesn't exist. Giving such a loose coalition of lunatics a name is right up there on the master list of egregious acts by idiots in power in the late eighties and early nineties.
There's absolute zero doubt in my mind that US money was funneled to the mujahadeen in the soviet war in Afghanistan, most likely via the CIA. To suggest otherwise in the face of everything else they did in the idiocy of the cold war is simply ridiculous, and demonstrates how much of an "expert" he really is. Of course he covered his ass by using the word "direct", which just shows he's both a snake and a bullsh*tter.
Jason Burke can suck my balls.
Last edited by dahamsta; 05/05/2011 at 3:36 PM.
That rant made me laugh dahamsta.
"If God had meant football to be played in the air, he'd have put grass in the sky." Brian Clough.
You'll NEVER beat the Irish.......you'll just draw with us instead!!!
Back on form at last!
I think you could be waiting a while for that. Obama has decided not to release the photos, which I think is the best decision. I don't see the need to give Al-Qaeda and their associates even more propaganda material than they have got already, from taking their figurehead out.
About the celebrations, while they may look to us here as insulting, if we lost someone from his attacks 10 years ago, lost a loved one in the struggle to find him, or lived under threat of his group at home on a daily basis since, as Americans did, the reaction would be totally understandable. We as a nation, have by and large have got off lightly in the War on Terror, so it's easier for us to be judge and jury on whether the celebrations are appropriate or not.Excellent points on the bizarrely undirected celebrations in New York - idiots holding up their camera phones to point at... what?.
You're right on that one.There's absolute zero doubt in my mind that US money was funneled to the mujahadeen in the soviet war in Afghanistan, most likely via the CIA.
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Sure, how many people here would be celebrating if Bertie got shot through the eye? And he didn't plan any terrorism
I saw one reveller dressed as that all-American hero, Hulk Hogan...
Was Bin Laden, with his seemingly permanent terror threat, really the notorious bogeyman the mainstream Western media made him out to be though? When it came to Bin Laden, I think much of the information dispersed on him erred on the side of fantasy. For one thing, and rather extraordinarily considering, his profile on the FBI's "Most Wanted" website mentioned nothing about playing the mastermind role in 9/11. In fact, it gave no explicit mention to it or to him even being a suspect in the slightest. Odd, no?
Couple of thoughts:
1 However unedifying this might be, just thank your lucky stars we don't have to watch Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bolton gloat about this as they all put their stetsons on and ride into Ground Zero on horses
2 Not excusing the Iraq misadventure at all, but trying to find logic and consistency in any "empire" is a waste of time. The pursuit of due process is, always was and always will be a selctive thing. It will be exempted in certain circumstances - always, always, always. No point in trying to parse the legal issues in this killing. There are many reasons why killing him was better - some honourable and justified - others pragmatic and self serving. But it was ever, and will ever be thus
3 Obama's delivery of the Sunday night speech was masterful. Sober, calm, factual and articulate and without gloating. Yes, it is the minimum one should expect but most presidents fall miles short
4 I have every confidence that we have not heard, and will never hear, the full story - but that doesn't matter. We never get the full story and never will. We got enough to know broadly what happened and it is somewhat comforting that minor details are being changed - it would be eerily suspicious if everyone was telling the same story
5 Can we please drop this "send him for trial" nonsense ? Like it or not, there is probably minimal evidence against him that would stand up in court. While it would make great TV it does not necessarily make it a good thing. Yes, I see the terrifying precedent - if it is OK to double tap UBL, can we trust the Yanks to be as diligent with the next person they want to get rid of. But a lack of clarity on where the line is drawn does not make this the wrong thing to do
DB Cooper is alive !
The people of manhattan live in constant fear, Air/truck/car/van bombs or even dirty bombs. The bridge from new jearsey is a major target too. I was in time square 2007 around 4th july when cops did one of their emergency responce drills 5am morning (I was out getting burger couldn't sleep!) 60 cop cars decending on certain point within 5mins. I can't stress how serious the yanks are taking this next terror attack.
I like new yorkers (melting pot of the world), but i'd more chance of been killed by a crack head/ mugger/ bum with a gun or got lost in harrlem, than terroist bomb!
I known 250,000 people die every day around the world but
What stinks about this murder is the yanks seem the be taking a leaf out of the Isreali (feck internatioal law, we'll invade yer country and murder who we want) book.
Al-Qaeda have been doing it for years, all over the shop. Without any regard for the consequences.
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