Death of Osama bin Laden, ten years later ... Options

[melloden]

Death of Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D)

Twatty AfDers.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

The US government is now admitting that bin Laden was unarmed. Presumably his wife was unarmed, too, when she was shot while "rushing the assault team." She must have looked pretty scary.

Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D) does not acknowledge any of this. It says that "Bin Laden, three other men, and a woman were killed in a firefight in which U.S. forces did not experience any injuries or casualties." Well, Duh.

Death of Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D) says that "According to U.S. officials, Bin Laden resisted the American special operation team. He was unarmed when he was shot." Since apparently he was not "rushing the assault team" along with his wife, exactly how was he resisting? Flipping the bird?

This looks like a summary execution, and I don't think it is going to help Obama's popularity all that much. I don't think even Dubya would have done this.

[Tarc]

This looks like a summary execution, and I don't think it is going to help Obama's popularity all that much. I don't think even Dubya would have done this.

I'm a flaming liberal on most issues, but not on this one.



for that fuckead. End of story.

[taiwopanfob]

This looks like a summary execution, and I don't think it is going to help Obama's popularity all that much. I don't think even Dubya would have done this.

I'm a flaming liberal on most issues, but not on this one.

This isn't an issue of "liberal" etc. It's called "common sense", and you and the elements of the US government that ordered the hit are not evidencing any.

The options were:

1) ignore the man -- for all intents and purposes he has been dead for almost a decade.

2) capture, followed by kangaroo court

3) kill while attempting to capture

4) extrajudicial execution

(3) is much worse than (2), and (2) is massively, incredibly, worse than (1). That what went down was clearly option (4) ("take no prisoners"), is easily the worst thing imaginable from almost any rational perspective. What a complete mess! Someone clearly thought they could manage the situation, and now all we have are backpedaling on mission details and concerns about "inflaming the situation"(!!!).

Rah rah, though. Have your party, or whatever it takes to keep the smile on your face during your next anal probe at the airport. Think of it has OBL reaching out from the grave: praise be to Allah! Or whatever bin Laden would say.

[Tarc]

This looks like a summary execution, and I don't think it is going to help Obama's popularity all that much. I don't think even Dubya would have done this.

I'm a flaming liberal on most issues, but not on this one.

This isn't an issue of "liberal" etc.

Sure it does; liberals are anti-war pussies, conservatives are wargasming hawks. This one time, I side with the hawks. No Trial of the Century, no cozy Supermax...hell, not even a burial site for them to make a martyr's shrine out of, he sleeps with Luca Brasi.

This post has been edited by Tarc: Thu 5th May 2011, 7:34pm

[Herschelkrustofsky]

This one time, I side with the hawks.

With all due respect, you side with the sheep. The evidence linking bin Laden to the 911 attacks is dubious and/or secret. His organization lacked the expertise and logistics to carry out 911. He has been mythologized by the media into a Jihadi superstar, and this whole extravaganza was like a giant "APPLAUSE" sign lit up by the people who brought you Obama. Can you say "Pavlov"? Don't worry, the effects will wear off by the end of the week.

[Milton Roe]

This one time, I side with the hawks.

With all due respect, you side with the sheep. The evidence linking bin Laden to the 911 attacks is dubious and/or secret. His organization lacked the expertise and logistics to carry out 911. He has been mythologized by the media into a Jihadi superstar, and this whole extravaganza was like a giant "APPLAUSE" sign lit up by the people who brought you Obama. Can you say "Pavlov"? Don't worry, the effects will wear off by the end of the week.

You really need to read the 9/11 Commission report to see what kind of Kings of Komedy operation 9/11 was. It was done on a shoestring. It was carried out by amateurs. At some point we have flight school people asking around about these weird students who only want to learn how to fly jets but not land them. All this in retrospect, but it all happened. Not that much money was involved. The effects were spectacular because a skyscraper represents a HUGE amount of potential energy, just waiting to be tipped over. As does a moving jet aircraft, if you redirect it a bit. And to do that, all you need do is break through a very thin cockpit door (at that time), and the pilots are not armed. All you need is 4 muscle-men and one guy who can turn an airplane.

The genius of 9/11 was in getting suicide operatives to apply force at three successive levels (pilot, plane, tower support structure) to gain access to larger and larger amounts of energy, in a chain. I don't think anybody, including al-Qaeda, thought the buildings would actually collapse. But hot steel won't stand those loads, and one section brings down the next, and away you go. As we know now.

Totally brilliant and nothing anybody saw coming, because nobody ever envisioned suicide jet-hijackers. Even Tom Clancey, a very bright guy who came closest to forseeing 9/11 in Executive Orders (1996) did it with a kamikazi Japanese airline pilot. The last flash of insight about not needing a skilled pilot if you take over the plane IN FLIGHT hadn't been arrived at.

Did bin Laden think of it? No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the brains. Bin Laden provided the resources of of al-Qaeda, such as they were. And because the idea was so damned original and so damned fanatical-- it took 20 men (19 in the event) who were willing to fly, or watch while they were flown, into a *&%$ng BUILDING at 500 knots-- it was enough. As with Lee Harvey Oswald and his surplus rifle almost as old as he was, audacity, originality, and sheer craziness counts for a lot. Sometimes more than all the planning and money in the world can buy from sane operatives and professionals.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

Totally brilliant and nothing anybody saw coming, because nobody ever envisioned suicide jet-hijackers.

Er, I just saw this mentioned above.

[Milton Roe]

Totally brilliant and nothing anybody saw coming, because nobody ever envisioned suicide jet-hijackers.

Er, I just saw this mentioned above.

Yes, and it refutes none of what I said. Yes, people had tried to crash small private planes into things. Nothing like a commercial jet. Yes, occasionally some nutcase would suggest that hijackers might crash a jet into something, and those in the know said "Not realistic-- hijackers are not going to be able to fly a commerical airliner, and the pilot on the job is certainly not going to cooperate in any way with a suicide dive no matter what they do."

IOW, you'll never recruit hijackers from people who are already commercial airline pilots, and nutjob hijackers cannot be run through all the stuff it takes to become a commercial airline pilot. That's why Clancey has his suicide commercial jet attack done by ONE lone and crazy airline pilot, as an act of personal vendetta (and after killing the copilot, with no passengers on board). People who ever thought about it figured a committed hijacker type would never make it all the way to being a legitimate airline pilot, and nobody considered that anything less would do the job. You're either a pilot or you're not, no in between.

The idea that there was an "in between"-- that's the That you might be able to teach just 4 or 8 hijackers JUST enough about piloting a commercial jet to fly the plane (badly) after take-off (some tiny fraction of what you need to know to be a commercial jet pilot), and that they might actually go to school to learn JUST THAT MUCH, ala carte, never occurred to anybody. That's the stroke of both genius and madness. Who would have thought you could go pay a fee and be taught ONLY to fly a commercial jet plane badly, but not land or take off? I would not even have thought that possible (it would be like teaching somebody to remove an appendix without bothering to go to any medical school). Only the sorts of people who ran such private aviation schools would have known that. And these guys are pilots-- it does not occur to THEM that they're teaching people who are only interested in crashing and dying. Why the hell should it? It's so foreign to their every thought and instinct that they never seriously consider it, either. Probably they think their students are just dilettants like people who pay to fly mockup space shuttles.

And there you go.