Yesterday, it was widely reported that bin Laden “resisted” his capture and “engaged in a firefight” with U.S. forces (leaving most people, including me, to say that his killing was legally justified because he was using force). It was also repeatedly claimed that bin Laden used a women — his wife — as a human shield to protect himself, and that she was killed as a result. That image — of a cowardly through violent-to-the-end bin Laden — framed virtually every media narrative of the event all over the globe. And it came from many government officials, principally Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan.
Those claims have turned out to be utterly false. From TPM today:
It was a fitting end for the America’s most wanted man. As President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan told it, a cowardly Osama bin Laden used his own wife as a human shield in his final moments. Except that apparently wasn’t what happened at all.
Hours later, other administration officials were clarifying Brennan’s account. Turns out the woman that was killed on the compound wasn’t bin Laden’s wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using a human shield. And he might not have even been holding a gun.
Politico’s Josh Gerstein adds: “The White House backed away Monday evening from key details in its narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces.” Gerstein added: “a senior White House official said bin Laden was not armed when he was killed.”
Glenn and I had a back and forth about this yesterday on the twitter tubes, and to me, the two important takeaways from this are:
1.) I think comparing this to Tillman and Lynch is inaccurate, because here we have a case of the WH putting out statements, and as soon as they realize they are wrong, walking them back. Not so with those other two cases. Hell, we still don’t know with certainty what happened to Tillman, and never will. And the guy who helped cover it all up, McChrystal, wasn’t undone by his dishonesty, but by a case of Bud Light Lime. Don’t get me wrong, I think anyone in a leadership position in the military who admits to liking Bud Light Lime should be fired, and immediately. But these scenarios are not the same.
2.) Once again, members of the media will simply uncritically repeat anything they are told. The human shield story reeked of bullshit the moment it came out, yet the media repeated it anyway and that will help frame the perception of this mission in perpetuity.
Personally, I’m not convinced there was anything intentionally nefarious done by the WH. As I joked yesterday, the reason initial reports are called initial reports is because later reports often correct and clarify the situation and what has transpired. This doesn’t mean I think the folks on the ground lied to the WH, it doesn’t mean that I think that the WH intentionally polished the stories, it means that there is a lot of shit going on in operations like this. Add in all the chaos, all the radio chatter, the excitement of maybe finally getting bin Laden, the concerns for the troop, the haziness of any combat situation, the media crush and demand to know WHAT HAPPENED, the downed chopper, etc., and you have a situation in which a lot of things can get garbled. Initial reports will be wrong.
But, you say, how could the “Osama used a human shield story” pop up? Well, pretty easy:
On the human shield question, he said at least two women in the compound, including a wife of bin Laden, “certainly resisted and they put themselves against the assaulters.”
“Whether or not they were trying to shield or whether they were trying to attack is still unclear,” Brennan said.
Carney later gave reporters a step-by-step description of the assault that also changed the initial details.
“On the first floor of bin Laden’s building, two al Qaeda couriers were killed along with a woman who was killed in crossfire,” Carney said. “Bin Laden and his family were found on the second and third floor of the building.”
Carney noted “there was concern that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation … and indeed he did resist.”
“In the room with bin Laden, a woman, rather bin Laden’s wife, rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed,” Carney said. “Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”
Carney provided no further details on how bin Laden resisted. A U.S. official speaking on condition of not being identified told CNN on Tuesday that bin Laden was shot when he made a threatening move.
When asked if bin Laden tried to grab a weapon or physically attack a commando, the official would only say: “He didn’t hold up his hands and surrender.”
Earlier CNN reports, which I can no longer quote because they have been edited, stated that a human shield incident occurred in the courtyard, and did not involve Osama but another member of the compound using the women. I can see that easily beinggarbled into Osama using human shields. Clearly that is no longer operative, which makes you wonder- WHAT IS CNN HIDING?
Seriously, though, these things happen fast and furious, and information gets garbled. DDAY has a great piece up on all the initial reports that have since been corrected. The WH was not watching this action unfold on a helmet cam, they were watching Leon Panetta give play-by-play. Add in the fact that this happened thousands of miles away, you had a bunch of excited troops with conflicting reports, it is quite easy to see how initial stuff got wrong.
What is important to me is that the WH seems, at this point, to be acting in good faith, immediately correcting the record when they know better. That’s the test for the WH.
zmullls
Hear, hear. It’s honest “this is what happened, based on what we know” followed by “we’re continuing to get further reports and clarifications and we’ll update you,” not deliberate spin. Stuff happens, and it’s hard to get right the first time.
We’re too used to watching operations on TV shows and in movies, where everything is scripted and crystal clear…
Fred
There you go with your Obama concern trolling again. Jesus titty fucking christ! And wtf is with your Greenwald fetish. The guy is a snake in the grass!
The Duc d'Fuck
You’d have saved yourself all the effort if you had just said “Brazil!”
Martin
I thought Brennen qualified his statements pretty well on Sunday. On Lynch and Tillman, those were clearly deliberate campaigns to spin a new narrative.
GG is a dishonest asshole. Sully should make him a guest blogger.
Egypt Steve
I agree. Greenwald is letting his inner-Obama-loather get the better of him here. Who knows how many ears and mouths all this info went through between the Seals on the ground and whatever spokesmen gave out the initial info to the press? Every 6th grader knows about “Telephone.”
FlipYrWhig
Greenwald might as well be Jim Hoft at this point, grabbing at whatever comes through the media. He’s a cartoon.
ETA: I half expect him to start talking about how the birth certificate had PhotoShop layers and thus was a forgery that the lamestream media fell for.
Jay C
@zmullls:
Unfortunately, to many out there in the general public – including all too many in the “MSM” – “scripted and crystal clear” is considered the standard for covert-action operations. And, as a channel for the disappointment of those who have some sort of axe to grind with the Obama Admin; this will do just as well as anything.
But while the Bush gang loved to appeal to (and, to a large extent, craft policy on) the public’s overheated notions of “anti-terrorism” activities as formed by films, TV, and sensationalist literature: they can’t be pleased that, unlike so much of their own operations, Obama’s Abbottabad raid actually played out, in real life, like something out of an episode of “24”. Which must rankle.
slag
I watched Brennan’s press conference. There seemed to be a lot of caveats and disclaimers in the statements he was making. Subsequent to that, I was seeing a lot of storytelling in the media that didn’t jive with my impressions of the press conference in that the stories didn’t include those caveats and disclaimers. So I was assuming they were backing up their stories with other information. Apparently not.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Some people get the vapors when I criticise the incompetent douchebag. It gives me pleasure to increase that vapor level.
MBunge
I didn’t see the respective tweets, but I’m sure Greenwald was entirely in agreement with your thoughtful and nuanced take on how this shit happens in real life.
Mike
John Cole
I’ve deleted Yevgraf’s gay-baiting remarks and mentions of them. If you can’t state your case without that bullshit, maybe you have no case?
You’ve been warned.
urizon
I think the human shield bullshit was an example of an administration official trying to “cowboy-up” the narrative: Bin Laden, bad guy till the end; us good guys to the rescue, etc.
But this isn’t the Bush White House; so, instead of running with the obviously false story, the administration corrected the record. I find this refreshing, to say the least.
And don’t think for a minute that the deathers wouldn’t jump all over any discrepancies if they were to emerge later on.
Ghanima Atreides
lol, n00b.
The whole double top secret SEAL mission is just cover so’s not to further destabilize Zardaris government.
I, personally, islamic populist revolutionary that i am, do not wish Zardaris government to be destabilize, not with custody of a hundred nukes.
But if the Arab Spring comes to Pak, that is what will happen.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Scolding noted – I’ll try and temper my deep loathing for this Greenwald creature.
The Duc d'Fuck
And here I thought that bigotry was no longer acceptable with the juicebaggers. I guess that this just proves the depth of John’s (self-professed) lack of interest in homophobia.
PeakVT
I don’t see anything nefarious. I just wish the Obama Administration had recognized that they needed to wait for a day or two to get the finer details right before talking about them. It’s inevitable that someone will try to exploit an inconsistency, regardless of whether it happened due to an honest mistake. That kind of discipline is hard to maintain in situations like this, though.
Corner Stone
We’re going to find out in 6 or 9 months that all of the details regarding this event were complete bullshit. Including the myth of “the courier”.
ETA, which is not a criticism in itself. The WH is protecting their sources, as they should.
Just all the breathless triumphalism and unwillingness to consider what is being swallowed whole…
RoonieRoo
Ignore me. I need to learn to read.
Lynn Dee
I agree. This is simply a case of there being ongoing debriefings of those involved, as well as other information coming in (e.g., regarding whether the woman who was shot was Bin Laden’s wife) — as a result of which the understanding of what actually happened ends up being revised.
If this stands in stark contrast to the Bush W.H., it’s because the Bush W.H. fixed on its “official story” and then went with it, the facts be damned. That’s where Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch come into play — evidence of that W.H.’s bad faith. That is NOT what’s going on here.
joeyess
Ha ha ha ha……… You see? This is why I frequent this blog more and more. In the middle of deadly serious issues, Cole, you always find a punch line. Well played Sir. Well. Played.
cleek
quite.
yet his perma-critics are, as usual, assuming the worst and finding evidence to confirm what they already deeply believe: conspiracy and corruption. when, in reality, there is merely confusion, haste and eventually, correction.
when you see the world through Obama-is-evil-colored-glasses, everything looks like Obama acting with malice.
Omnes Omnibus
The world is a messy place. If the White House had not offered provisional details immediately, I would guess that many, possibly including Mr. Greenwald, would have been asking why there was such secrecy and what the Obama Administration was hiding. Fuck it.
John Cole
Boy, you look stupid now, don’t you? Particularly since I deleted the offending comments as soon as I saw them, and BEFORE you made this little snide comment.
Piss off.
Fred
For fuck sakes. Glad to see so many arm chair generals around!
They obviously cannot talk about the real time communications system they had. ABC reported today that they were likely watching infra red predator drone video with Panetta in corner of the screen relaying ground communications via the field commander.
So they were likely NOT watching Bin Laden getting shot in the head via a seals helmet cam or anything like that.
What probably happened is there were some assumptions made through the chain of command in the heat of battle and they had to revise that after debriefing the Seals.
I don’t get why you people get sucked into these right wing games of trying to control the message with massive amounts of manure! People are just so fucking dumb sometimes it’s depressing!
singfoom
Yeah, I’m with you on this Cole. I think Greenwald is right when he talks about the stenographers, but I don’t think the WH was deliberately misleading people, just doing the best with the infor they had.
Greenwald tends towards distrust of official sources and tends to ascribe bad motivations where it’s ambiguous. I don’t get a hatred of Obama from him as others on this thread have, but he does have some good points.
I watched the twitter conversation, it was thrilling.
Mike Kay (Team America)
BWHWHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAH
I told so you so.
jrg
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree. Greenwald is an idealist, who will find something to complain about, regardless of the circumstances.
When Obama talks about “making the perfect the enemy of the good”, folks like GG are exactly who he’s referring to. There does not appear to be a pragmatic bone anywhere in GG’s body.
JCT
Really, why don’t we just remove Obama from office and re-install Bush at this point.
I will never, ever understand this endless far left-wing carping re: everything Obama does. I don’t think he’s perfect either, but the belief in endless unicorns that “someone” else could magically bring to us is farcical. This is exactly the same thing that the wingnuts engage in — endless criticism without a shred of alternative ideas.
Tell us, Glenn (and Jane and whomever) — who is this magical real liberal person who can win the presidency and deliver exactly what you want.
We’re all waiting with bated breath for your CONSTRUCTIVE and HONEST suggestions.
And really — please enlighten us Glenn (based on your experience with fog of war situations and the timings of military de-briefings of what, 40 -odd people) how this could have been handled better. Especially given the desire for instant answers in this day and age.
This really pisses me off.
Lori
John,
Mostly what you say makes sense. But when I look at the photo of the folks in the White House Situation room, I am certain they are not looking at Panetta’s face as he narrates. I’m willing to bet that at that moment they are watching someone get shot. (image here http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972927/-This-is-what-political-courage-looks-like?detail=hide)
Maude
I heard on righty radio that some people want to see the video of the bin Laden firefight.
Here we go, pictures or it didn’t happen.
How long before we hear, Obama is as bad as Bush, black Jimmy Carter?
The Duc d'Fuck
See, now that’s how one goes about baiting the hook without bringing up unrelated issues like race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.
WereBear
Stop expecting professional behavior from this bunch of lying weasels.
We don’t have news; we have a travesty of news. We don’t have journalism; we have paid shills. And we don’t have reporters; we have compliant puppet propagandists.
At least with Pravda, the Russians knew they were being lied to.
AAA Bonds
It’s too bad Leon Panetta, a piece of shit, is working in the White House, much less talking to the press about this.
LM
I agree with Dana Houle here. “Greenwald doesn’t regurgitate a false claim, he makes one” about Leon Panetta. Nearly every time I read Greenwald, I end up thinking he’s refused to see, or at least acknowledge, any good in this administration. Dimmed by that filter, his pieces seem to me almost invariably uninformative and sometimes deceptive.
Rosali
Panetta is in the Situation Room pic. Were they watching events as they unfolded or was Panetta across town narrating via video feed?
Mike Kay (Team America)
This is GREAT NEWS for Gary Johnson!
joeyess
@The Duc d’Fuck: Lighten up, Francis.
AAA Bonds
@JCT:
You know, writing as someone who just called Leon Panetta a piece of shit in this thread, your post is easily the most childish here.
What the hell is that idiocy? That’s like when shitty quarterbacks respond to criticism by saying “but, but, you’ve never been in the NFL, man!”
Ghanima Atreides
@Corner Stone:
Doubt it. Maybe in 7 years. ;)
A source told me that OBL was a kill-not-capture raid, because we couldn’t afford to have him chat about how the Paks knew where he was for 6 or 8 years.
Sheesh, he was 30 miles north of Islamabad in the middle of a Pak military town and right next to a Pakistani military academy.
Also, anything about the Paks sheltering or supporting OBL on the hard-drives collected will be classified TS codeword and never see daylight.
Greenwald is a an assclown. He is freemarket fucktard and an Obama concern troll.
FlipYrWhig
@jrg: I dislike his method of arguing and the way he works towards conclusions, but in Greenwald’s defense, there’s no reason for him to be “pragmatic.” He’s not a politician and doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself. He can demand truth, transparency, and principle to his heart’s content.
The Ancient Randonneur
It really is disappointing to learn that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. What next? Is Trump going to announce he’s bringing LaToya Jackson back on his show?
gwangung
We all suffer, to some extent, from expertitis: the tendency to speak like an authority in areas that aren’t in our realm of expertise. I think it’s clear that Greenwald often does this, thinking his realm is greater than it is. And I think it’s also clear that this area is an example of that.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Lori: actually, I’m thinking Hillary was reacting to the Blackhawk chopper exploding.
Ghanima Atreides
@AAA Bonds: well…this explains both why Obama wouldn’t call off the drones and why Panetta got Gates job, right?
The droning was destabilizing Zardaris govenment so they had to give OBL up to get Panetta and Obama to dial back on the drones.
Obama gets to count coup on OBL, and i betcha the droning stops in Pakistan at least.
i luffs me some 13D chess.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thank you, John. When I read Michael’s insulting comment, I was immediately transported back to the time when Allan said something very hurtful and homophobic to me.
It’s unfortunate that we have to create a whole new set of rules solely to control the behavior of a few people that have shown up recently and lobbied for a whole new set of rules.
AAA Bonds
@gwangung:
Prove it. What does this mean? Bring your greater knowledge to bear and show us what you mean – show us the gap between Greenwald and this particular “realm of expertise”.
jrg
@FlipYrWhig: True, but I think it’s important to take that into account when you read GG, because the end result of taking someone like him too seriously can be seen in the great Nader clusterfuck of 2000.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig:
He can demand it, but I don’t have to listen to him or think he’s anything other than a fool.
Just Some Fuckhead
And lest we forget, yesterday we were all treated to the execrable Mike Kay suggesting overpopulation was the result of Sarah Palin not being able to keep her legs closed.
Ghanima Atreides
@FlipYrWhig:
then he should do that on economics as well.
AAA Bonds
@Ghanima Atreides:
That’s a wonderful example of wild speculation?
Sentient Puddle
@PeakVT:
That’d be ideal, but bagging Osama bin Laden is a Big Fucking Deal. There was no way the public/media/whoever would abide any sort of delay in the story.
The Duc d'Fuck
FlipYrWhig: At least you understand the role of a polemicist. I can understand that some dislike Glennzilla’s style or disagree with his political assumptions. What I don’t understand is ‘Brazil’, ‘too many words’, or the aforementioned ‘faggot’ remarks.
Joeyess: I guess you’re another one who doesn’t worry too much when someone goes after ‘the faggots’. Noted.
John Cole: To be fair, it was his second ride on that particular hobbyhorse, given that he started the line of attack yesterday.
kay
Eyewitness accounts are unreliable, so I wasn’t surprised that the story evolved.
This is the most boring lawyer-fact in the world, BTW, because everyone knows it :)
mikefromArlington
This entire obfuscation from the WH is to distract from the fact one of the local Safeway’s has a sale on split breast and thighs going on this weekend.
Dave
Comparing this to Tillman is bullshit writ large. Tillman’s death was a fucking extensive coverup by Army brass. This was a case of the WH trying to get information out likely before DEVGRU was completely debriefed. And as a more coherent picture emerged, the WH corrected what they got wrong.
Isn’t that what we WANT from our leaders?
JCT
@AAA Bonds: Now there’s a brilliant analogy. Sort of like believing a TV doctor’s diagnosis over a real one. And you are an abject idiot if you don’t think that eyewitness accounts under the conditions of engagement don’t change during debriefing.
There is no current evidence of any Tillman or Lynch -like coverup.
Sorry, maybe it’s just me, but I’m not too interested in Holy Glenn’s interpretation of the event and it’s immediate aftermath re: intel. Seems he’s not exactly starting from neutral in his arguments. So what else is new.
nitpicker
About 13 years ago, I was stationed near Brcko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the only town that was so important it’s “ownership” couldn’t be decided during the Dayton peace talks. Because of this, there continued to be tension and post-Dayton violence–RPGs being fired into houses, drive-by shootings and the like. One day we got a report a column of Serbian armored vehicles were on their way to Brcko to take the city and everyone started getting spun up, strapping on their war faces and flak jackets, but a crusty first sergeant told me, “You watch. This is going to be nothing. The first three reports are always wrong.”
Nearly on cue, we got a second report that it wasn’t really a “column” of armored vehicles, but a few. Then we heard it was actually a line of buses, filled not with former Serb army folks, but with armed, militant pro-Serbian demonstrators. The single bus that finally entered Brcko was a soccer team headed to a match.
The first three reports may not always be wrong, but I certainly learned over the course of my military career to put little faith in the first report.
Danny
@John Cole
You’re spot on, and I’m actually even more dissillusioned over the moral bankrupcy and cluelessness of Glenn Greenwald than I was before.
Tillman, Lynch and the human shield events, while it may look similar on it’s face, are actually in reality polar opposites in a way that cuts to the very heart of progressive values and what good government means.
The former are examples of a finely trimmed political operation skillfully trying to use events for propaganda reasons, and when reality is found not to conform to the preferred narrative, considerations of the political impact is priorotized over transparency and good government.
The administration fights tooth and nail to keep the truth from the public and defend the narrative.
This was the choice consistently made by the Bush admin and the american public lost as a consequence. But it’s important to note that the Bush admin did not! They avoided inumerable controversies, and acknowledging the steep political price that they ended up paying on account of all their aggregated screwups, that would have happened so much sooner had their political operation not been scrupulous and top notch.
The “human shield” controversy on the other hand is evidence of a completely different set of values in the current administration.
All the facts points to that the first narrative comes about through some admin officials putting a slight benevolent spin on details that are not yet acertained on account of the fog of war, imediately after the operation.
But what happens after that is what is of real importance for anyone that hasnt got their head stuck up their ass, like Greenwald.
How does Obamas team proceed? How do they chose to proceed?
They know that there is no imediate political benefit to be had whatsoever from either verifying if their speculation check out – or from bringing the findings to the public. Yet they choose to do both, and quickly. And they’re paying the political price right as we speak.
They do that because they believe in transparancy and good government when feasible, not the opposite. Granted, it’s possible that they also think that the shortterm benefits would come with longterm costs.
But whichever is true, both are vastly preferable to the Bush admins M.O.
But that doesnt change the fact that by the rules of modern journalism, first saying one thing, and then imediately changing the story – for however good a reason, is making yourself an easy target for all kinds of accusations and distrust – if anyone is willing to take the bait and attack you.
When Greenwald does that, when he goes for the easy, misguided, superficial outrage, he’s proving that the values that he claims to support – transparancy & good government – are less important to him than building his own brand and generating more superficial outrage to fuel the misguided crucade he started over the spy and traitor Bradley Manning.
It’s fairly sickening, really.
Citizen_X
@Lori:
Or, you know, maybe they were listening to fragmental reports on a deadly-serious operation that could have gone wrong in a thousand different ways?
Hal
While I agree with the idea that media should never just parrot everything the Government says, this seems to be a matter of miscommunication that was ultimately corrected within hours, not years like Tillman. Tillman was also a deliberate attempt at deception and this seems to be more of a broken chain of reporting.
I really think Greenwald sometimes is so eager to make sure to criticize the Government in general (not even neccesarily Obama specifically) that everyone is untrustworthy and purposely duplicitious. Not everything is a conspiracy to deceive.
I feel like Rachel Dratch needs to resurrect her Debby Downer charachter for a special OBL pity party.
D.N. Nation
Well that settles it. Glenn’s convinced me. I’m voting for that glibertarian stooge he loves so much.
WarMunchkin
I don’t fault the WH on this — a day or so is more forgivable than Jessica Lynch’s or Pat Tillman’s story. That said — part of journalism is verifying your report. The fact is leading journalists have too often confounded verification with “that’s what a government official told me”, and that’s not how the job should be done.
batgirl
For some reason when I think of GG, I think of the adage, “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Also too, his hate of Obama seems to lead to quite a bit of irrationality.
And I say all this as someone who thinks that GG sometimes has some important points.
Paul in KY
@joeyess: Agree about liking Bud Light Lime being a firable offense for a General officer.
trollhattan
I’m willing to bet big bux the Tillman family stongly disagrees with the comparison. I’m willing to further bet the Tillman family is pretty darn pleased with events of the last four days and appreciates the WH’s willingness to quickly correct themselves rather than massage the narrative to 1. look good and 2. cover their collective asses. Now, what would the recently departed WH crew have done in Obama’s shoes?
The next thing we know, we’ll be hearing that rather than “easing the body into the sea” they instead “flung him into the ocean from the bridge with a mighty splat, whilst steaming at 30 knots.”
Teh horror, teh horror.
Lori
@Citizen_X: I’m no expert on body language, but here are some nonverbal indicators I see: no one’s head is tilted while listening, no one is tilted forward looking about to speak with a videoconference, no one is looking down (like they were imagining the scene that Panetta would be narrating… instead they seem to be *watching* it). If they were videoconferencing with Panetta, I’d expect Obama or the generals to be in front of a microphone or with a headset on but instead Obama and the generals all are watching without any body language indicating they are having a conversation.
@Mike Kay (Team America): @Fred: The combination of what you guys are saying is another feasible explanation to me. (Thanks, I hadn’t read any other explanation that made sense.)
Paul in KY
@Maude: Oh, about a year ago…
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: True, and I also think he’s Glenny One-Note who sees nefarious intentions around every corner, but that’s not really related to the question of whether he should be more pragmatic.
catclub
@Maude: “black Jimmy Carter”
With the notable difference that _his_ raid,in the middle east, with helicopters, succeeded.
I just read a comment frm a man who met Carter in 1988 and asked him if he had any regrets. “I should have sent more helicopters.”
Mike Kay (Team America)
Night.
the raid was conducted at Night.
it was a moonless night.
in a neighborhood that didn’t have lamp posts.
night vision goggles and infrared surveillance cameras aren’t as neat as dramatized on tee vee.
adrenaline and people firing bullets, as you look for trip wires, while your chopper crash lands behind you can fuck up memories and immediate debriefings.
Georgia Pig
Let me predict that, at some point in the not too distant future, Glen Greenwald will be booted from Salon and end up with his own talk show on FoxNews in a slot following Juan Williams. All part of Fox’s attempt to become “more relevant” and move away from angry, emotionally manipulative old white guys who hate Democrats to angry, emotionally manipulative minority and gay guys who hate Democrats.
trollhattan
@nitpicker:
A two-fer: hellova good story and a good lesson on human shortcomings.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@FlipYrWhig:
this is why I’m against legalizing pot. it causes paranoia.
Paul in KY
@Ghanima Atreides: Even if it wasn’t a ‘kill not capture’ raid, I think Bin Laden might have hoist his own petard with all his braggadocio: “I’ll never be taken alive, ready for maryterdom, etc. etc.”
He makes one twitch that doesn’t look like he’s surrendering & I’d put a bullet through his head. After his rhetoric, I would have expected him to sleep in a suicide vest.
Georgia Pig
@Mike Kay (Team America): Which is what is annoying about this parsing of the actions of the WH and the SEALs. Zero perspective or context, just fantasy and hypothetical nonsense. The other alternative was a B-2. I’m sure that would have been preferable.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Lori:
I bet they just saw/heard about the downed chopper in that photo, actually. Esp. given Clinton’s face, and her likely memories (and fears) of another Black Hawk Down incident, much less Desert One, which she and many others in that room would also recall vividly.
It also makes sense in terms of when the image was taken — I’m amazed Souza has the clearance for being in that room at all, and it makes much more sense that he would be allowed in early, before the actual attack began. And that would be exactly when the helo situation would have gone down.
Also, I think there’s a issue around sheer bandwidth. If there’s a chopper and a drone on site, it’s unlikely they have the bandwidth to keep up their critical comms and pipe through helmet cams, as well. It comes down to basic tech issues that no amount of NSA/CIA/DARPA black budget works are going to overcome in this decade, at least.
(Or, on, edit, what others have said, as well. Too much typing…)
jomo
They corrected the record without being prompted. End stop.
Paul in KY
@Danny: I think accusing Glenn of ‘moral bankruptcy’ is a little over-the-top, IMO.
I like to reserve those characterizations for our enemies on the right (of which Glenn is most assuredly not one).
Understand you don’t like his idealism & non-pragmatic tendenicies, but I think Glenn has this country’s best interests at heart. Michelle Malkin, to use an example, would love the US to become a fascist dictatorship.
trollhattan
@Georgia Pig:
Yup. “Big-ass house in Pakistan Mysteriously Vaporized” doesn’t quite offer the closure of “Osama: He Dead.”
Worth repeating that this was the hardest option and proved the correct, and only option.
Tsulagi
Yep. Lesser truthful admins (I’m looking at you, Bush) would have stuck to a helpful narrative well after Hell froze over.
At the very least really questions their judgment.
That accounts are officially being corrected this fast is amazing.
Paul in KY
@Georgia Pig: That’s just silly.
Suffern ACE
@Georgia Pig: Explain to me again why we’re parsing again? .
Roger Moore
@Dave:
No, we want them to be perfect on the day they’re elected and to improve from that point on. Obama has let us down by not using his psychic powers to know instantly the exact details of what happened so he could tell us right away.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: One of the reasons Bin Laden was there was that this was a neighborhood we weren’t going to hit with an airstrike (too many important Pakistani civilians/military living there).
slag
@Paul in KY: I know I’m going to have to say a thousand Hail Greenwalds for this, but I am so glad they killed and not captured Bin Laden. Personally, I love what Glenn does, and often, I think he’s on the right side of things. And he’s right that, as a matter of policy, they should have captured OBL if they possibly could have. But after I thought of all the stuff we’d be subjected to for the next several years by the media circus (OJ on steroids) if they had captured him, I just breathed a huge sigh of relief that Osama is dead. Our rabbit hole has already gone more than deep enough for me…any deeper and there would be absolutely no light left.
I admire Glenn’s fortitude, but I just cannot emulate it.
Gian
given the pants-wetting fest congress had over closing gitmo, or having trials in new york, I expect there was very little incentive to capture Bin Laden. Just game-play in your own thoughts, where do they take a live bin laden? where do they try him? the cries from the right wingnut land about how he should be tortured and executed without a trial…
sure, it’s possible that the admin would have negotiated that thicket of thorns well, but this certainly avoided it.
Admiral_Komack
@JCT:
It was John Edwards, until he got busted (but it explain that “two Americas” thing). :-)
JCT
@trollhattan:
This. And yes, vaporized with a dozen or so children and a large amount of potentially important intel.
@Admiral_Komack: You’re right! My husband was a big Edwards supporter, I still tease him about it. But this is what you get when you look for magical superheroes.
different church-lady
@gwangung:
True. The difference is that I don’t get paid for it.
Paul in KY
@slag: One of the reasons I wish we had captured him for trial is that he is a megalomaniac & his followers have an exalted view of him. Seeing him shuffle into the courtroom in scrubs & chained & having to go thru the indignities of the legal process would have diminished him (IMO).
Ghanima Atreides
@JCT:
and no proof. unless the Paks would let us sift the rubble for DNA signature.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
I don’t know about that- I bet those vests are uncomfortable as hell and would keep you from getting a good night’s sleep, not to mention prone to blowing up before they’re supposed to- but I bet he was at least as paranoid as the average American dope dealer and slept with a pistol under the pillow and an AK under the bed. Any twitch, and I’d assume he was going for a hidden gun.
Danny
@Paul in KY
I reserve my invectives firstly for our enemies on the right, but secondly for our enemies on the left.
People who like Greenwald chose to make it their new schtick that the Obama admin is practically as bad as Bush are not “friends”. People that think that spies & traitors are not spies & traitors if they’re gay and spying for wikileaks – but are then in fact “heroes” – have no principles, and can’t be counted on to do the right thing. People that use phony outrages like this latest one to mobilize progressives against the president and democrats are nothing but the latest iteration of the Nader shoot ourselves in the foot left.
Those guys have gotten many conservative republicans into the white house, e.g. Richard Nixon ’72, Ronald Reagan ’80 and George W Bush ’00.
Guys like him are no asset to the movement at all. Not until they lose the ego, wisen up, and get back in line. I’ll tolerate him when there’s a republican in the white house, then he’s at least somewhat useful. His schtick needs a target, republican or democrat, conservative or progressive, lesser importance.
slag
@Paul in KY: In a sane world, I would agree with you absolutely. But Gian mentions just a very few of the indignities of the process that would have diminished the rest of us.
BR
Greenwald’s only interested in this story insofar as it allows him to bash the WH. His first post on this was telling. (It reminded me a lot of his non-response after Obama’s Tucson speech.)
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
I agree that was a strong point on the minus side of the ledger, but I’ve been around enough AF folks to know the generals were assuring them they could have reduced the joint to so much gravel without taking out the neighbors, being that it’s conveniently surrounded by a blast wall and all. I wonder what those cadets in the nearby acadamy would have thought? As it played out they must have been pretty spun up by the actual raid.
Since we probably didn’t know whether there was a Saddam-style bunker beneath the compound until entering it (hence, the dog) I wouldn’t have been too reassured by their promises. I’m also quite relieved so few of the occupants were killed, kids especially. Nobody would have survived a bombing. [edit: as already noted above.]
Villago Delenda Est
Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Ghanima Atreides
@Paul in KY: umm…OBL is not really relevent to the Arab world anymore. This was a symbolic kill for the US.
There is no Arab street protest, only local protests in Af-Pak. And that is because the citizens are pissed off about about droning and the lack of Pakistani sovreignity, not about OBL.
The Arab Spring is relevant. Imran Khan shutting down the NATO convoy routes is relevant. Imran Khan bringing an international lawsuit against the US for droning is relevant.
different church-lady
@slag:
Maybe GG wanted to see OBL captured simply so he could bitch relentlessly about his poor treatment in detainment.
/snark
trollhattan
Sorta on topic: has the US responded to Pakistan’s assertion we captured and removed one live guy? I’ve lost track of that tidbit.
Lawnguylander
@AAA Bonds:
It sounds to me like gwangung means he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. He thinks Gary Johnson/Russ Feingold would make a good ticket for the White House, for example. That’s idiotic. If someone said that to me at a party I’d dismiss that person’s ideas on politics as useless and change the subject. Unless the guy had a history of being a dishonest, insulting asshole in which case I’d make fun of him until he changed the subject himself.
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: I tend to strongly discount any estimates of the efficacy of air power. The AF is the most overtly religious branch of the military because many of the fuckers are evangelists at heart, strategic bombing, Jesus, whatever….
West of the Cascades
I want to double down on what Cole says is important here, the WH’s good faith in correcting initially incorrect facts, and argue that what’s even more important is that the WH (1) is well aware how anything it says is going to be spun and misconstrued and that people on both ends of the political spectrum are going to scream ‘flip flop’ or ‘coverup’ or other nonsense, and yet (2) the WH doesn’t appear to care in this situation. Instead they gave the best information they had in as objective a way they could (no “mission accomplished” banners and flight suits) and then followed it by correcting the information, and (apparently) intending to continue to correct it until the full story emerges.
It shows a commitment to trying to present objective truth (the consequences be damned) that is pretty unusual in politics and the media today. It’s refreshing to see political leaders living in the fact-based world where shit happens fast and it takes a while to sort out what really happened, and being willing to acknowledge that something the thought initially now is actually something different.
Rosalita
Cue up the ‘deathers’. Via Twitter
BreakingNews Breaking News
by NewsTimes
President Obama has decided not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s body, a senior official tells NBC News
4 minutes ago
Cromagnon
Greenwald is just another wingnut. Of the lefty variety but no different than his right-wing brethren. Why anyone would listen to a word he says is beyond me
tkogrumpy
@nitpicker: Nitpicker is quite right, which is why GG is quite wrong in this case. The fact that I think he is wrong does not devalue his input for me. He makes it plain he is an absolutist,and I take him at his word.Any thinking person seeking a range of opinion can’t possibly agree with them all, but can certainly benefit from each one.Plus, he has to post about something, no?
Mike Kay (Team America)
I can’t believe the SEALs didn’t read bin Laden his Miranda rights!!
tkogrumpy
@Danny: Thanks for this . It helps me tweek my thinking.
jp7505a
I think I”ve landed in an alternate universe:
1. John Yoo, of torture memo fame, is critizing the seals for not taking ben laden alive
2. the right is hold torture up as a patriotic duty of a leader to protect the country. does this mean that John mcCain was not tortured since the NVA government was just trying to protect its citizens
3. Limpdick is now taking the word of ben laden’s daughter/wife and the pakestani government to dispute the White House version of events. Never mind everything W said was gospel
4. Limpdick also seems outraged that the Seals shot poor osama when he didn’t have a gun to defend himself.
There is not enough booze to make this seem even remotely logical.
trollhattan
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Would have been worth it to bring Samuel L. Jackson along to read them.
“You have the right, m%^#$^*i$R, TO REMAIN WITH YOUR DAMN TRAP SHUT!”
Morbo
@jp7505a: Yoo’s and Limbaugh’s position makes perfect sense if you work under the premise that they wanted the SEALs to take Bin Laden alive so that we could torture him.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@trollhattan:
/fix’d
WereBear
@slag: Yes, this; because the purpose of trial is so we don’t do anything to an innocent person.
In this case, where the person not only confessed, but bragged about it; what purpose does a trial serve?
Bob Loblaw
This all seems weird to me.
We know that the administration is lying about all sorts of operational details. But there’s nothing that can be done about it. There won’t be an explanation for Pakistan’s true role in al Qaeda for decades, if that. The ISI is knee deep in terrorism. And the complex web of economics and security relations between the West and Pakistan is ridiculous. But Pakistan always gets protected. That’s the rule of the 21st century. They’re a failed nuclear state.
So we know that we aren’t getting the “true story.” Why waste time worrying about the details to a story we know was finessed in the first place?
Paul in KY
@Danny: Glenn is a civil liberties nut & the current administration hasn’t been as much a champion of rolling back the Bush/Cheney abominations as I’d have liked them to be. He mainly goes off on them about that (and he has a point).
He also claims to be non-partisan & I guess he feels he has to slag Pres. Obama when he does stuff that to Glenn echoes what Pres. Batshit McChimpy did.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
I agree that the bin Laden situation isn’t like the Jessics Lynch or Pat Tillman situation.
It’s much, much worse. Here’s why.
Folks, nobody knew that Jessica Lynch’s vehicle was going to crash. Or that Pat Tillman would end up being fragged by his own troops. And there weren’t, so far as we know, any cameras at either location.
1. The raid on Usama bin Laden’s compound was planned.
2. There were cameras on the helmets of the assault team.
3. As the photo shows, there were a bunch of people watching the video feed. (and also a bunch over at CIA headquarters.)
4. I’m not positive, but I’m assuming that the feed was taped, and that it could be reviewed.
5. In the Lynch and Tillman situations, the news just sorta broke and everyone in the media was scrambling for details, and anyone who said they knew anything got it repeated.
Announcement of the Bin Laden raid was withheld for 8 hours. That should have been more than enough time for someone to review the tape and get the story clear and accurate. And if that wasn’t enough time, they could have withheld it until Monday morning.
I mean, unless we’re saying that the raid had to be announced during the west coast broadcast of Celebrity Apprentice, another hour or twelve wouldn’t have mattered, right?
6. The Pentagon certainly couldn’t have known that the Jessica Lynch story would turn into such a media circus. Yeah, she’s an attractive young girl, but wall-to-wall coverage? Hoocoodanode.
Pat Tillman was a well-known football player with a media-friendly backstory, and a child should have been able to guess that people would want all the details.
There isn’t any excuse for not realizing that the entire world would want to know every detail of the death of Usama Bin Laden.
7. There seems to have been an enormous amount of planning done here. The government decided exactly how they were going to handle the disposal of the body. Nobody gave comparable planning to how they were going to report the information to the entire world?
8. Lynch and Tillman occurred during the reign of Emperor George I (AKA “Bush the Unready”), who was universally beloved for his full codpiece and manly flight uniform. It isn’t entirely shocking that his underlings assumed they could be sloppy and/or deceitful and still get away with it.
The Bin Laden raid took place under Barry “Damien” Soetoro, the aloof, uppity, Collectivist Muslim who was the culmination of a 50-year plot to destroy the U.S. Government that began with the planting of false birth notices in Hawaiian papers. For the last 15 months, we’ve had daily demonstrations of what happens if every ‘i’ isn’t dotted and every ‘t’ isn’t crossed– and even when it is.
Anyone think there wouldn’t be a big hairy deal made if anything seemed amiss? 9/11 Truth mean anything to anyone? The Warren Commission? “Paul is Dead?” The refereeing in Super Bowl XL?
You don’t even have to be a conspiracy theorist to be appalled by this. This needed to be perfect– and there was only going to be one chance to do it. And I’ve seen Mongolian Cluster-Fluffs (or Balinese Fire and Boat Drills) that demonstrated logistical planning and organizational skills superior to the communications effort here.
The thing I find most appalling is that every paper in the muslim world is running an alleged photo of the dead body of Usama– with people claiming at has/hasn’t been photoshopped– and the Obama Administration is still trying to decide if maybe they should supply some documentation.
We are, I would guess, about 36 hours away from people believing one of the following (depending on your political jujus)
A. The U.S. faked the death of Bin Laden and he’s still alive.
B. They shot an unarmed man who was not resisting.
C. They kidnapped him and tortured him for months or years and then created a fake death scene
When that takes root, it will be very difficult to feel sorry for the Obama Administration, given how badly they’ve bungled this.
trollhattan
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Win.
eemom
I think I’m gonna just go with a simple Fuck you, Greenwald, you utterly insufferable little twit.
Ah. That hit the spot.
tkogrumpy
@Paul in KY: Yes but, Hermann Goering.
Ghanima Atreides
@AAA Bonds: not really.
1. The Paks knew where OBL was. The middle of a military city, 30 miles north of Islamabad, next door to a Pak military academy. How could they not?
2. The raid took 40 minutes. It was tweeted. Where were the first responders in a wealthy suburb? Not all Pakistanis live in mudhuts in Waziristan without municipal first responders. Just the ones that America launches MQ9 Reapers on.
3. Stealth helo tech is not robust enough to avoid detection yet because of the blades.
4. Actionable intel was not gleaned from torture. The courier story has more holes than swiss cheese.
5. Timeline: April 16 Pasha/Panetta meet. Panetta insists droning will continue. April 20: Imran Khan files lawsuit. April 23-24: Imran Khan’s PTI party along with students federations and many pakistani civilians stage a peaceful protest to block NATO convoy routes. April 28: Panetta named to replace Gates. May 1: OBL death.
6. Why build a mockup compound? A denied site can be built in a digital simulation in less than a week. The mockup compound is part of the courier story.
it begins:
Paul in KY
@slag: Got to play for the long term. I think cities would have been clamouring for the right to try him (NY would have wanted his ass for sure).
Remember, there’s no chance he would be getting off. I haven’t ever heard one right wing nut afraid that if we tried him here, he might get off & move in next door.
I guess they would have raised a stink just for crass political purposes. To me, you respond in a way that shows the sane Americans what a bunch of political whores they are & you stick to your guns. Americans hate weenies, that’s why the Democrats have a hard time with Independents & low information voters (IMO).
Mike Kay (Team America)
As an absolutist, I sure Glenn will contact bin Laden’s next of kin and implore them to file a criminal complaint and civil suit against Obama for wrongful death.
Paula
@gwangung:
Lordy. You have insulted him by implying he doesn’t know everything about everything! How DARE you!
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: I think by now, Pres. Obama has to be taking the AF assertions with a grain of salt.
Agree they would have been talking up the ‘pinpoint accuracy’ and all that.
FlipYrWhig
@Cromagnon:
Greenwald is not “lefty.” He’s a “civil libertarian,” which is what you call a libertarian who cares more about the Bill of Rights than about weed and property rights. A lefty would have few problems with a powerful central state acting to remedy inequalities. I don’t think Greenwald would sign onto that. He’s gravely suspicious of state power.
Ghanima Atreides
@Paul in KY: dude. kill-not-capture. The US couldn’t afford to put OBL on trial because the Paks knew he was there. Khan would use that to work up the students and tribals to kick America out, and the Wingnut street would use that to defund Pakistan as a traitor state.
No one expects the Arab Spring.
And after the Spring, the American Fall.
FlipYrWhig
@WereBear:
A trial would compel the government to demonstrate that it followed proper procedures in proceeding against the bragging, guilty person. The function of the defense counsel even with a confessedly guilty client is to force the government to operate by the book. That’s a systemic purpose that stands apart from the purpose of determining the guilt of any particular person.
Danny
@Paul in KY:
Yeah the guy’s one big walking Nirvana fallacy, and if you’re prone to forgive such sins, sure knock yourself out.
The bridge I won’t cross is allowing your absolutism to actually go right ahead and mobilize against the guy that is the best feasible alternative that you actually have. Because in case you didnt notice, the old Bush vanguard are all over the airwaves right now preaching the virtues of torturing our enemies. You can then – as Greenwald does – choose to make it your main focus lynching the Obama admin over specious, alleged mistreatments of a spy or you can state your concern and move the hell on to the real fight.
But – just like with Hamsher – it’s not only that he is an absolutist and a foe of incrementalism – it’s that he’s often wrong and counterproductive.
Did you read the part in the first post where I believe I made a pretty strong case that the Obama admins actions re “human shield gate” actually indicate a pretty strong commitment to transparency and not the opposite?
I’m not the only one who made that case here, and I think it really is pretty self evident if you take the time to think about that for awhile.
By attacking the admin over that, do you know what that means? That means that he is providing incentives to not be forthcoming, to not be transparent, next time. Because the outcome was only political backlash – even from self awoved transparancy champions. That’s being counterproductive for you in a nutshell.
So sorry, I won’t allow Greenwald his much sought after civil liberties and good government “cred”, until he shows himself to be capable of actual analysis of what the f-k is going down and what it means – as opposed to getting “cred” by doing teh outrage on teh blog.
IOW, screaming loudly that you careth the most about something doesn’t necessarily mean that you are of actual use towards achieving that end.
Ghanima Atreides
@FlipYrWhig: all libertarians are just crypto-conservatives.
Paula
@FlipYrWhig:
As one of those who would have preferred to see him captured and put on trial … how feasible would it have been for Obama to have had the fortitude to give him to the Hague?
Useless speculation, but in my most ideal of ideal reactions to this scenario …
WereBear
@FlipYrWhig: It would work that way; except our system allows someone to plead guilty, too.
Pragmatically speaking, trying to take him alive and try him would put lives in danger. There’s been way too much of that already.
eemom
@Mike Kay (Team America):
maybe he’ll even offer to take the case!
Oh wait — he has jack shit’s worth of experience practicing law. Never mind.
artem1s
I never did buy the ‘human shield’ line entirely. How American military culture interprets events and what is the norm for bin Laden and his family are wildly different things. It seemed fairly predictable that there would be casualties that were the result of people who were willing to throw themselves in front of a bullet, male or female.
There are still those in our military/society who would like to pretend that women won’t get hurt unless some nefarious man drags them in front of a gun. I don’t know what really happened but when you live with a drug lord, terrorist, Mafia don, you can pretty much predict that there will be violence involved. Being a woman isn’t any guarantee you’ll get a pass when the firefight starts.
Everyone in bin Laden’s presence was a human shield. He didn’t fly the damn planes on 9/11. He didn’t stay in Kabul and defend the faith. He just talked (paid) others to enact his crazy ideas. He was the Charles Manson of the 21st Century with a bigger army and Saud money behind him.
MattR
@Ghanima Atreides: Generally speaking, civil libertarians are a whole lot closer to DFHs than conservatives.
WaterGirl
@Ghanima Atreides:
Either I woke up with far fewer functioning brain cells than usual this morning, or you are assuming that there are obvious conclusions to be made based on the items below, that maybe aren’t so obvious.
What are the holes in the courier story?
What’s your point about the timeline? You have listed some interesting dates, all falling within a short timeframe, but you do you connect the dots?
I also don’t understand your point about the compound. It makes complete sense to me that you would want a real live replica to train on, rather than looking at some digital simulation.
I also don’t know what point you are trying to make with the last 3 paragraphs of your blockquote.
Danny
@Paul in KY:
And, in the second paragraph, by “you” i mean Greenwald, not you. :)
Ghanima Atreides
@MattR: prove it. I have never seen a single one that didn’t swear allegiance to the market gods.
eemom
@Paula:
please see my comment on DougJ’s thread about Moshe Landau, the distinguished presiding justice at the Adolf Eichmann trial, who coincidentally died (age 99) on Sunday, the same day the US assassinated OBL.
I gotta say I am truly fascinated by that coincidence — the good man’s death evoking, as it does, the memory of how the most heinous of criminals could, and did, receive a fair trial.
MattR
@Ghanima Atreides: umm, Glenn Greenwald?
Ghanima Atreides
@WaterGirl: this is a quote from Imran Khan, the head of the Pakistani Justice Party, the leader that staged a Tahir-style protest to block the NATO supply routes….
Pardon, but I thought readers here might actually be well informed enough to pick up on the Arab Spring references.
You draw your own dots.
Or not.
idc.
Paul in KY
@Danny: He does let his purity overule sensible pragmatism. You have to work with the non-Republican president you have, not the non-Republican president you wish you had.
I also think Glenn had high hopes for Pres. Obama when it came to civil liberties & feels sorta betrayed. He never thought that way about Bush/Cheney. If they didn’t authorize torturing kittens & puppies for fun he counted that as a win. He certainly had a much higher performance threshhold for Pres. Obama.
Paul in KY
@Danny: Understood that. Appreciate you telling me that though :-)
Ghanima Atreides
@MattR: hes a free market fucktard too.
they are ALL. THE. SAME. socially liberal fiscally conservative legs of the stool.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: Link?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ghanima Atreides:
If what I’ve read is correct, before Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured not far away in Mardan, he’d escaped from the ISI as they tried to apprehend him on that same property in Abbottobad as the villa was still being built.
ETA: Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383074/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-US-trained-Pakistani-troops-hunt-Al-Qaeda-near-compound.html
Tim, Interrupted
Obama will NOT release photos of OBL’s alleged corpose. Hmmm…
What’s at issue for non- “USA – FUCK YEAH” thinkers such as GG and myself is not primarily whether or not this government is or is not lying in a specific instance, but the credulous press and public which, even after at least ten years of one lie after another, still tend to believe and repeat as fact whatever the government tells them, on faith.
It’s silly and indefensible.
I’m willing to believe OBL went down just as the WH has said, depending on which version of the story at which time, and I’m willing to believe he’s been dead for ten years. But I’m not willing to accept either story just because the U.S. government says so.
I keep asking and no one answers: Why is it so important to Obots to BELIEVE something, anything as told; why are you incapable of maintaining healthy skepticism. Why can’t you say “maybe…maybe not?”
It’s kind of fascinating…and immature.
WaterGirl
@Ghanima Atreides: I am fairly well informed, but I didn’t see where you were going with your comment. So I asked you to clarify where you were trying to go with your comment, and you pretty much respond with “you’re stupid, screw you”.
What’s the point of you writing a comment if you don’t care if it is understood? Thanks for nothing.
Tim, Interrupted
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05binladen.html?hp
Above is the link to the story about BO not releasing pics. I attempted to include it in the previous post, but it didn’t take.
MattR
@Ghanima Atreides: One remnant of your conservative past is that you look at a series of dots, connect them together to form one particular picture and then decide that any other way of connecting the dots is illogical.
@Omnes Omnibus: I look forward to m_c digging up one quote where Glenn speaks positively about some aspect of the market and then use that as proof that he “swears allegiance to the market gods.”
eemom
@Paul in KY:
must beg to differ with you, sir. GG was dissing on Obama since before he won the nomination.
Morose purity martyrs like Greenwald don’t have “high hopes” for anybody. It would ruin their schtick.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Ghanima Atreides:
This is a joke, right?
No operator is going to trust any boots on the ground stimulation to a “digital simulation”, whatever the hell you mean by that. The only way to train — as anyone who does any actual physical work, from sports to dance (my bailwick) on can tell you, is to do so as close to the actual process as possible. And there’s no magical holodeck, or even VR, that’ll work the same as working with real walls, and real doors. You simply can’t train for rappelling down a wall properly with even a Kinetic, much less standard video game tech.
Feel free to read any work on how these guys actually train, and they’ll be happy to go into deep detail on exactly why they train like this. Otherwise, I’m curious as to what miracletech you know about, and can provide citations for, that will allow them to train for such a mission without building as close to the real thing as possible. This isn’t sims of nukes going off or plane aerodynamics, where the numbers are well-understood and don’t involve actual human lives.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: The “the courier” story is transparent to everyone but Americans.
eemom
@Tim, Interrupted:
so, you’re saying you want to see the corpse?
Mike M
Eye witnesses seldom agree on all the details of a robbery or a car accident. When a story is relayed by audio, like this event, there is even more room for misinterpretations and misunderstandings. I thought that Brennan was very careful to explain that he wasn’t certain about specific details and that the WH would provided updated information as soon as they received it (i.e., after the team had been thoroughly debriefed and there was a chance to ask clarifying questions).
If the WH had been trying to spin the event, they certainly would have never corrected the story to acknowledge that OBL was unarmed. The fact that they made the correction, and made it quickly, shows that they doing the best to release as accurate a description of the even as possible given the circumstances.
different church-lady
@Tim, Interrupted:
Maybe… maybe not.
Happy? OK, now it’s your turn: Why is it so important to “O-bashers” to automatically assume everything spoken by the administration is a lie?
I’m not actually interested in playing this game. I’m just trying to make a point.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Tim, Interrupted: The key phrase is “healthy skepticism”. Sure, I’m skeptical, but the WH isn’t acting in a way to indicate they are lying in this case.
GG’s skepticism is the knee-jerk vsriety: The government said it, so it must be a lie. Just like your response to anyone defending the WH is to immediately call him/her an O-bot. Both types of responses seem to me to indicate a lack of critical thinking on the parts of GG and yourself.
Tim, Interrupted
@eemom:
Eemom, I prefer not to engage you in particular. You tend toward irrational cursing and embrace name calling as a first option in discussion. I just don’t feel that we have a healthy vibe, and must respectfully decline your attempt to engage.
Have a nice day.
WaterGirl
This makes complete sense to me:
Obama’s regular birth certificate didn’t convince anyone who did not want to be convinced; the same was true for the long-form birth certificate. Anyone who thinks that people would not have said “the photo of Bin Laden’s death was photoshopped” has been living under a rock.
We had nothing to gain but everything to lose by releasing the death photos, so I am quite happy with this decision.
MattR
@Mike M:
From my understanding, one of the ways police can tell if a story is made up is if multiple witnesses relate the exact same details.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: I completely agree that it’s quite possible that things didn’t go down that way and the courier story is to provide cover for how they really found the location. If that’s the case, i’m glad that we are at least smart enough to try to provide cover for whatever entity provided intel.
At the same time, I don’t understand why the courier story is not believable. Of course, I am an American so that may make your point for you. Would you mind explaining?
Ghanima Atreides
“retard” jarvis
do you understand the concept of a flight simulator trainer?
do you understand VR mission simulator trainers?
No compound was “built” in meatspace.
the fabricated compound was both unnecessary, and impossible, because Panetta didnt have OBL geolocated until his meet with Pasha.
The courier story, the last april date, all cover and disinformation, stealthy chopper rotor blades, absent first responders, all disinfo that only americans are stupid enough to believe.
America Fuck Yeah! USA! USA!
Tim, Interrupted
Are you saying there are no reliable, respected specialists who can look at a photo, examine it, and determine that it has most likely NOT been photoshopped. OF COURSE you are not going to convince the far right haters, but you are going to convince the majority of reasonable people, which is who you’re going for.
Danny
@Paul in KY:
Sure, and while acknowledging all the people here pointing out that Greenwald is a civil libertarian rather than mainstream progressive, that’s a (far too) common occurance on the left wing. It’s counter productive to even make it about feelings, you reward the guy that delivers most of what you want, any other behavior means aiming to lose, decreasing the chance you’ll ever see your ideals realised.
Apart from that, there are very few areas where I think the prosecution of the Obama admin in this regard has merit.
Possible re the patriot act; counter terrorism measures.
Or the authorization to terminate that Al Qaeda guy in Yemen, who’s an american citizen. On the latter, I totally respect someone that on principle want to argue that the president should not authorise the assassination of american citizens, even if they are leading Al Qaeda cells in Yemen, targeting the U.S.
But in the latter case, I hardly see any reason for feeling betrayed, as Obama was quite clear during the pres debates that he would reserve the right to target high value Al Qaeda targets on foreign soil.
IOW, feelings of betrayal are only warranted and an excuse (but still not useful) if you were actually led to believe different, not if you convinced yourself to believe, the facts be damned.
On guantanamo, Obama tried to do the right thing, but his hand was forced by the republicans and congress. To change that means going after the republicans in congress and helping change the narrative on Guantanamo – not attacking the admin. It’s once again counterproductive.
On Manning, he’s just being ridiculous and dishonest. Did Obama promise that accusations of mistreatments were to be declared true by decree as long as the detainee was gay and there on account of a form of spying that Glenn supports? Could hardly be a warranted cause for feelings of betrayal.
Paul in KY
@eemom: No problem, kind mom. Disagree away :-)
Tim, Interrupted
@different church-lady:
On second read, you might note that nowhere here or elsewhere have I said that this OBL thing is a lie, or that “everything spoken by the administration is a lie.” What are you talking about?
See where your reflexive, subjective point of view takes you?
WaterGirl
@Ghanima Atreides: So who really gave us the intel? What do you think really happened on Sunday? (no snark, no name calling, no innuendo, just lay out your position, please)
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Mike M:
And neither do trained soldiers. And although I just study and talk to them, I find the idea that it’d take mere hours to get all the video together and processed absurd.
Remember there’s at least one drone, a bunch of operators with cameras, likely video from the helos on-site, and so forth. Remember the commanders on the ground will almost certainly wait for the After-Action reports; camera on soldiers are very new, and they’d be crazy to depend on what was likely a chaotic set of video images for a full story. And although there was likely an initial debrief, it’s certain the operators got some downtime before having to churn out the detailed evaluations of the work.
In all that, remember that even the small details in sports don’t get revolved in Instant Replays to everyone’s satisfaction, and that’s with clear Rules of Engagement (so to speak), multiple camera angles, and clear lighting. The concept that we’d sort out every detail of this incident in a couple of days, under much worse conditions, is bizarre.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tim, Interrupted:
Keep pushing, Donald, keep pushing.
Tim, Interrupted
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Would you care to elaborate on the lack of critical thinking employed by Obama backers who immediately assume that anything he says IS true? Thereby qualifying for the label “Obot,” just as a Bush Ball Licker is labeled a Bush Ball Licker, or a person who believes the earth is flat is labeled a Flat Earther?
Paula
@Danny:
Well, credit to your passion and all that stuff, but it’s probably not worth it.
Myself, I’d just like GG to stop going on TV without explicitly identifying himself as a “civil libertarian” whose expertise is primarily in “civil liberties and national security issues”. As opposed to his hosts giving him a de-facto editorial platform to speak “for” and “about” and “to” progressives, because he’s not.
Paul in KY
@Danny: I think Glenn feels differently about that than you do & could much, much better articulate those differences than I. He is over at Salon. Responds to comments. You need to go over there & engage him.
Ghanima Atreides
and go ahead, don’t believe me.
but watch the drones.
i bet droning unofficially stops or falls off in Waziristan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: I am going to call bullshit on lack of rehearsal. If you seriously do not think that a special operations unit would practice each phase of an operation again and again in an environment that that as closely as humanly possible matches that of the their actual target, you are delusional.
Ghanima Atreides
@WaterGirl: i said it several times. Spychief Pasha gave OBL to Spychief Panetta to get the US to dial down the droning which is destabilizing the Zardari government.
Danny
@Paula:
They just wind me up, the fifth columners, please forgive me…
But isn’t that the perfect example of moral bankrupcy – the willingness to don a false mantle, knowing the ample airtime that will be automaticly provided to any self styled “progressive” willing to go on tv and fling specious accusations at a sitting democratic president?
I rest my case.
Danny
@Paul in KY:
Ok, I get your point. Sorry for venting. Maybe I will.
eemom
@Tim, Interrupted:
jeez, I just asked a simple question. What a chickenshit.
Ghanima Atreides
@Omnes Omnibus: sure they meatspace rehearsed. but they didnt build a brick and mortar mockup compound. they moved cardboard building fronts around and worked in a simulator trainer.
umm…national assets sensor fusion eo sar flir flar night vision amplified light.
There is a whole big dollar black budget project to do shit like that…extraction, assassination, videogame trainers.
and show me a place where GG says the free market or the “freed” market (hehe) is a LIE? cant dooo eeet can you.
;)
batgirl
@Morbo:
If the SEALS had taken OBL alive, Yoo and Limbaugh would be screaming about why didn’t they kill him.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Ghanima Atreides:
I code for a living, and have poked at code around an Open Source Flight Sim app, so yes, I do. Given that I even referenced sims that can emulate aerodynamics, you might have thought twice before asking me this insipid question — and trying an insult in the process.
Do you understand that a VR trainer has limitations? Point out to me where, for example, the FAA lets people who’ve only trained in fight sims get licensed to fly. They don’t, and for damned good reasons. A VR sim, even a high-tech top-of-the line one, isn’t nearly as good a trainer as even a Hollywood-style set — and they have people who build this stuff a lot, both for mission-specific training and for skill updating.
And if you’re going after bin Laden, wouldn’t you have your people use the best training available? That’s NOT a VR, no matter how you play it.
As for this Pasha handing bin Laden over to Panetta — dude, I just searched a ton of strings around that, and got diddly. Maybe you’d like to cite a source, or some evidence, or something so us weak-minded American can follow your clever chain of evidence?
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl:
Sure, be happy to.
The “the courier” story asks us to suspend our ability for critical thinking in a number of ways, many beyond simple spying/hiding tradecraft.
As it is currently being told, the story is that the pseudonym of a trusted courier was being bandied about by a number of people in custody. Interrogators ran this name past two super top level AQs we had in custody. They both said either they didn’t know him or he was irrelevant, etc.
And THIS was the tipping point to our guys that the courier was really somebody they should know more about.
Now, here’s a courier who is “trusted” by OBL ~ yet lots and lots of these battlefield level AQ humps knew who he was AND how “trusted” he was thought to be. Hmmm, ok…
Alright, then KSM gets nabbed and OBL, a man worth $25M dead or alive KEPT USING the same “trusted” courier for 6 YEARS after the one guy who may know him better than anyone else alive got captured.
There is simply no way OBL did not terminate any external facing operational cells he had previously used after KSM got nabbed. He knew that no matter what KSM did, he would be broken. And useful intel or garbage, EVERY crumb he babbled about to us would be investigated thoroughly.
Of course OBL rolled up his external networks. It is beyond the bounds of credulity to think otherwise. This is a man who lived his life hiding from the Soviets, then planned for a decade to bring 9/11 to reality, all the while trying smaller maneuvers to goad and entice the US.
And THEN there’s the whole Pakistan side of the equation!
Bob Loblaw
Oh look, matoko jacked another thread and got people to play her little game for hours on end again. That almost never happens.
Corner Stone
And further, if you consider from the reverse view and start by assuming the courier story is a cover you have to admire how beautiful of a mindfuck it is to credit 6 year old intel from people all in custody that all worked together en masse and these little loose threads are somehow just now actionable.
This discredits entire operational networks who won’t trust their own mommy now, it sends a clear signal to AQ leadership they are being cast to the wolves by their former Paki “allies”, and it causes an internal sturm and drang so loud no one will take two seconds to question it in the US.
Mandramas
@Bob Loblaw: You can always rejack it with some interesting things to discuss. She is not putting a knife in the neck of the commenters.
Ghanima Atreides
“retard” Jarvis
/points and laffs
LEPER! UNCLEARED!
Paul in KY
@Mandramas: She has an interesting theory she’s floating. I wouldn’t consider that ‘threadjacking’.
Fred
The way you people around here get sucked into the Reich Wing echo chamber talking points is amazing! I swear this site must be run by a Koch funded group doing concern trolling.
“Black Jimmy Carter”. Give me a fucking break!
What about “Black Clinton”? You know, the guy who ‘screwed up’ Mogadishu…aka “Blackhawk down”. The guy who ‘screwed up’ Rwanda..aka “Hotel Rwanda” and “Shake Hands with the Devil”.
How did that work out for him? Pretty good I would say. Only thing that brought him down was a friggin blow job!
tomvox1
I want to know why this Lynch/Tillman meme popped up from both an Atlantic senior editor and Greenwald. Memes like this are usually coordinated, a la the “we got the intel from waterboarding” push from the Right. Said it before and I’ll say it again but I really do believe Greenwald, like his buddy Hamsher, is a paid demotivator used to attack Obama from the “left” (just look at the majority of Obama-bashing comments from this article–it works!). Paid by who? Paid by the Kochtupus, of course.
Hal
@Tim, Interrupted
It’s a bit of an irony to accuse others of reflexive name calling while you labeling people Obots.
I don’t think people who believe Obama can do no right as anymore valid in there opinion than people who believe Obama can do no wrong. I say a healthy dose of skepticism goes a long way, but I also think being in a constant state of Liberal/Progressive outrage is just as bad as being in a constant state of approval. Different sides of the same coin as far as I’m concerned.
Mandramas
@Paul in KY: Sorry, I didn’t put the /irony market. Shame on me.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Corner Stone:
Bin Laden was trained as a solider, a specific kind, as well. All the cell and underground stuff he learned was in support of directing attacks, not hiding secrets. (ETA: Although, obviously, operational security is key to such work. But it’s not THE work, as spycraft is. And it’s a reason most gov’ts have a spy agency and a military, often at odds.)
This is a guy who was caught with money & phone numbers sewn in his coat. That’s not anything a smart spy would do — but is something a man fighting an underground war might do, under the assumption he can always escape to fight another day. Hell, it’s been working for a decade, hasn’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred: You are quite literal minded, aren’t you?
Tim, Interrupted
@Hal:
Do I seem to you to be outraged? ???
Calming Influence
Navy Seal shortly after Bin Laden’s compound was secured, and somewhat excited that the operation was a success: Hell yeah! I popped a cap in his ass!”
CNN, 10 minutes later: “It’s just been confirmed that Bin Laden was killed by a shot in the ass.”
tomvox1
@Corner Stone:
You know, even the evil super geniuses, they sometimes make mistakes. Military history is full of successful operations because the other guy did not change his codes or the like when he really should have. Something was going to give bin Laden away–why not a misplaced trust on personal relationships and/or too much faith in his own imperviousness? He wouldn’t be the first “commander” undone by such sloppiness. Just sayin’…
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
You’re making a lot of assumptions here.
al-Libbi denied knowing him so vehemently that the CIA didn’t believe him. Mohammed, under routine interrogation (after being waterboarded 183 times w/out giving it up) finally admitted that he knew the courier. Not that he knew the guy was the courier once, or that he knew the guy was still a courier, just that he was someone he knew.
I haven’t read any reports saying that Abu Ahmed was still acting as a courier. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t acting as the front for OBL, or that he wasn’t acting as the head of OBLs phalanx of bodyguards.
Rather than type it out all over again, my thoughts on this here.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Was there some specific thought we should read? Your link went to the entire thread.
US: DO YOU KNOW THE COURIER?!
KSM: No! What? WHo??
dunk…splash…drip…[redux 182 times]
US: TELL US ABOUT THE COURIER!!
KSM: He’s a lovely fellow, that courier. Great guy, knew his pappy.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): We disagree about other things as well but let me say that I do not find your post to be a very strong rebuttal of my current working theory.
Corner Stone
And I would reply to you Woodrow but it won’t let me because of your quotation marks in your name.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think we got ourselves a genyoowine Village Idiot here.
Corner Stone
OBL had become useless sidecar baggage for the ISI. In the wake of revolutions across MENA OBL could no longer be used as the proper boogeyman the dictators needed.
He was causing someone in the ISI more trouble than he was worth, and that person(s) decided to not stay bought.
It’s my strongly held opinion that someone with serious juice in the ISI sold him to us for a certain set of outcomes.
Corner Stone
@tomvox1: Sure, it happens.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
It didn’t even go the entire thread, but I’ll sum it up briefly: It was a three-way tradeoff, the civilian government looking the other way while the military/ISI protected AQ, in exchange for AQ influencing the Taliban to focus in Afghanistan (this is what Zardari gets out of it) while the military/ISI gets to keep AQ as an asset to foment against India.
Ghanima Atreides
@Corner Stone: Pasha sold him to Panetta in order to dial down the droning, which is EMPIRICALLY destabilizing the Zardari government. But i think you are right that the Arab Spring rendered OBL obsolete as an icon. Only America actually cared much about him anymore.
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): even if you can swallow the courier story, what about the lack of first responders and the airdefense warning system fail?
kamper
Wrong.
Where Men Win Glory
There’s actually very little doubt, down to precisely who fired the shots that killed him.
ABL
hilarious and FTW.
Fred
@tomvox1: Nothing sloppy about the worlds most wanted man evading capture for 10 years.
I don’t believe ANY of the speculation that Pakistan was helping him. He has many sympathizers in Pakistan. I’m sure there were a few he trusted that may have some connections with the Gov’t and/or military but it was not some giant gov’t run operation as some are suggesting.
The guy was smart! No electronic connections to the outside world. Hiding in plain site right next to a military academy was actually a very shrewd move. Somewhat counter intuitive although I’m sure the CIA profile of his likely hiding places would have taken that sort of possibility into consideration.
I saw a picture of a reporter standing beside one of those walls. It was huge! More like a fortress!
different church-lady
@Tim, Interrupted:
On second read you might not that nowhere here or elsewhere have I said that everything the administration says is true.
How many volleys you wanna do?
Ghanima Atreides
@Corner Stone: And one reason i think it was Pasha is that whoever gave up the coords had enough juice to turn off the watchers.
different church-lady
@Corner Stone: Ooh, this is great! Now do the Zapruder film!
Corner Stone
@different church-lady: It’s obvious, isn’t it? It was Col Mustard in the Library with the pipe wrench.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ghanima Atreides:
As much as the Pashtun-dominated Pakistani Taliban in the NWFP? I don’t think the drone strikes there do much to undermine his political support amongst the urban dwellers, not even that much amongst all of those Pashtuns in Karachi.
Jamming radar, flying in low. As for first responders- who called them? If anyone did, someone there probably remembers when the ISI failed to take al-Libbi on that spooky walled-in property 6 years ago. If I’m the cops or firefighters and I’ve received that call (again, if there was a call), I’m saying, “THIS is WAY ABOVE my pay grade. Helicopters? Fuck that shit!”
Uloborus
@Hal: @Paul in KY:
I’m afraid that my problem is that when Obama doesn’t do anything to echo Bush for Glenn to bitch about, Glenn makes things up. And people believe him.
Actually, that’s what really bothers me. Glenn’s role in pushing misinformation on people who assume that he must be honest because he’s Defending Civil Liberties is destructive to liberal causes in general.
FlipYrWhig
@Uloborus: I don’t know if I’d say “makes things up,” but there’s a lot of this: “There can only be one possible interpretation for Phenomenon X, which is that they willingly and actively sought to bring about Phenomenon X.”
Mike Lamb
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Seriously.
Pakistani 9/11: What seems to be the problem?
Caller: One helicopter just landed near my neighbor’s house who I haven’t seen in the 5 years since the compound was built. And another one just crashed and…holy shit…they just blew up the crashed helicopter. Just torched it.
9/11: Uh huh.
Caller: There appear to be a number of heavily armed men swarming the house, with what appears to be machine guns, grenades, night vision goggles, and other high tech weaponry. Ya, I’m thinking you might want to send an EMT, maybe a couple of police cars and the fire department to put out the burning wreckage of that helicopter.
9/11: What’s that sir? I think we are having a bad cell collection…mkaybuhbye.
different church-lady
@Corner Stone: If it’s so obvious, why won’t Parker Brothers release the photos?
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: Thanks for the explanation above in answer to my question.
I’m starting to conclude that my response to all these theories is the same reaction I had when I went to see the Oliver Stone movie JFK all those years ago. I came away feeling that I didn’t KNOW that what was portrayed in that movie had actually happened, but believed it was possible that it happened that way.
The one thing I’m sure of is this: They weren’t 100% that it was Bin Laden in that house, and they knew the risks they were taking if the mission didn’t go well or if it turned out not to be Bin Laden. The comment that the Obama decision was the “the most gutsiest” was very heartfelt, in my opinion, which is what makes me so certain about this.
The other thing is… if they really knew it was going to be Bin Laden, and/or if this was staged, or the mission was certain to succeed, I don’t think we’d be hearing about how 50% of the people around the table thought it was too risky and I don’t think we’d be hearing about how gates didn’t think we should go in.
Edit: Is this Ghanima Atreides person M_C?
Ghanima Atreides
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): lame. Pasha begged Panetta to stop the droning because of Pak nationalists like Imran Khan…the head of the Justice Party who successfully and peacefully blocked the NATO supply routes. Imran Khan has a philosophy named after him, Khanism, and he is making Beeg Truble for the Zardari government.
The raid was twittered. The guy heard choppers and gunfire.
Again, this wasn’t a buncha mudhuts. These were million dollah villas where the military richies lived right next to a Pak military academy.
Are you really that credulous?
Dude, they had helos. If they flew low the groundlings could hear them. And helo blades emitt distinct periodic signals and blade flashes because they turn. We can’t make stealthy chopper rotors yet.
Nope, im confident someone turned off the watchers.
Someone with juice.
Ghanima Atreides
@WaterGirl: it still could have failed.
Pasha could have doublecrossed us any number of ways. But then the droning would have continued, right? Pasha and Zardari want to stop the droning. Because if the Arab Spring comes to Pak their American client government will fall.
and yes, ghani is one of my aspects.
like Sarah Plain and Tall is one of morzers.
The Duc d'Fuck
‘tako-chin: And if there is one thing that I rely upon, it is your confidence.
Ghanima Atreides
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
lol
Teerik-e-Taliban (the Taliban party) have seats in the Pakistan parliament.
WTF are you talking about?
Ghanima Atreides
@Mike Lamb: Dr. Carroll on OBL’s neighbors twitter stream.
different church-lady
@Ghanima Atreides: from that link:
That’s funny: I found the TV pundits to be pompous and clueless, while I found the internet to be hyper and clueless.
Guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder, new media star-struck cheerleaders not withstanding.
Uloborus
@WaterGirl:
You know someone else who uses the term ‘crypto-conservative’ to describe libertarians? But you hardly need those clues. Darned distinctive, ain’t she?
@FlipYrWhig:
I was engaging in hyperbole, but not by much. He lies with half-truths, which is worse than a flat-out lie. He’ll tell you that Obama ordered a US citizen assassinated without mentioning that a court ruled that said citizen had waived his right to fair trial, thus making it legal. That’s the one I always remember, because as a lawyer *he’s supposed to know* that yes, there are exceptions like that. He’s arguing like a lawyer to people who think he’s giving them a lawyer’s expertise.
EDIT – And thus making issues out of what he knows are non-issues, which was my original point.
WaterGirl
@Uloborus: I successfully skipped over M_C posts for 2 years, but then she changed her name (multiple times) and for a moment today I got caught in the web before I realized who I was engaging with.
Ghanima Atreides
@different church-lady: well…Dr. Carroll’s brain is all munged up from thinking about qphysics. like mine i guess.
i mostly agree with him.
debbie
Since when have initial reports ever been accurate? I remember in the hours after the shootings at Fort Hood, the Army spokesman announced that the shooter was dead.
Triassic Sands
I have mixed feelings about what Greenwald wrote. I’ve lost virtually all respect for the American people, so the USA USA USA kind of response to bin Laden’s death struck me as typically immature and distasteful. I don’t think you measure the greatness of a country by whom it kills.
As for the accuracy of the White House version of the events leading to ObL’s death, I would have thought that after past fiascoes in which the original versions of events turned out to be lies (under the previous administration), this administration would have gotten its facts straight before making the announcement. It works a lot better to have one, accurate story, even if it has to be delayed a bit while all the details are checked. I’m not clear why that can’t happen.
I didn’t vote for Bush and when his administration lied (yawn), I was disgusted, but I didn’t feel any sense of responsibility. I voted for Obama and I want him to avoid needless and pointless shitstorms, which means getting it right the first time.
One thing is certain — the MSM are nearly worthless. The corruption in American journa-tainment-lism is so complete I doubt there is any way to ever fix it.
@tomvox1:
Wow. Just wow. I’d love to see some evidence.
Marc
@Triassic Sands:
Greenwald is a libertarian and has written for the Cato Institute. It’s not too much of a reach to postulate connections between him and the Koch Brothers – who fund libertarian initiatives. Although I get a bit too much of a Moriarity vibe from blaming those guys for everything.
johnny walker
Greenwald really does live in Brazil (read: is in fact full of it) on this one, or at least the portion of this one that took place on Twitter. The article’s reasonable enough, with him focusing on the media’s role, but come on. That “blah blah progressives blah blah human rights” RT was fucking absurd.
Reflexively banging out LOL HE LIVES IN BRAZIL to shut down criticism is no less idiotic than doing the same to shut down praise.
@Triassic Sands: I believe the argument is:
Damn site and its congenital blockquote issues.
johnny walker
@Marc: Haha, it’s “not too much of a reach” to jump straight from drug decriminalization researcher to paid fifth-columnist. Sure thing brah.
eta: also, “postulating” is a synonym for “flatly stating.”
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ghanima Atreides:
Yeah, and…? Sinn Fein gets seats in the UK’s parliament all of the time- that doesn’t mean they don’t want to reunite Ireland under the flag of the Republic.
Ghanima Atreides
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): your comment was–
That is dumb. Zardari and Pasha are worried about American droning destabilizing their government, not about talibs. Both the Obama admin and the Zardari government are panicky that the Arab Spring is coming to Pakistan.
Because after the Arab Spring comes the American Fall.
;)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ghanima Atreides:
That is an over-simplification.
Those protesters in Syria and Libya hate how the US has been backing their dictators for decades?
Here’s the thing about the Pashtuns: Some of them are relatively sophisticated, living in places like Kabul and Karachi (which contains more Pashtuns than any other city in the world), while they’ve got some backwards-ass hillbilly cousins who straddle the Af-Pak border. And those cousins- especially those who are Afghan nationals- think that those Sindhis like Zardari are corrupting their city cousins with some namby-pamby form of Islam- hell, they even let them Hindoos live there!
Now if those Afghan Pashtuns had full control of their own country, they might focus harder on teaching Pakistan a lesson about how a REAL Islamic republic should be run. But they never quite had control like they wanted, due to them damned Tajiks and their Northern Alliance, and then, later, the Great Satan keepin’ ’em focused on other things.
Zardari is fucked either way, as is Pakistan as a whole, because it’s a jerry-rigged entity, Punjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns and Baluchis and….
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Man. You’re just not any damned good at making 2 + 2 = 4, are you?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
Coming from you, I consider that a compliment.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yes, I can see how you would. It fits right in with your lack of critical thinking skills, and your inability to put a cogent argument together.
Well done kid, well done.
Draylon Hogg
So your President orders an assassination in a sovereign nation state without its government’s consent and that’s not nefarious? Cole you are still a prize wazzock.
joeyess
@The Duc d’Fuck: I beg your pardon??
Listen, you over-reacting fuckstick, I have a gay couple that lives with me and my wife.
Don’t pretend for one fucking minute that you know a damn thing about me or the company I keep.
Don’t you dare presume you have me pegged into your narrow little pigeon hole.
You don’t.
Fuck off.
cheers. ;^)
Ghanima Atreides
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): nope, its not an oversimplification. In some params every state is different, and in others every state is the same. All the Arab Spring revolutions are grassroots populist protests involving both students and islamist movements…all the Arab Spring nations are 95% muslim or above. All the movements have a social media component. But in Libya we are on the side of the muslim citizens for once. Although we would like to, we can’t do anything in Syria because Assad has a border with Israel. We cant do anything but stern scolding in Saud, Bahrain or Jordan because that would destabilize those countries and skyrocket oil prices. We couldn’t do anything in Yemen or Egypt because we propped those dictators.
But in Afghanistan and Pakistan we are the dictator.
Ghanima Atreides
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Pakistan actually was the first Islamic state, and is a real islamic republic, with shariah in the constitution and anti-blasphemy laws like Indonesia. The President must be muslim. 5% of the seats in parliament are reserved for minorities, and those elections are held at different time than the muslim seat elections. The population of Pakistan is actually 96.3 muslim. It is the only muslim majority nation to possess nukes.
There are several islamist parties in the Pak gov, and since OEF they have been gaining seats, and anti-american sentiment has been growing, culminating in the recent sit-in to block NATO supply routes and the rash of flagburnings and protests against Raymond Davis and the droning.
THE
Oooo Look. A stealth helicopter.
Paul in KY
@Uloborus: I respect your opinions. Certainly could be what happens. I personally don’t think Glenn is that nefarious. I could be wrong, though.
Ghanima Atreides
@THE: so? we have been working on stealth helos for a while. The nontrivial problems are rotor signal periodicity and blade flashes. Do you know how stealth works Spock? By reducing sar signature with materials and rounded corners. That is apparent in that downed helo.
A more interesting question is why is it there? If it failed in air there would likely be dead seals. Chopper crashes usually involve fatalities. I think the seals parked it there and blew it up to give Zardaris gov some deniability.
And if there were only two choppers like they claim a 50% fail rate is unacceptable for deployed mecha in any defense contractor I’ve ever heard of, and particularily for a high value target like OBL.
In the neighbors twitter stream the local law enforcement puts out that the raid was a failed Pak training exercise.
And no first responders in a million dollar neighborhood?
Riiiiight.
Ghanima Atreides
@Paul in KY: I think all male libertarians secretly hate Obama. I think its subliminated sexual jealousy.
;)
Ghanima Atreides
@THE:
i think… they brought along a spare, and parked it and blew it up in situ. It may or may not be representative of actual current tech.
i love my country.
;)
THE
@Ghanima Atreides:
I can answer all your objections I think.
But this is not the right place.
The stealth chopper supports the US was trying to minimise their radar signature. They wouldn’t needed to do that if they had prearranged the attack with the Pakistanis.
It is one of many pieces of evidence that supports the administration’s version, broadly, rather than your whacko conspiracy theory. That is as far as I am willing to go.
I reacted the same as you at the start, but the more I investigated, the more the administration’s version stood up.
I no longer doubt the essential truth, although I do believe that it was a targeted assassination because they were more interested in bin-Laden’s computers than him.
Ghanima Atreides
@THE:
sure they would. they need plausible deniability for Zardari with his citizenry. Zardaris government is being destabilized by the perception that he is an american lapdog, by droning, by the Raymond Davis event and by Terry Jones anti-islamic mad highjinks. You cant cover this shit up in the age of social media.
Check out my man Khan on Pak talk tv.
Want a translation?
Shorter Khan: GTFO American terrorists.
so dooo eeet.
Where were the first responders?
THE
I think you must be a secret supporter of the English Cricket team, they were always worried about Imran Khan.
I am not going to post all my research here.
Ghanima Atreides
@THE:
AND…..maybe the helo that was “crashed” and blown up was the only one “stealthed”. I think they brought it just to ditch it, because they had enough space on the other helo (s) for the team and they obviously blew it up on the ground or there would be injuries at least.
Deniability.
Ghanima Atreides
@THE:
lol
you got nuthin.
THE
You know my price.
What do you have other than your grand fantasies.
Prove your secret Pakistan/US deal.
THE
You just pull theories out of your “intuition”
You probably got if from Tarot cards. Maybe astrology.
THE
According to you Ahmadinejad was definitely doomed. Membah?
THE
What was that? Chicken entrails, right?
Dreams? Numerology?
THE
I make my living from my research, Ghanima Atreides, and I cannot afford to post my work for free.
Ghanima Atreides
@THE: Nejad is doomed…..we just don’t know when. :)
The Danger Room disputes the official “two helos” story, and the neighbor’s twitter live-stream also disputes the official story that the Paks knew nothing.
This is age of social media and wikileaks….the Obama admin is ‘walking back’ the original human shield accounts right now….but they are going to have to walk an awful far way back to explain how they crammed 25 geared seals into a single blackhawk, or crashed a helo without a single bruise, or made the Abbottabad police believe that the raid was a Pak training exercise.
THE
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin.
In all the objections you have raised so far I would ask you to consider your sources or how you are reading your sources.
I would have to take each issue one at a time and show you better sources or alternative readings.
This would mean a long, long, discussion because you keep throwing up more and more issues.
Thats fine. I am more than happy to talk to you. You are my favorite biped. But not here. I would need to refer you to my proprietary research. Members only.