Expect to see a lot of this in the future:
his is just sad. First the White House told us bin Laden was firing at the SEALs, using his wife as a shield. Then that story became inoperative, and they said he was unarmed. Now officials are saying that the SEALS shot bin Laden because they thought he might be reaching for a weapon.
So they think the SEALS, who obviously, in my view, were sent into Pakistan to shoot bin Laden, take his body away and dump it into the ocean, need to be defended like a policeman who shoots an unarmed man on the street and says it looked like he was reaching for a gun. Pathetic. We have been trying to kill bin Laden for nearly a decade, and finally succeeded. Great news. Can’t we leave it at that, without the White House muddying the waters with their crime-fighting approach to international terrorism?
That’s Time’s Blog of the Year, upset at being told the truth and demanding more spin, demonstrating what we can expect to see a lot more of in the next few months. Unable to grapple with the fact that a Democratic administration ran a successful mission to get bin Laden, something that eluded the Bush admin for almost eight years, we will be subjected to months of nitpicking- “He waited 16 hours to give the go!” “They are crapping on the troops!” “There was no live video feed!” “The Obama security team is in chaos!” “How did they bungle this!”
As they descend deeper and deeper into the echo chamber, it will just be a known known among the wingnutterati that this was a blown mission. The rest of us will wonder what the hell they are talking about, as the mission was flawless with no American casualties and America’s public enemy #1 dead and buried at sea, but the wingers will know the real truth.
And we all know they will have an assist from the village idiots, too. Here is Marky Mark Halperin, he of the “McCain not knowing how many houses he owns during this economic crash is bad news for Obama” fame, explaining how the administration “blew” the aftermath. Number two is my favorite:
2. Not giving George W. Bush enough credit for helping bring bin Laden to justice: Even if the White House believes the previous occupant had nothing to do with OBL’s ultimate demise, it would have been better for national unity and Obama’s own political fortunes if he had gone out of his way to thank 43. His invitation to Bush to join the event Thursday at Ground Zero (an offer declined) was the right idea, but belated. (Watch “President Obama on the Death of bin Laden.”)
Sure, the mission was a success, but what about Republican fee-fee’s?
You can’t make this shit up.
Mark-NC
Not crazy – just nasty liars.
Valdivia
OMFG, now the Bushies are out in full force saying Obama hurt Bush’s fee fees for claiming too much credit. Fuck them all!!!
piratedan
obviously those in the village don’t understand the nuance of “checkmate” in 11th dimensional chess.
Captain Haddock
To be honest – if this happened when Bush was on office: burial at sea, no photo, changing stories, etc — I would be calling bullshit. I don’t want to say I “trust” Obama but I don’t get the same slimy vibe that I did from Team Bush.
Captain Howdy
Salon has a Gene Lyons article up titled “Who’s Soft on Terror Now?”
What evidence is there that Obama was ever soft on terror?
And how does the assassination of a figurehead in a terrorist organization reverse that perception?
Conclusion: Our discourse is bullocks.
burnspbesq
As I said a couple of days ago, nobody who wasn’t on scene knows anything. Unless and until the Navy convenes an Article 32 hearing, AFAIC shooting bin Laden was the right thing to do under the circumstances.
Ghanima Atreides
A++
also, Obama did not further destabilize Zardari’s government by announcing that we bullied Pasha into giving up OBL to dial down the droning….like Bush would have done.
It was slick.
;)
dmsilev
Halperin’s pathetic article basically boiled down to “Obama is bad because he didn’t force the press to all regurgitate a single unified line of spin. I miss George W. Bush.”
Alex S.
I can’t give Obama any credit here since he stubbornly insists on being black which totally kills my terror-induced boner.
Also, Mark Halperin is totally right. McCain won the day.
Valdivia
Halperin lead the way yesterday making it all about the spin and the propaganda and how Obama and his team lost because killing OBL does not matter how the media spins it is how it matters. Win the day! Our media sucks balls. They ruin everything, absolutely everything they’re like little children pursuing a shiny object that matters not one bit and then get angry when one points out they are responsible. Ugh.
david mizner
@Captain Haddock:
Well, as D-Day says, the narrative’s falling apart. Based on NBC’s reporting (all the usual grains of salt), the certainly looks like a flat-out kill mission. The pesky details won’t matter to most but they matter to me, because I happen to believe the U.S. should capture suspects when they’re able to, and because I happen to oppose official lying.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/05/05/narrative-on-bin-laden-raid-collapses/
burnspbesq
Can’t we just resolve to shun Halperin?
Comrade Javamanphil
@dmsilev: Halperin appears to really miss blowing W.
Foxhunter
The best part of Halperin’s article is the comments section, as usual. Just sort by highest rated. If Halperin reads those comments and doesn’t feel like a corner whore, then he will never understand how to do his job.
jze
Obama showed his weakness by not ordering the dropping of a hydrogen bomb on OBL.
Ekim
Americablog is just as bad.
malraux
Nitpick, we lost a stealth helicopter. The loss of the craft isn’t a big deal, but it does confirm that we have a previously unseen stealth copter, and the tail rotor section is now almost certainly in someone’s (china?) hands.
Of course, we have advanced aircraft to use for important missions, so if that’s the largest criticism, then the mission was clearly a huge success.
Surly Duff
It really is a giant game of Calvinball.
He didn’t thank another administration that left office 3 years ago. OK, he thanked them, but was not effusive enough in his praise, and he did not even invite them to the ceremony at Ground Zero. OK, he did invite them, but it really was not quick enough for me.
I really dislike the term poutrage, but it truly is appropriate. And Helperin is a twit.
gex
I used to think the right was all about daddy issues. But clearly their mom’s didn’t hug them enough. Christ. Why don’t these people just get some therapy for their issues?
Ekim
And Firedoglake.
ppcli
@Captain Haddock: True, I had reached the point where I just assumed that everything the Bush administration said was a politically massaged fabrication at the level of small details. But as far as the broad picture is concerned, the basic claim that Bin Laden had been killed during this operation isn’t something that could be credibly faked. If Bin Laden were still alive, he could just make a video. If he had died earlier of natural causes, his body would be somewhere else. There are just too many people in the loop in an operation like this for a fraud not to come out somehow. So even if the Bushies were in charge, the core story that Bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by a US military operation would be hard to disbelieve. Matters of detail (where did the info come from, were there any US casualties and if so how did they occur, etc.) would probably be fabricated to fit the preset narrative, of course.
Bulworth
And how about that downed helicopter that had to be put out of its misery?! What an Obama fukup. If W had actually gotten OBL, you can betcha there wouldn’t had been a helicopter malfunction.
burnspbesq
@david mizner:
In the abstract, it’s easy to say that if we could have gotten bin Laden alive, we should have. But in the current climate, it’s utterly impractical. Or have you forgotten the freak-out that ensued when DOJ proposed to try KSM in Manhattan?
WyldPirate
Crazy people drive the debate in this country.
Bullsmith
I certainly remember how during the Bush years Republicans always pointed out how patriotic and cooperative their democratic colleagues were. It’s shameful to see President Obama destroying the years of bipartisan cooperation Republicans have worked so hard to establish.
Foxhunter
@malraux: I hadn’t really noticed much about the chopper crash, then I saw the reuters photo today. That rotor housing looked like it had B2 lines. Stealth, indeed.
jrg
Why is Halperin criticizing the president during war time? Does he hate America?
Tim, Interrupted
OK, for the tenth time, John: At this point you have no independent verification of any kind, other than the word of the U.S. government, known to have lied repeatedly, about any of this. Maybe the current story is true, maybe it’s not.
But why are you as eager to believe whatever the government tells you as the Obama haters are eager to disbelieve?
What is your problem with maintaining a healthy, objective skepticism until you see evidence one way or the other?
Seems to me this is an area where your credulousness, which made you a Bush Licker, shines thru. You seem to have an intense need to BELIEVE some authority figure and to BELONG to that figure’s team.
Which is why your screaming “believe!” in this case brings no credibility to the Obama side of things.
Bulworth
And you can betcha that W wouldn’t had a have pus$y footed around about releasing the photos. He woulda released them and not pus$yfooted around. Or he wouldn’t have released them. But you can betcha he wouldn’t have pus$yfooted around.
MikeJ
@Captain Howdy: You should reread that. Lyons isn’t saying that Obama was ever “soft on terror.” He’s saying that it a favorite republican attack, and Obama showed how full of shit they are.
Lyons is one of the good ones.
Ash Can
Throw in the fact that the president is less melanin-challenged than his predecessors, and you’ve got the crux of the whole thing right there.
A post or comment here a few days ago linked to a corporate news story — in Time, maybe — about Obama being the one to insist that a back-up helicopter be used on the mission to nail bin Laden, and that the back-up copter turned out to be essential. I waded into the comments on the Time site, and sure enough there were a couple insisting that the story was wrong, it had to have been the generals ordering the back-up copter and directing the operation, because, to quote one of the yahoos, Obama “ain’t that smart.”
These people have nothing to support their beliefs and opinions but out-and-out denial. Nothing.
piratedan
@david mizner: my best guess David… is that while armed soldiers broke into his living quarters, when he (OBL) didn’t raise his hands in immediate surrender or drop to the floor and lay prone, he did something else that was interpreted as “aggressive”. Would hazard a guess that at least one of the SEAL team knew enough Arabic to be shouting instructions that were either ignored or refused. They had zero idea what he/they could have setup in there in the way of traps or weapon caches. I imagine the situation would have held a certain intensity that none of us could possibly relate to and as such the assault team would likely have had standing orders to not take any chances.
RossInDetroit
@Bullsmith:
This. The situation in a snark wrapped nutshell.
CJ_n_PA
I seems clear to me that the Republican spin will slowly change from “the details are changing” to “it was a kill mission” to “it was Obama’s illegal kill mission” to “impeach Obama for illegal kill missions”.
My guess for a timeline is 2 weeks till they start to bring up impeachment… 3 months till something hits the house…
lldoyle
My favorite part is how Marky Mark concedes that Obama has in fact taken Bush’s fee fees into account by issuing an invitation, but continues to pound the square peg into the round hole by saying that he waited too long to do so.
Nothing short of actions reasonably certain to boost GOP poll numbers will do.
Calvinball, indeed.
Cacti
@david mizner:
No one cares.
Sad Iron
Come on, Mr. Cole–they’re just being diligent, asking as many important questions now as they did concerning the Iraq War. Wait, never mind.
Muley Graves
@david mizner: fortunately, no one gives a shit what you think.
Loneoak
Isn’t it about time we impeached Obama for violating Mark Halperin’s Constitutional right to snort bath salts, dress in ladies underwear, and masturbate over the corpse of Osama?
gex
@david mizner: Not disagreeing. But I strongly feel there’s no way OBL lets us take him alive. I just do. Once we showed up at the door it was martrydom or losing to the Americans. I believe he would have chosen the former no matter how we approached this mission.
Plus we torture now. Maybe we no longer do under Obama, but if he was about to be captured by Americans, I don’t think he’d count on that.
And he’d get the death penalty anyway.
So I don’t know what the mission was or how it went down, but I feel pretty confident we weren’t taking him alive no matter what.
Surly Duff
Frankly, this was the most revealing part of that “article”:
The White House has stumbled by violating one of Washington’s iron rules: when something becomes famous inside the Beltway for not being released, the pressure from the media to release it becomes unrelenting.
The bolded phrase part is the only relevant part to Halperin. Once something becomes important to a small, self-important group of people (Beltway insiders), then the media exerts pressure or pays attention. But not before that because they have no mind of their own.
Truthful, insightful journalism is a rotting corpse.
Cacti
Firebaggers and Republicants join each other in a somber embrace and cry on each others shoulders over the loss of their friend Osama.
Who could have seen it coming?
geg6
Shorter Halperin:
The preznit is blackety, black, black, black and George W. Bush wins the week, always and forever. Unless, of course, it’s John McCain’s turn. And notice! They most certainly ARE NOT blackety, black, black, black.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Mark-NC: “crazy” and “nasty liars” are not mutually exclusive
Culture of Truth
of course
General Stuck
Likely the dumbest, most fatuous piece of rank bullshit I have read in some time. The intellectual laziness alone pushes the stoopid to new levels for a national pundit. “belated”? WTF?
How dare that uppity nigger not give massa Bush his rightful credit. It’s an outrage. What will white America think?
schrodinger's cat
I have been meaning to ask this for a while but what the hell are fee fees?
Also, Halperin is an idiot.
RossInDetroit
Though it’s not gonna happen, there’s a window of opportunity for Obama to slap the GOP around on this issue. Tell ’em how the cow eats the cabbage, as Grandpa used to say:
“We killed Public Enemy #1 and got everyone out alive with a goldmine of intel that dwarfs your puny pile of waterboarded lies” “You got a problem with that, state it or STFU”
But that would be divisive.
stuckinred
@david mizner: Oh boy a citation from Hamsher, that fucking settles everything!
david mizner
@burnspbesq:
Sure, keeping OBL alive would’ve created a host of practical problems — all the more reason to believe this was a kill mission. This seems to be pretty much in keeping with other assassinations that Bush and Obama have ordered — that’s precisely the problem. Assassination is becoming normalized, so we have a situation where people are rightfully concerned about due process for suspects but there’s relatively little objection to assassinations and summary executions. The killing of OBL is some ways the least objectionable because there’s no doubt about his guilt; for others, there will be.
burnspbesq
@Tim, Interrupted:
Your position on this matter is silly.
For reasons of operational security which should be easy to understand, “the evidence” is never going to emerge in its entirety. We are never going to know much more than we know now. In fact, there is a case that can be made that too much information has already been released.
So draw what conclusions you can from what you know now, and be done with it. Unless you want to continue your long-running and tiresome rant.
Culture of Truth
free paper in NYC this a.m., called “AM”
(With pic of Obama)
“Thanks But… What Now?”
you can’t make this up
Bulworth
Oh c’mon. The bestest part of Halperin’s gurgling is surely #3.
Obama let the photo-release thing get out of control.
Out of control! Chaos! pus$yfooting around about the photo release for about day nearly killed the nation. the only worser thing would have been if Obama had taken more time pus$yfooting around about releasing the photo. Or decided sooner. That would have been worser, also too.
david mizner
@stuckinred:
That wasn’t Hamsher; that was D-Day, one of the best news blogger around.
Napoleon
@piratedan:
It has been clear to me that the administration is defining “aggressive move” as ANYTHING other then an obvious immediate surrender. I have seen several differant admin members say something like this in interviews “if he had raised his hands in surrender of course we would have captured him”.
And look, who could blame them. By the way it just amazes me that only one of the people in the compound fired and appeared to actually be holding a weapon. Seriously, you are the most wanted man in the world and a helicopter lands on your lawn in the middle of the night and you do something other then 1) run, 2) surrender or 3) grab a gun and hide behind something to sheild yourself.
Redshift
@piratedan: It’s amazing the number of people who are unable to tell the difference between “unarmed” and “they could tell he was unarmed and not a lethal threat.” This is a group that has routinely used suicide attacks; it would not have been unreasonable to take any action other than surrender as a possible lethal threat.
I’m disappointed in D-Day; he used to be better than that.
Ash Can
@CJ_n_PA: So this explains what David Mizner, Tim Interrupted, and Firedoglake are all up to.
Mark S.
Jesus, I’m pretty much speechless at that Halperin article. Is he really a journalist or a performance artist? That kind of trollery belongs in the Smithsonian.
Surly Duff
@Tim, Interrupted:
Maybe you need to go ahead and restate the same argument for an eleventh time. I think the more you repeat the same point, the stronger your argument becomes. Repetition = revelation.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@david mizner: I’m curious, David, would you have volunteered to be part of a mission that went in to capture Obama to make sure that he wasn’t killed? Because they could have declared it a capture mission, but unless they were going to control the soldiers like drones, and therefore settle on the possibility that some of the soldiers might be injured or killed due to their hesitating – which is what will happen if you try to sit there and rationalize everything going on – they couldn’t guarantee that he would have come out alive. And I, for one, will not lose any sleep over it. As I told someone yesterday, there is a difference between bin Laden and a murderer who laid down on the ground when the cops showed up.
kdaug
I believe you have sited incontrovertible proof that they can, indeed, make this shit up.
Cacti
@david mizner:
Who gives a f*ck?
PurpleGirl
@burnspbesq: This is an important point. The Congress has gone crazy with the idea of trying the Gitmo prisoners state-side. If KSM had super powers that would be displayed in the court and somehow affect New York City and the country, imagine the super-duper powers of bin Laden and what the sound of his voice would have done. It would be nice if Democrats could show a belief in the efficiency of our courts, but the Republicans don’t at all believe in the system any more and it’s their fee-fees we have to accommodate, unfortunately.
Tim, Interrupted
@burnspbesq:
We KNOW very, very little. All we KNOW is what the government as said is true.
It that is good enough for you, have at it. You’re no deep thinker, that’s for sure.
lonesomerobot
Looks like Halperin forgot #3 (or whatever he went up to, I can’t read that crap): Not making sure to blame Clinton. Also for national unity, of course.
Captain Howdy
@MikeJ:
You’re quite right. I hadn’t read the article, just the title, which by itself reflected the consensus center-right meme (pre-assassination). My point, such as it was, still stands, but it was hasty to use Lyons (yes, one of the good ones!) as an example.
Dave
Jesus Christ…for being a bunch of bad-talking mo-fos, the Republicans are a bunch of weak-kneed hothouse flowers.
General Stuck
I don’t know what’s worse, idiotic pundits like Halperin fluffing the wingnuts morning noon and night, or pearl clutching wanker libtards like Mizner, recreating everything that happens into some kind prissy sessions of bringing down Obama by inflicting a thousand concern troll paper cuts, one by one, at every opportunity.
Joey Maloney
@piratedan: he did something else that was interpreted as “aggressive”.
Such as inhale.
I just figure the SEALS were so amped there’s probably nothing OBL could’ve done to avoid taking fire.
Cacti
@Tim, Interrupted:
Maybe they’ll invite you to the White House and brief you on the details, because you’re such a special snowflake.
Jane2
@Captain Haddock: Maybe you should expect the same quality of evidence from both Presidents, or indeed any administration.
The CIAs claims that waterboarding helped capture bin Laden (they never can resist going that one step too far, can they) should give you pause, if nothing else does.
jwb
@Tim, Interrupted: You really need to go back to troll school. Pathetic. Where’s BOB when you need him?
Valdivia
@General Stuck:
what you said.
Tim, Interrupted
@Surly Duff:
Hmmm…sometimes when idiots continue expressing their credulous idiocy without addressing one’s questions and observations, one’s only recourse is to keep restating the obvious.
BJ is an outpost of the Center-Right portion of the American Idiocracy.
Cacti
Personally, I give George W. Bush a heap of credit…
For keeping his “ranch” impressively free of brush for 8 years.
JCT
@Cacti: OK, now THIS has to be peak wingnut.
@schrodinger’s cat: “feelings” with the highest dose of sarcasm implied. Highly appropriate as these are the big manly-men who love to declare war, beat their chests and sent other people’s children to battle under the most minimal or made-up pretenses. But heaven forfend they feel “slighted” as they all at once commence whinging and crying and clutching their peals in deafening unison. Today’s Republican Party.
RSA
From the NY Times:
Belated? WTF?
taylormattd
@david mizner: Jesus fucking christ.
You people are worse than the dead ender Bush acolytes.
I was going to say John, it isn’t just the wingnuts who are fucking nuts.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat:
fee-fees = feelings.
OzoneR
Can’t possibly understand why the White House would have trouble with their messaging.
Chyron HR
@Tim, Interrupted:
Damn, he’s got us figured out.
Tim, Interrupted
@jwb:
Hmmm…thoughtful response. Thanks for directly engaging the questions I keep asking. Appreciate it.
Fool
Rosalita
@Comrade Javamanphil:
He’s still doing it
Cacti
@Tim, Interrupted:
You really shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.
Someday you may outgrow your sophomoric self-righteousness.
Ghanima Atreides
@malraux: we didnt loose a stealth helo. We blew it up on the ground to give Zardari plausible deniabilty.
Walker
@Napoleon:
This is little different than how SWAT teams react in a raid.
Culture of Truth
That may very well be, but OBL could have turned himself in to the Pakistani government (assuming he didn’t).
Tim, Interrupted
@Cacti:
So…should I take this to mean that you take pride in your unthinking sheepness?
stuckinred
@david mizner: Horse shit. It’s on her website and she has done everything possible to derail Obama from day one.
taylormattd
@david mizner: Yeah, he’s the “best” of the Daily Kos-generated Armando wannabees, which isn’t saying much.
Bobby Thomson
@RSA:
Translation: “Someone read my column and told me I fucked up in accusing Obama of not even inviting Bush. Fuck it. I’m leaving it in anyway. It’s all Obama’s fault I didn’t know that.”
chopper
obviously, its the WH muddying the waters, as opposed to the ‘show me the body and was this even legal?’ right-wing douchelords.
if i were an asshole, i’d start throwing out the phrase ‘objectively pro-osama’ or maybe ‘fifth column’ in response to these dicksacks.
Ghanima Atreides
@JCT:
No, but the Wingularity is near. We can never reach Peak Wingut, but the run up to the election has started and the wingnuttiness curve is approaching slope vertical.
You aint seen nothing yet.
cleek
@Foxhunter:
totally.
all the top-rated comments right now are of the “what a stupid article this is” variety.
OzoneR
@david mizner:
oh, the horror.
jeff
A lot of far left criticism of the raid is outrage that the story changed. Of course, they didn’t believe the first version–but were even angrier when it was corrected by the WH. Now they’re apoplectic.
geg6
@david mizner:
On what planet have you been living for the last, oh, 2000 years?
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but political assassinations have been normalized since, at least, the death of that possibly mythical creature, Jesus of Nazareth. And the US is hardly innocent of such goings on. I think the last time we know the US did such a thing was Allende back in ’73 or so. Ngo Dinh Diem is another famous one.
Another problem you have is that this was not a political assassination. bin Laden is not and never has been a politician or head of state or even held office as dog catcher. So it’s pretty hard to conduct a political assassination on someone who is not a politician. He was a terrorist. One does not tiptoe around when one confronts a terrorist. One goes for the kill, if one can. You might feel queasy about the reality of how one goes about taking down the head of a terrorist organization, but all this hand wringing and comparing it to political assassinations is more than stupid.
taylormattd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Don’t engage David.
He has zero credibility on anything having to do with war given he spent all of 2007 slobbering all over John “Let’s invade the shit right out of Iraq” Edwards.
lonesomerobot
@david mizner: And a kill mission is bad…why? What, they’re supposed to capture him and take him to Gitmo, or some black site somewhere? I’m sure the administration looked down that path and saw the mother of all freak shows. Briebart screaming that he should be allowed to kick Osama’s ass personally. Pam Gellar demanding to be the one to execute OBL with her stilettos.
Of course it was a kill mission; they wanted OBL dead and GONE.
Tone in DC
Loneoak – May 5, 2011 | 10:03 am · Link
Isn’t it about time we impeached Obama for violating Mark Halperin’s Constitutional right to snort bath salts, dress in ladies underwear, and masturbate over the corpse of Osama?
So… Halperin is actually in fact Marv Albert, circa 2002?
Cacti
@Tim, Interrupted:
Yer so smart, you invent new words.
Let’s if I can do it…
You really should work on toning down your assholitude.
catclub
@MikeJ: “Lyons is one of the good ones.” And the fact that he does not live in DC, New York, or LA is a feature, not a bug.
maya
You know, all this time I thought Halperin was something you’d expect to find in Walgreen’s headache aisle. Right next to eXtra strength E-Erickson.
Surly Duff
@Tim, Interrupted:
when idiots continue expressing their credulous idiocy without addressing one’s questions and observations
Sweet fancy moses. Your question is, “What is your problem with maintaining a healthy, objective skepticism until you see evidence one way or the other?” How is anyone supposed to answer that question? Yes, I will reserve my skeptecism that OBL is dead until I get to touch, taste, smell the corpse?
Your main argument seems to be, is that you do not trust the support that has been reported so far by the administration and that only additional evidence will convince you. What you fail to realize or accept is that any additional evidence would be provided by…wait for it…the administration! OMG!! But how can I trust them! They were the same people that I couldn’t trust before!
Seriously, you are reaching truther territory with your unrealistic demands for “more evidence”. So don’t complain when you are not taken seriously.
RP
It that is good enough for you, have at it. You’re no deep thinker, that’s for sure.
knee jerk cynicism =/= deep thinking
As a general matter, the argument that “you wouldn’t trust this story from Bush, so you’re a hypocrite if you trust Obama” makes no sense. In the real world, everyone understands that a complement from a friend carries far more weight than one from a salesman at Neiman Marcus. Obama might have flip flopped on some issues, and he’s far from perfect, but he and the rest of the dems still have far, far more credibility than Bush and the repubs.
Mary
@Tim, Interrupted:
Maybe I’m just coming too late to the game here, but I am genuinely curious as to what it is that we’re being skeptical about. Is it just the details of the mission and whether or not OBL was shot in cold blood or was offering resistance? If so, then it seems completely moot to me. We’ll never know exactly what happened and everyone needs to decide for herself whether it really matters.
As far as I can tell, the only definitive facts that the administration have conveyed are that OBL is dead and they buried him at sea. If that’s what you’re skeptical about, then there’s really nothing to discuss.
cleek
@Tim, Interrupted:
ooh. that looks like fun! word salad is delicious.
top ten Google hits for “this place is a” *:
This place is a prison.
This place is a zoo.
This place is a dump.
This place is a joke.
This place is a nasty dump.
This place is a complete paradise.
This place is a combination: Restaurant up stairs and Fish and Chips shop down stairs .
This place is a HOLE!
This place is a gem.
This Place Is A Gynocracy.
chopper
@General Stuck:
doesn’t matter how much work the grad student does, the advisor gets first author.
Bulworth
It occurs to me that instead of slamming Halperin we should all recognize how incredibly BOLD and Very Serious his column is and how it moves the debate.
david mizner
@lonesomerobot:
We can debate the merits of a kill mission. At the very least he government should say that’s what it was.
Joey Maloney
@Culture of Truth: Or he could’ve, you know, not devised, planned, and financed the most spectacular terrorist attack in the modern age of mass communication.
If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea-cart.
celticdragonchick
Off topic college grades…
11604 GEOL 360 001 Optical Petrology Guilford A
11161 MATH 121 002 Calculus I Guilford C
Damn. The first “C” I’ve gotten at Guilford in two years.
Annoying. Still waiting for 20th century European History to post…
OzoneR
@david mizner:
because no one has ever conducted political assassinations before now.
J.W. Hamner
It’s sort of exciting to see the genesis of new conspiracy theories right before our very eyes.
Culture of Truth
@Joey Maloney: I thought of that also, but I didn’t want to be divisive.
david mizner
@taylormattd:
Little Matty, of course you eagerly lap up every bit of bullshit the Obama government throws out — you’ve been doing that for months — but some of us have retained the capacity for independent thought.
cleek
@Surly Duff:
even that wouldn’t do it unless you had already touched, tasted and smelled OBL before. otherwise, it could be anybody. and, knowing how crafty that Obama fellow is, you could be touching, tasting and smelling an expertly-crafted steel and latex dummy that’s been flavored and scented with synthetic OBL aromas and flavors!
truly, Obama’s corruption knows no bounds.
public option!
celticdragonchick
@Tim, Interrupted:
I give.
Which front pager are you really…and is it really that much fun trolling the site?
Jay C
@Ash Can:
This.
But sadly, in the end, it won’t matter a bit, since “these people” also include a non-trivial portion of our national “mainstream media”.
It’s astounding: the Abbottabad attack on Osama bin Laden was one of the most successful anti-terrorist operations this country has ever mounted; a textbook case yielding one dead terrorist mastermind (Osama bin Fucking Laden, no less!), and a trove of valuable data: all accomplished with no casualties on our side – and the main response from cretins like Mark Halperin? Shrill nitpicking and blinkered reflexive fault-finding. Apparently, even the remotest notion that President Obama might have done something right sends these idiots right over the edge. Is Obama Derangement Syndrome really that much of a pandemic “inside the Beltway”?
My God, WTF is wrong with these people?
kd bart
Can you imagine what a site like FDL would’ve been like after the D-Day invasion? The invasion was a success but quite a few things did go wrong during the actual invasion.
RP
oops — “compliment” not “complement”
Sad Iron
Let’s imagine for a moment that President McCain had been at the helm of this operation. What’s the narrative right now? More importantly, what are the odds that McCain would have made the announcement with his shirt off and yelled “Fuck Yeah” at least once?
Rabble Arouser
@david mizner: Oh man, you’re like, through the looking glass now!
Do you not hear yourself? You sound like Milhouse from the Simpsons: “The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the reverse vampires, are plotting to destroy dinnertime!”
I guess we all have our pet theories, but get a grip, man!
Bulworth
Only The Left in its Coastal Enclaves believes Obama didn’t totally eff up the Aftermath of the OBL kill and shouldn’t give more credit to W and torture and shouldn’t take a political victory lap around Ground Zero.
roshan
You know, next time any wingnut urges you to acknowledge that the surge worked, you should ask them to acknowledge that OBL was killed during the Obama admin. Also, when the media frequently notices democratic partisanship they need to be reminded the pettiness and childish tantrums of the modern GOP, which is nothing but extreme partisanship.
Where were these arbiters of wisdom when the color coded disco alert system was used quite bluntly to turn in terror votes for the GOP?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
of course i haven’t seem much kumbaya from the right, about how maybe they were wrong about obama, and in fact he has more courage than any of them.
kumbaya works both ways.
moving on, i like this. i want more of this.
i want to see the gop trash the rationale behind the police shootings and beatings of unarmed suspects, or suspects not in a position to “resist”. normally they defend the police officers to a double fault. please, please, go on record talking about irresponsible police work and how the seals work in pakistan reminds you of it.
i don’t think i can say please enough, just do it.
lonesomerobot
@Tim, Interrupted: Shorter Tim: “Hello and f- all you sheep for the tenth time. I just don’t understand why you stupid idiots won’t listen to me!”
Cacti
@OzoneR:
Again, on what level could this be considered a political assassination?
What was Osama’s political office before, during or after 9/11? Of what nation-state was he a citizen? In whose national interest was he working?
John Cole
@Tim, Interrupted: Care to explain to us who or what “Obongo” is?
Georgia Pig
@General Stuck: It’s a feature, not a bug. Halperin has always been the standard bearer for idiocy and I like nothing better than seeing Fox and the other wingers criticizing Obama, and by inference, Navy SEALs, for being trigger happy. The right is really losing their mojo lately, what with this nonsense and the Ryan Plan. It goes without saying that Obama has much to gain from visible separation from firebaggers.
chopper
@RP:
indeed. remember ‘iraq has WMDs’. that guy lied about the most important shit a president could possibly lie about.
OzoneR
@Jay C:
Yes, and this is what many of us Obot have been saying since 2008.
piratedan
@david mizner: David, if it was a kill mission, why bother sending in a SEAL team. We got these things called predator drones, death by joystick
Cacti
@kd bart:
They’d have sent all the troops in with handcuffs rather than rifles.
Villago Delenda Est
@lonesomerobot:
You’re so mean to the fucktard. Stop it! Stop it!
Valdivia
The fact that someone pretending to be on our side worried about the legality of this calls Obama Obongo is all one needs to read to just know this guy is working for the other side.
stuckinred
@piratedan: Nothing to do with the 20+ people who didn’t die because these dudes are so professional and committed.
JCT
@Cacti: Details, details — stop trying to mess up the pretty narrative. /snark
Dave
@kd bart:
“Why did the Allies kill so many innocent French citizens with their haphazard shelling? The media blackout prior to this invasion was an affront to a free press!!”
MikeJ
@piratedan: And not just predator drones. Last night Martin pointed out that an AC-130 gunship could have orbited and pumped a few tens of thousands of rounds into the building before the choppers landed. Would have made things much safer and you could still go in and grab the body. They didn’t do it.
lonesomerobot
@david mizner: we talked about this last night (and I don’t want to get into it again), but I would think there are specific reasons for being vague on this topic.
kdaug
@Ghanima Atreides: m_c!
Welcome back!
You just can’t quit us, can you?
celticdragonchick
@david mizner:
Since we in a de-facto war (of sorts), there is little no impediment to the military exercising its ability to kill or incapacitate the enemy chain of command. This has been a recognized part of warfare for quite some time.
The British would complain about this vociferously in the Revolution when American marksmen with rifles (as opposed to smoothbore muskets) would snipe at officers and the drummer boys. The officers wore bright metal gorgets, which made them easy targets…and the drummer boys relayed vital battlefield commands. Killing them often ended up in severe disruption of the British battle line.
The British thought it was quite uncivilized to expect officers to face greater statistical hazard then the men under their command. American riflemen thought that an officer’s gorget with a bullet hole through it was a pretty cool battlefield trophy…
Tim, Interrupted
@John Cole:
That quote is not from me. The commenter mis-applied the block quote device thingie.
Oh, and thanks for addressing my questions. Not.
jwb
@lonesomerobot: And to top it off, I think Tim believes himself to be a wolf.
Cacti
@Valdivia:
They just can’t help themselves.
But remember, the Tea Party is not a white resentment movement so stop saying that!!!
catclub
@cleek: After Obama released his long form BC I heard a reporter say that she had touched the raised seal.
This happened the week after Easter.
I was reminded of the story of Doubting Thomas which is read in church the next sunday.
‘Unless I see and touch the wounds, I will not believe.’
Changes to:
‘… blessed are those who believe and yet have not seen.’
john b
hm. i guess my adviser was just a nice guy, because if i was the primary contributor to the paper, i got first author.
lonesomerobot
@piratedan: death by joystick doesn’t give us access to the stuff we wanted – more intelligence.
david mizner
@piratedan:
To be sure that a) OBL was in there b) that he was killed.
General Stuck
@Georgia Pig:
There is no good reason not to think that the Seals were on nothing less than a suicide mission going into that compound after OBL. That the entire property wasn’t rigged with explosives in the event of such a US raid. Or at least OBL, or others with personal suicide vests to take out as many of his attackers as possible. These folks luvs their explosives.
Trigger happy? who wouldn’t be?
Valdivia
@Cacti:
but but they’re just for rule of law and freedom and civil libertarians!
kdaug
@maya:
No, no, Walgreen’s sells things that cure headaches.
bkny
the white house press corpse isn’t any better… this from yesterday’s white house press briefing. jay carney also has a poker face not to have collapsed in laughter at this question. i do wish the transcripts identified the reporters:
Q Bin Laden — Sunday when the raid happened, was there any opportunity for U.S. officials to question him before he was shot?
Thoughtcrime
@Cacti:
And Bush has a true “Mission Accomplished” moment himself, as he finally smoked out and killed his #1 terrorist:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4b3afc5c2f/president-bush-reacts-to-osama-bin-laden-s-death-with-will-ferrell?rel=player
celticdragonchick
@General Stuck:
This.
soonergrunt
It was ever thus.
Cacti
@JCT:
Now, my history’s a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure the Treaty of Westphalia didn’t include a provision for state-less, self appointed, holy warriors.
catclub
@Sad Iron: What are the odds McCain turns half of Pakistan into a glass-topped nuclear blast site?
Mike in NC
So sorry, but Dubya doesn’t do personal appearances now unless there’s a paycheck involved.
This “appeal to national unity” bullshit coming from GOP hacks like Halperin and Malkin is merely the latest wingnut talking point, to be forgotten in the next news cycle.
Chad N Freude
@Tim, Interrupted: Tim comma Interrupted to John Cole:
I love the sound of psychoanalysis by Internet in the morning. Is it covered by Medicare? Medicaid? Obamacare? Private insurance? But I digress.
You state that
This is generally a function of the administration in office. How true is it for the Obama administration? Is the history of the Bush administration reason to assume the worst of the Obama administration without evidence? Has the Obama admin lied and stonewalled about anything? How do you know?
1. Heated immediate on-the-spot reports of sensational events are often modified or “walked back” as circumstances cool and more evidence becomes available.
2. Government representations to the press have been known to stonewall, deny facts, and stick to outright lies. By all appearances, that wasn’t the case here.
3. It is possible to maintain some degree of skepticism and simultaneously acknowledge that the official story could be true without having one’s head explode in a mushroom cloud of cognitive dissonance.
4. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, it’s reasonable not to scream “Lies! Cover-up!”, even while assuming that more details may emerge that change some details of the official story.
I hope this satisfactorily addresses your questions. Have a nice paranoid day.
chopper
@Tim, Interrupted:
where’s the beef, cole? i’ve fallen and i can’t get up!
JCT
@General Stuck: This, in spades. How could they possible not assume that the place wasn’t wired.
And right, I am sure that as Osama heard the helicopters come in and then gunfire, he decided to sit back in his lounge chair. Why would the SEALs possibly assume that he might be armed or holding a triggering device that would blow the whole compound to Kingdom Come once they burst in the room.
Cliff in NH
@OzoneR:
Ok Moron, where o where is Osama – the self confessed mass murderer a politician at?
What country is Osama bin laden the president of?
RP
Walter Dellinger on the legality of the mission.
Georgia Pig
@General Stuck: Exactly, and a vast majority of the public would likely think the same, especially after thinking about it for a while. This is just another example of the disconnection from reality of a lot of folks in the media and politics, including a lot of right wing and some left wing bloggers. Just like proposing turning Medicare into a groupon is tone deaf to folks who are, say, 45 to 55, who’ve been paying into the system for something like 20-30 years and don’t have a a 5 mil stock portfolio.
Corner Stone
@Valdivia: Both you and Cole got trolled by Chyron HR’s only schtick. S/he rewords anything he doesn’t like into a racial context and uses the block quote to frame it.
Tim, Interrupted
@Valdivia:
If you are referring to me, I did not use the term “Obongo.” It was misattributed to me by another commenter’s sloppy/intentional(?) application of the block quote option. Maybe you should read more closely, or better yet, maybe you should be a little more objectively skeptical. Just a thought.
Kiwanda
Ah yes, I remember that great day of national unity, when Bush and Gore stood together at Ground Zero, and later, when they visited the troops as “Team America”.
And even though the Soviet Union fell on Reagan’s watch, Republicans always point out that, well, that’s pretty much a coincidence, and any credit to America should go to the decades-long vigil of containment, by Democratic and Republican presidents alike.
Why can’t Democrats have some of the grace and magnanimity that Republicans unfailingly demonstrate?
Valdivia
For those still insisting this was like a SWAT raid. just read this in the New Yorker. See if the light finally dawns.
gex
Listen, the only time the right understands that shit happens in the heat of the moment that can’t be foreseen is when soldiers go apeshit raping the women of a village or we start torturing our prisoners. Every other time, especially when the President is black, operations like this are precise, knowable, and can be completely violence free.
handsmile
Halperin’s article is nothing more than today’s iteration of the fundamental principle of Village media analysis of any event: It’s Always Good for the Republicans.
For myself, I am suspending judgment on this matter until President McCain delivers his verdict on Sunday morning.
To Tim, Interrupted; I do appreciate your hectoring insistence that we regard with skepticism all government-issued pronouncements. Yet such adherence to a kind of media Empiricism seems ultimately quixotic. What would constitute the “evidence” (from your #28 post above), irrefutable and inoculated from doubt, that would enable you to form a conclusion?
lonesomerobot
@Chad N Freude: Don’t you understand that “healthy skepticism” and “independent confirmation” are merely the gateway rationales for a super fun ride down conspiracy lane? Don’t harsh dude’s buzz, man!
WereBear
I am desperately trying to block that image, thanks a bunch.
Criminy, we can get all Freshman Philosophy on it; this was a freakin’ secret mission. As it should be; freakin’ lives are at stake. Maybe they should have carried pictures of a cute puppy so OBL would have surrendered immediately!
What part of “terrorist who said he wouldn’t be taken alive” do you people not get? What, we were supposed to tempt Hitler out of the bunker with a cream bun?
Tim, Interrupted
@Chad N Freude:
READ! then…COMPREHEND!
I have repeatedly stated that the government narrative might be true…might not.
I have never said the ever changing story put out by the government is LIES or a COVER UP.
In your haste to argue against a case I am not making, you are making shit up. Why?
Reading…comprehension…these are your friends.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@david mizner: I remember having truly independent thought when I was a teenager. Then I kept getting in trouble because some of my independent thoughts were wrong. Then I finally realized the error of my ways and grew up.
Don’t confuse independent thought with just doing the opposite of what the person you don’t like is doing.
Yutsano
@Tim, Interrupted: Let’s start here: what do YOU think happened and where is your evidence to back your version of events?
FlipYrWhig
@david mizner:
You don’t have the capacity for independent thought. Your knee just jerks in a different direction. You _think_ it’s independent thought because you’ve auto-eroticized your own preening and predictable self-indulgence and self-flattery. That applies to Greenwald, Aravosis, Hamsher, and any number of others as well.
piratedan
I know all that guys, just trying to get lil’ Davy to understand that this wasn’t a “kill” mission, yet for some reason, despite measured arguments and the evidence regarding the outcome of the mission, he doesn’t believe. So I’ll let him keep looking for his uniciorn.
Paul in KY
@piratedan: Sounds plausible to me.
Chad N Freude
@Tim, Interrupted: Sorry, I thought you were the guy who asked
I guess I didn’t comprehend those questions.
lonesomerobot
I think it’s funny that people actually think there will be some full, public briefing of the operation. Like we’re gonna get to see the video or something. These were Navy SEALS. We don’t want to compromise their identities. They were probably using technology we wouldn’t want other intelligence services to try and identify. That, and any other operational information is and will remain secret. Get over it.
OBL is dead. Our guys risked their lives to get him. I don’t care if he was armed, not armed, wearing lingerie, whatever. We have the entire cabinet, and certain members of the armed forces verifying it. Many of the members of intelligence and armed services committees in Congress have already been briefed. If that’s not enough for you, go and have a friendly debate about it on Powerline.
jurassicpork
Still, you have to put partisanship aside and ask yourself why we were getting a constantly Protean account of what happened when the president and several other people watched what was happening on live CCTV. The assassination, and it was an assassination, plain and simple, looks about as legit as a corrupt cop shooting an inconveniently and inconsiderately unarmed suspect then dropping a throwdown on the crime scene. Personally, I have a problem with a special forces unit (which, like JSOC in general, is the legal exception to posse comitatus) killing people then lying about it every day. I mean, come on. We’d be questioning the legality of this mini Grenada if Bush was still “President”. Why are we rallying around Obama when this whole thing has hair and warts all over it?
And does it really surprise anyone that Bush is now saying, “Hey, what about me?”
Chad N Freude
@Yutsano: He thinks
What more are you asking for?
Tim, Interrupted
@handsmile:
Well…the alleged death pics, which would immediately be examined by photo experts, would go a long way toward that. I would read as much as I could get hold of and make a determination as to which way I would lean on their veracity. I tend to think the administration would NOT release fake pics anyway; people highly overestimate the power of Photoshop to escape detection.
But your question also overstates my need to form a final conclusion in this type of case. The closest I would ever come in the case of governmnet assertions of truth is to say that I lean in the direction of aye or nay. There is great power in the ability to say “I do not KNOW, and I will never KNOW because it is not possible to do so in this case.” I’m ok with that. I just wish a lot more people felt the same way and would quit accepting as fact whatever their team leaders put in front of them.
GregB
Suddenly these rafuckers are concerned about national unity?
LOLz! Fuck ’em. Mock them. Point and laugh.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
In the Republican wet dream about capturing bin Laden, all the SEALS blast their way into the compound while dressed in face paint and sleeveless fatigues and after a sustained firefight break into bin Laden’s bedroom and scream “Wolverines!!!” before they all empty their clips into him. Twice.
Omnes Omnibus
If people are concerned about whether or not Osama was actually killed during the mission, the claim is easily falsifiable. If he is alive, we can expect that he would put out a video with indisputable evidence in the near future in order to humiliate the US. The Obama administration is smart enough to know this. As a result, I think it is stunningly unlikely that they would claim that they got Osama if it were not true.
If people are concern about a SEAL team not arresting Osama, they should consider that Osama considered himself to be at war with the US. He was the head of a terrorist group that has conduct numerous attacks on the United States and other countries. I would expect that the orders to the SEAL team told them to capture him if he made it clear that he was surrendering. In such a case, the onus would be on the person surrendering to make clear his intention. It was a military operation, not a police raid. In my view, capturing Osama would not have been worth the life of one American or, if the Pakistanis were also involved, Pakistani life. YMMV.
chopper
@lonesomerobot:
not just seals, team six, which is full-on black ops. tier 1.
might as well be asking for video of a top-secret CIA SAD operation or some shit.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: What is ‘Optical Petrology’?
Being able to spot oil from surface visual clues? Like the oil coming out of the ground when Jed Clampett shot at a bear or whatever?
aimai
@burnspbesq:
That’s not exactly the rebuttal that Tim etc… need. Here’s the thing, Tim, if this were all a lie there’s simply nothing stopping Obama et al from postitioning the fake “kill” at a more convenient political moment. Or to stop them from making more political hay out of it than they have–the guy is holding a fricken’ moment of silence at ground zero. Bush would have held a ticker tape parade. Since a fake kill would have been incredibly easy to fake, to provide pictures, to orchestrate at a different time occam’s razor dictates that this kill had to have been real.
Once you abandon the stupid notion that this was fake everything else follows perfectly logically. Even the absurd public discussion of whether the pictures should be released or not.
aimai
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: I should have added that “maybe true, maybe not” relieves him of the burden of postulating an alternative scenario.
Paul in KY
@piratedan: I don’t think Pres. Obama was stupid or callous enough to drop a missile in that neighborhood. Sounds like it was a Pakistani version of the Hamptons (houses not as nice, but lots of rich & important Pakistanis living there).
cleek
@Tim, Interrupted:
what’s more plausible:
1. they killed bin laden.
2. for some unknown reason, the entire cabinet, and a military chain of command all the way from the President down to the guys who carried out the mission have all agreed to lie about killing OBL. and not one of them has resigned or spilled what they know out of a sense of duty to the US.
Occam is offering you his razor. use it.
Joey Maloney
@jurassicpork:
Right, because eyewitness observation, even of fast-moving, highly-charged events, is always accurate.
Chad N Freude
@Tim, Interrupted: I didn’t realize that this thread was about questions of epistemology. One can never KNOW anything with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. We can’t even know for certain that we have a real physical existence. We can, however believe that we can choose to believe something and act on it (in the world we believe we inhabit) like vote, for example. It’s not clear to me what you gain from your intellectual-philosophical stance without stating what sort of action it impels you to. (I’m a pragmatist.) Your objective seems to be to assert your intellectual-philosophical superiority to people who choose to believe a particular story about an event and predicate their actions on it (like voting, writing letters to the editor, commenting on a blog, etc.).
lonesomerobot
@Tim, Interrupted: so, what team are YOU on? Or are you like Rambo, or something?
Tim, Interrupted
@Chad N Freude:
You are correct. You do NOT comprehend those questions. You keep answering other questions you hear in your head. I have no idea why you do this.
tomvox1
The Bushies are already doing their damndest to enshrine this meme as a “fact”–NY Daily News Thomas deFrank on why W declined the invite to Ground Zero (via Benen):
Yutsano
@Chad N Freude: So the healthy skepticism is based on…
I work for the government. I question what it does early and often. I also have both evidence and reason to do so. Don’t get me started on some of the unnecessary complexities of the tax code. I don’t just automatically mistrust the governemt on the basis of ZOMG ITZ TEH EBIL GUBMINT AND MUST FITE TEH POWER NAOW ! 11ONE ! ! That’s just ridiculous paranoia.
(Edit: FYWP.)
Paul in KY
@jurassicpork: Read Gen. Stuck’s comments up above. I think he captures the mindsets of the commandos as they assaulted the hideout.
Cain
Obongo – the pet name for Obama by racist assholes.
lonesomerobot
@Joey Maloney: and I believe I heard the press secretary actually denied yesterday that the President or other members of his cabinet were watching the operation in progress.
Surly Duff
@Tim, Interrupted:
That is an interesting stance. However, even if there is power in saying “I don’t know”, telling people they are sheep because someone else determines that the information presented is sufficient evidence in their minds is an odd way to demonstrate the power you have of not knowing.
I don’t know, therefore you are obviously stupid for making up your mind is not an adequate argument.
Tim, Interrupted
@Cain:
Hey, fuck you, brainless motherfucker. I have NEVER used that or any other racist term to refer to Obama.
Some commenter above included that phrase of his own in a block quote along with a sentence I actually DID write. You, being too stupid, lazy, and incurious to read my original comment to see if the block quote was an accurate representation, assumed that I used the alleged term “Obongo,” which I fucking did not. You did this because to do so serves your purpose, such as it is.
Fuck off, half wit.
prankster
@cleek:
Seriously?
made it into the top 10? That’s fantabulous!
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim, Interrupted: Are you sure that your “skepticism” here is not just a result of your unthinking hatred for the military and anyone whoever was a part of it? Because I don’t see any evidence that it isn’t.
lonesomerobot
@Tim, Interrupted: I, for one, am maintaining a healthy skepticism as to whether you did use the term “Obongo” or not. Until I have independent verification that it wasn’t you that said it, I’m going to have to at least presume that you might have.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the sheep, after all.
Joey Maloney
@Tim, Interrupted: I don’t believe Cain said “…by racist assholes SUCH AS TIM, INTERRUPTED.”
Did the fu-bird just shit on your head?
Chad N Freude
@Tim, Interrupted: Help me out here. Would you reword them in a way that might help my comprehension?
Thanks.
Tim, Interrupted
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, that’s it. Idiot.
Ghanima Atreides
well…the problem is that the official story needs to be packaged for a lot of different audiences, and social media messes with the official versions.
The raid was live twittered by a neighbor of OBL’s and it defies reason that the Paks didn’t know what was happening, the Danger Room disputes the “only two helos” official story, and now Pakistanis are demanding proof that OBL is really dead and questioning why there is a blowed up chopper in a swank neighborhood just north of Islamabad. Pretty soon the American conspiracy theorists will start saying Obama wont release the death pics because he has OBL stashed in a black site and is waterboarding him just like Bush.
The admin is going to walk back a lot until it evolves a story that everyone buys.
PS
@cleek: Bingo! Shave and a haircut, two bits.
Chad N Freude
@Yutsano: Sorry if the snarkiness of my question wasn’t screamingly clear.
MBL
@Tim, Interrupted:
And when our objective skepticism leads us to believe that the conspiracy theories being advanced are bone-shatteringly stupid, what do we do then?
Because they are. They’re really impressively incredibly stupid. Changing details of a military action within 48 hours of the action taking place isn’t “lying.” The way you can tell is that both stories came from the administration and that they labeled the second one as a correction to the first. That’s not how lying works.
The idea that we’d just been holding on to bin Laden so that we could whip him out whenever he felt like it is dumb as hell because 11:30 PM on a fucking Sunday night months from any relevant elections is a really stupid time to drop a major story. If this had happened a month before the election, I’d be wondering too. May of 2011? Not so much.
The idea that he’s not dead is even stupider, because all he has to do is release another tape. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see this ANYWAY; there’s plenty of reason to fake a tape.
He had plenty of chances to surrender. You may know them as every single goddamned second between September 11, 2001 and now. Common goddamn sense tells me that Osama bin Laden probably didn’t lie down and put his hands over his head when the SEALs came into the room. Frankly I’d be less likely to believe the official story if he HAD surrendered.
Capturing Osama bin Laden alive as opposed to killing him isn’t worth the life of an American soldier. Period.
No photos of the body? Don’t care. It would give the al-Qaeda rump that’s left something to rally about and the “skeptical thinkers” among us would just call them fake anyway.
Burial at sea? I told my wife that’s what they would have done within five minutes of finding out OBL was dead. Because it’s the only option that makes any damn sense. We’re not creating a pilgrimage site and he has to be buried within 24 hours according to Islamic law. Sea burials used to happen all the time on the Hajj.
That skeptical enough for you?
tl;dr: Stop being a dumbass.
Tim, Interrupted
@lonesomerobot:
You think you’re being cute, but you’re just being an idiot. Only at BJ, and Red State would healthy skepticism be derided as an invalid philosophy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim, Interrupted: Cool, you admitted it.
handsmile
@Tim, Interrupted:
Thank you for the lucid and straightforward response to my question. I would subscribe more or less to each statement you make there.
I realize this is hopelessly milquetoast, but I do wish the vituperation and ad hominem slagging on these threads could be dialed back. But then again who doesn’t wish for ponies?
Chad N Freude
Is there such a thing as an unhealthy skepticism? What would Michael Shermer say?
Tim, Interrupted
@MBL:
wow. you are just as dumb and incurious as they come.
I have never encouraged anyone to believe any alternate “conspiracy theory.” I have encouraged people to ask questions about the conspiracy theory put out by the WH.
Obviously, you are uncomfortable with questions that make you doubt your team’s pre conceived beliefs. In this way you are the mirror image of the Obama haters. Carry on.
Danny
Republicans are experts at pumping out this meta narrative, when they know they got nothing on the merits. Manners, hurt feelings, taste, projecting the right stuff, whathaveyou.
Bush and his team made torture official policy for the first time in the history of the republic. They bullshitted americans into Iraq to prevent “a mushroom cloud” and when we got there, there were no wmds, but crucial resources had already been pulled away from Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda and dedicated to Iraq for years to come. They create the structural deficits that we’re still suffering from today (Bush tax cuts, medicare part D, the wars). Their economic policy finaly led to disaster in 2008 and we’re still suffering the consequences.
The administration of George W Bush very nearly broke the greatest country on earth. The administration of Barack Obama has had to spend most of it’s time cleaning up, and they still are.
And for all George W Bush did, for 7 long years he couldnt manage to deliver the one most important thing the american people wanted him to deliver. He couldnt bring the man who ordered the attack that killed over 3000 americans to justice.
Now the Obama admin has finished the job that Bush couldnt, delivering closure and peace of mind to everyone who lost a loved one or a friend on that day.
George W Bush and his old partners in crime should get down on their fucking knees and kiss Obamas feet in gratitude and shame if they had any decency whatsoever.
Instead his feelings are hurt over not getting more credit after being out of office for two and a half years. And the old cronies are working the media curcuits overtime pitching the virtues of torturing our enemies to the american people.
Chad N Freude
@Omnes Omnibus: Is the comma in Tim’s nom d’ecran one of yours or does he have his own stash?
Ghanima Atreides
And classical covert ops are simply going to become more and more difficult to pull off in the age of social media and wikileaks.
I think….like Julian Assange predicts, the modern security state is doomed.
Emma
Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.
Will Rogers
And we’re proving it.
Tim, Interrupted
@Ghanima Atreides:
YAY
Hal
Christ, some of you are so boring. All this angst, the Nietzsche quotes, the MLK quotes, the waxing poetic about taking joy in the death of another human being, boo hoo hoo, no matter how bad he might be.
And I just love the fact that the only thing standing between you and absolute conviction of Osama’s death is…a photo. A fucking photograph. And then you will be convinced, because photos are just so damned hard to fake.
geg6
@Tim, Interrupted:
Heh. Only you, on the occasion of being pwned, would equate BJ and Red State.
You are fucking hilarious. Hilariously stupid, but still hilarious.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim, Interrupted: Healthy skepticism is something other than the automatic assumption that anything ever said is false absent irrefutable evidence to the contrary. You are correct that there is a possibility that the Osama killing is false. It is simply much less likely than the other possibility. As I, and many others, have noted above, Osama could disprove his death with one video. Do you think that Obama would risk the humiliation that would ensue for the ephemeral boost that the claim provides? I don’t. And as a result, I accept the claim that Osama has been killed. If sufficient contrary evidence appears, I will change my mind.
celticdragonchick
@Paul in KY:
It is the study of metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous rocks and their constituent minerals, provenance or facies of origin. The optical part comes from studying thin slide specimens in a cross polarized microscope. Cool stuff, but the microscope starts giving me nasty headaches after about an hour and a half.
The first semester is learning how to use the microscopes, some basic physics on how light works and what happens in the various lenses we use, and mineral classification and chemical structures (feldspars are tectosilicates, which means they use silicon dioxide in a three dimensional structural lattice. Pyroxenes are inosilicates, where the silicon dioxide tetrahedra never even touch one another but are separated by heavy metal cations).
The second semester goes to more detailed rock analysis…which is what I just finished.
bcinaz
It could have been worse, President Obama could have stood up there and pointed out how his predecessor ignored all the intelligence warnings, including the big one from Clinton. Shrub was told before he even took office that al Qaeda and ObL were the biggest threats to US interests here and everywhere else.
If the shoe were on the other foot you can bet a Republican would not hesitate to pull the trigger on something like that. It’s pretty much the difference between the man who is President of the United States and the man who is President of the people who agree with him.
MBL
@Tim,Interrupted:
The awesome thing about this response is that there’s not a single syllable that demonstrates that you read anything I wrote.
Good job!
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
You can’t fight in here, this is the war room! Angry, crazy concern troll can sure dish out the angry, crazy insults (I’ve lost count). Must become enervating, eventually, leading to critical loss of precious bodily fluids.
MikeJ
@celticdragonchick:
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is really the best for that.
John Cole
@Tim, Interrupted: My bad, I thought it was you.
To whomever it may concern, anyone using the term Obongo gets an instant ban with no questions asked.
Jay in Oregon
@Malron aka eclecticbrotha:
There’s already been at least one no-name rightwing talk show host going on about how he wished he coulda been there to pull the trigger on OBL.
It’s a favorite wingnut/gun nut fantasy, being able to shoot someone and have it be justified. S’funny how that “Culture of Life” seems to obsess so much about killing people.
celticdragonchick
@MikeJ:
Yeech…
I think I’ll pass.
taylormattd
@cleek: but cleek, he lied about the public opshun!!!!
Tim, Interrupted
@John Cole:
Commenter Chryon HR at #81.
And thank you, John, for clearing that up.
Danny
Sure, but the many revisions from the admin can best be explained by them actually trying to be accurate (out of the goodness of their hearts or some other motivation).
Them changing the story only brings them grief and suspicion. What motive would they have in going from a Bin Laden actively involved in the firefight and using a woman as shield to him being unarmed and the woman throwing herself in front of him?
The “optics” of the former are trivially superior to those of the latter, and changing the story always bring suspicion.
So maybe what we’re seeing is actually an administration that believes in trying to be accurate and forthcoming about this?
Sure, I could easily make up a scenario where they’re lying and make it rational, e.g:
They first floated the human shield firefight story because Brennan thought that would make Bin Laden look bad in the eyes of extreme islamists but after consulting with islamist experts they concluded that Bin Laden would look weak if he was unarmed and in his pyjamas and the woman attacked the SEAL and he didnt. It’s at least somewhat plausible.
But on the other hand the global PR of killing an unarmed man is likely to be pretty bad, and above all we got no special reason to suspect this is actually the truth.
Occam’s razor favors the admin’s position: they revised the account as the people on the scene were debriefed and analysts verified the chain of events.
I think it’s sufficient to say “I wasn’t there so I can never be 100% sure” (if one feels the urge) and move on, without speculating about various conspiracies theories.
Danny
My preceding post a reply @Tim, Interrupted; #28
JCT
@Jay in Oregon:
But rarely follow that up by actually enlisting.
Ken
@david mizner: I don’t remember who the ‘interviewee’ was as I watched either CNN or MSNBC on Monday; but, the statement was made that this was a “kill mission”. Frankly, in this case, I don’t really care whether we sent in a hit squad.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: Thank you for the explanation. Sounds very interesting. I hope you kick ass in that course & get the degree you desire :-)
freelancer
@General Stuck:
No kidding. It’s gotten so thick that I almost lost my damned mind yesterday.
celticdragonchick
@Paul in KY:
Thanks :)
I have finished all of my geology requirements now, and I will graduate this December.
Time for grad school.
gwangung
Then you epistemological objections have no force and are quite stupid to raise.
That’s first year graduate student fodder.
There’s a purpose in raising such questions, but it doesn’t seem to me that you know much about that purpose.
dww44
@Cacti: it matters to me, and while I have little tolerance for the blogging at FDL these days (their anti-Obama posts are more annoying than Greenwald’s), I believe that selling the mission early on (Obama, Brennan) as one where taking OBL prisoner first before shooting him made the inevitable redraw as a “kill only mission” particularly distasteful. I happen to find the meme that we would have difficulty bringing a live OBJ to justice insufficient justification to make the mission a kill only one.
Then there was the Panetta interview with Brian Williams that made me sadly conclude that this administration also probably engaged in those “enhanced interrogation techniques” . IMO, Panetta was very careful NOT to assign the possible use of them only to the previous administration.
Then there was the upfront selling of the OBL compound as some million dollar luxury resort when it was obviously no such thing.
The only positive feelings I have at this point are that revenge was meted out to OBL and that that payback was administered by a Democratic President, and specifically that it was Obama, as I have gone thoroughly tired of the meme on the right that Obama is a “weak” President. Truly, they all really do believe that. It’s also good that the puncturing of this meme was done via a surgicial incision mission and not one with lots of collateral damage. That was a gutsy call by this President and the right cannot take that away.
lonesomerobot
@Tim, Interrupted: Quite the contrary! I’m not deriding healthy skepticism, I’m deriding you.
lonesomerobot
@dww44: It’s not just the difficulty bringing him to justice, it’s the unheralded freak show that would ensue in the interim. It’s pretty easy to see why they wanted him off their hands as quickly as possible.
Danny
I haven’t seen this reported anywhere. From what I read anywhere there is doubt that any information whatsoever leading to the operation against Bin Laden was collected using torture, and if it was, it was back in 2003 from a witness that was cooperative anyway.
Starting unsubstantiated rumours to the detriment of the Obama admin is exactly the FDL / Greenwald M.O.; just saying.
BC
@malraux: They destroyed said helicopter, according to reports I saw, so it isn’t in “anyone’s hands.”
soonergrunt
@david mizner: Since we’re not seeing any actual thought, independent or otherwise from you but a whole truckload of truther bullshit, can you please GTFO and leave us in our poor benighted ignorance?
Groucho48
@Tim, Interrupted:
==================================
But, you may have changed your post. We have no objective proof you didn’t and it is common knowledge that folks lie on blogs all the time, therefore, it is quite possible you are lying about this. All we are saying is that it is impossible to tell if you are a racist or not and only sheep would definitely claim you aren’t based on the scanty and quite possibly manipulated evidence provided.
Tim, Interrupted
@Groucho48:
As previously stated: Fuck off, half wit.
Andrew
As previously stated: Fuck off, half wit.
Hey, why are you deriding healthy skepticism? We only have your word that you aren’t a racist. Absent iron-clad proof to the contrary, we’re just raising reasonable questions. No one is advancing an alternate theory that you’re a racist; we’re just asking naturally-occurring questions about the official theory.
On the other hand, I can totally understand why you’re getting upset about being caught JAQing off in public.
Groucho48
To my mind, it would be wrong not to speculate. What evidence we have is transitory and muddled. Some folks say he used the Obongo word, some say he didn’t. As proof of his claim, we only have an easily altered blog post, and everyone knows blogs are dens of thieves and liars. I’m afraid we’ll have to put him into the racist category unless he can come up with substantial proof he isn’t. After all, if that is the standard required of Navy Seals, the chain of command and the President of the United States, it should be the standard for him.
Jethro Troll
It could be, of course, that Tim (comma) is actually a Freedomworks employee, trolling in order to lower Obama’s standing among liberals. After all, blog commentators have lied before, and there’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, is there?
soonergrunt
@Groucho48:
@Jethro Troll:
You guys are forgetting Occam’s Razor, as it relates to blogs:
“the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one,” or in this case, “why ascribe to Tim all sorts of motives and capabilities when he’s really just a pathetic asshole?”
Groucho48
@soonergrunt:
Well, you’re a real party pooper.
dww44
@Danny: I know it’s late and you probably won’t read this response, but,
I think I prefaced my Panetta remarks with “IMO” My recollection of the interview is that Panetta was careful not to ascribe the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to the previous or current administrations. I was hoping to hear a clearcut denial that EIT were not used by the current administration. Brian Williams was clearly soliciting more specific responses from Panetta, which he really didn’t get. Panetta would only say that some of the information came from detainees who had been subjected to those EIT. That’s all he said. I certainly believe that Panetta left the door open for watchers and listeners to drawn their own conclusions.
In this post I proffered my own opinion, which I believe is allowed on these comment pages. If I were aiming to start a rumor, I believe I would pursue a far more visible avenue. Just saying…..