Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

So many bastards, so little time.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

People are complicated. Love is not.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

T R E 4 5 O N

Trump should be leading, not lying.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

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Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

You are here: Home / Latest Wingnut Claim in Forbes Magazine: Killing Osama bin Laden was actually an Obama foreign policy failure.

Latest Wingnut Claim in Forbes Magazine: Killing Osama bin Laden was actually an Obama foreign policy failure.

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According to Richard Miniter of Forbes, so anxious was President Obama to take credit for Osama bin Laden’s death (which, in and of itself is abjectly ridiculous since President Obama’s speech late that Sunday night in April 2011 gave full credit to SEAL Team 6) that he blundered by not keeping the op a secret, capturing bin Laden alive, and using the intel gained from the operation to — “within a few weeks” — take out all of Al Qaeda:

Obama ran to the cameras and raced to tell the world that bin Laden was dead– just hours after his body bobbed beneath the waves in the wake of the USS Carl Vinson. He was anxious for the credit, not realizing that the credit would keep. He forgot about the military advantage of surprise.

Seriously.

[read full post at ABLC]

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I read down the entire rant, and it utterly ignores the fact that the ‘treasure trove’ of information captured was made perishable by the fact that Osama, um, perished, which his organization would know whether Obama informed the world or not.

    The cat was, um, out of the bag even if Obama waited two weeks to inform us that that the cat had, indeed, left the bag.

    Unless this dumbass is suggesting that somehow we’d get control of Osama’s safe house (located in hostile, heavily populated territory) and have a Osama stand in (a la Dave) play Osama for the weeks needed to sort through that information in order to maintain the fiction for Osama’s own organization that he was still alive.

    Ooooooohhhhhh Kay!

    Sure, that sounds doable!

  8. 8.

    J.D. Rhoades

    This is an extension of one of those ‘heads we win, tails you lose’ tactics they’ve been using for a while now in regards to the War on Terror. We had Cheney bitching that Obama “not acting like we’re at war,” while at the same time we had some other Bushista on Fox bitching that we were killing too many terrorists.

  10. 10.

    maya

    I know I was surprised when Dubbya flew onto the USS Mission Accomplished to announce that hostilities were over in Iraq and we could start planning for Baghdad vacations again.

    He, himself, already had 6 pairs of sox packed just for such an occasion.

  11. 11.

    Richard

    I’ll never forget all those phony terror alerts during Bush’s first term, all “coincidentally” occurring at politically advantageous times, including right after the 2004 Democratic convention. Then of course, bin Laden released that audiotape just before the election, which Bush later admitted probably pushed him over the top. “Mysteriously”, the terror alerts stopped right after that.

    These pieces of shit are simply upset that they can no longer use their partner in crime as a prop to generate fear.

  12. 12.

    Keith

    @Villago Delenda Est: Maybe the theory goes that Al Qaeda would have just assumed OBL went on vacay for a couple of weeks.
    Fal-azad: “Hasim, have you heard from Osama?”
    Hasim: “Not for a few days. Think something’s up?”
    Fal-azad: “Naaa, he probably just took the family on a getaway for a spell. Nothing to worry about”
    Hasim: “Cool.”

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    Look on the bright side, so to speak. It’s not *quite* as stupid a theory as the one advanced by Rush Limbaugh, in which members of al Qaeda colluded with Obama to sacrifice bin Laden as a way of strengthening the cause long-term.

  15. 15.

    Chris

    I’ve heard this theory. First person I read it from was, I believe, Tom Clancy, of all people. Hey, they really want their pound of torture flesh, they’re fucking desperate to deny Obama a foreign policy success they think is Bush’s birthright, and it fits with their whole “taking out Osama is actually eleven-dimensional chess for advancing the al-Qaeda agenda, yo!”

    that he blundered by not keeping the op a secret, capturing bin Laden alive, and using the intel gained from the operation to—“within a few weeks”—take out all of Al Qaeda:

    Bullshit. Al-Qaeda isn’t SPECTRE. It’s a franchise with branches in Iraq, Pakistan, North Africa, Europe, Chechnya, Somalia – you name it. Kill the group that revolves around Osama Bin Laden and that’ll be a good thing done, but it won’t do a thing to bring down all those other branches – plenty of those started out as completely independent groups which ended up swearing allegiance to Bin Laden’s cause. (Including Zarqawi, I believe).

    It’s like the KKK, or MS-13; there’s a shared ideology, there’s a shared MO, there’s contacts between the different branches and all that, but a lot of it is just the local branches doing their own thing. And there’s no central point that you can hit to take down the entire “organization.”

  16. 16.

    JPL

    @Richard: During one of those red alerts, my son was flying back from Brussels. His suitcase was filled with wrapped xmas presents, many of the alcohol nature and he didn’t have problems. That’s the first time my dislike developed into hatred. The alert system was to keep us in line and served no other purpose.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    Yeah, because as soon as he saw Jack Bauer, Osama would have spilled his guts. Which would totally have killed off AQ since he’d had tight day-to-day command over it since, like, forever.

    My daughter still believes dragons were once real, which I’d give more credence than what this hump “believes.”

  19. 19.

    Brother Maynard

    Maybe bin Laden is alive and currently being held somewhere. They announced his death so Al Quada wouldn’t know he was feeding us intel. We never saw a body or a grave

    /adjusts tinfoil

  20. 20.

    Chris

    @trollhattan:

    My daughter still believes dragons were once real

    Can I just take a break from the foreign policy and say that’s fantastic. Far better than believing in Santa Claus.

    Okay, carry on.

  21. 21.

    Ben Franklin

    If I didn’t know better I would have thought this was a pre-history of Will Durant’s…

    The Decline of Western Civilisation

  22. 22.

    MattF

    Well, you read Forbes, you get what you deserve. Steve Forbes was one of the original templates in the wingerhood, and they’ve gone downhill since.

  23. 23.

    EconWatcher

    Miniter is a moron who got fired by the Washington Times (which is kind of like getting kicked out of Guns N’ Roses for leading a reckless lifestyle). He wrote a whole book for regnery on how Clinton was criminally derelict for not getting Osama. But apparently getting Osame is just as bad (if you’re a Dem).

  24. 24.

    Davis X. Machina

    But aparrently getting Osama is just as bad (if you’re a Dem).

    No hint in that Miniter discussion of the real problem with the raid — no warrant, not even a defective warrant, from a Federal magistrate, no attempt, even a nugatory attempt, to Mirandize bin Laden.

  25. 25.

    Hal

    And in an alternate universe where Bush is President when Osama bites it, his head is being carved into Mount Rushmore.

    It just fucking kills these people that it was Obama who gave the order, and it drives them insane.

  26. 26.

    scav

    Minor Giggle: They’re now channeling, well, Publishers Clearing House, something along those lines. Because there still may be dollars left unvacuumed from the rubes. A dollar in every mailbox: the latest RNC fundraising pitch

    Priebus wrote in the letter that he was “risking a dollar bill to get your attention at this critical moment of the 2012 campaign.”
    __
    The RNC chairman said the party still needed to raise $7.3 million by Sept. 28 to fully fund its get-out-the-vote operations for presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates.

    Get-out-the-vote?! Get-out-of-here!!

  27. 27.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Chris:

    Bullshit. Al-Qaeda isn’t SPECTRE.

    Look, we’ve got a supreme court justice who actually refers to Jack Bauer in legal arguments.

    These people think the world operates on a script.

  28. 28.

    Richard

    There was a crashed helicopter in the compound. The firefight was heard by people in the neighborhood. How the fuck was that supposed to be kept a secret from the Pakistani military, who were just down the road? Once they knew, the information would have been quickly passed on to al Qaeda.

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Look, we’ve got a supreme court justice who actually refers to Jack Bauer in legal arguments.

    I must’ve been busy the day that happened.

    Assuming that wasn’t some kind of snark from you, which I’m hoping against hope that it was… fuck, that’s depressing. Although I’ve met plenty of conservatives who do, literally, point to 24 as conclusive proof that torture works.

  31. 31.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Hal:
    This. The rootin’ tootin’ six gun shootin’ cons fell on their faces. Remember their orgasmic reaction to Bush’s “Wanted dead or alive” speech? Fuck me.

  32. 32.

    Richard

    @Chris:

    Justice Scalia Hearts Jack Bauer

    Justice Scalia responded with a defense of Agent Bauer, arguing that law enforcement officials deserve latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia reportedly said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” He then posed a series of questions to his fellow judges: “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?”

  33. 33.

    danah gaz

    Okay, so Plan A didn’t work
    Plan B didn’t work…

    what iteration of wingnut OBL smear are we on yet?

    Is this plan Q?

    In any case, the fail train rolls on, unimpeded by obstructions of reason, common sense, or observable reality.

  35. 35.

    Richard

    Scalia also said…

    Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist’s plot would have ensured “in Los Angeles everyone is safe.” During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. “There’s a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed,” Judge Scalia said. “They had it on closed circuit television – and it was all staged. … They really didn’t kill the family.”

  36. 36.

    RSA

    I just can’t get over the title of the piece:

    President Obama’s Greatest Foreign Policy Failure: Killing bin Laden

    I wonder how that goes down in middle America. Can you imagine Miniter talking about what he writes? “Yeah, my last piece was on how killing bin Laden turned into a disaster for Obama.”

  37. 37.

    jp7505a

    NO, No, this guy has it all wrong. Al Quada leadership gave up Osama so that Obama could claim credit, win re-election and turn the US into a caliphate. So sayth El Rushbo, and surely he would never mislead his ditto heads. You really have to fear for the republic when the top members of the ALTERNO-WORLD can’t even get their conspiracy theories to align.

  38. 38.

    Chris

    @Richard:

    Similarly, people should also probably be aware that traffic accidents and combat by firearm are both perfectly safe and non-deadly. There’s, like, a hundred episodes of the A-Team that’ll back me up on this one.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Richard:

    This one is easy. You post Kevin Bacon, in an ROTC uniform, right outside, and he quietly informs everyone that everything is under control, that all is well, nothing to see here, move along.

    OK, so you need Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, or Ewan McGregor for the “move along” part, but you get the general idea.

  40. 40.

    Kane

    If Mitt Romney is going the defeat Obama, he will have to challenge the president on his foreign-policy record. A good place to start is Obama’s supposed strong suit—the bin Laden operation.

    Criticize President Obama for killing Bin Laden. That sounds like a winning strategy.

  41. 41.

    J

    Had Republicans been in office anytime between 11 Sept. 2001 and now they would have done it better. The nation made a great mistake in electing Gore, Kerry and Obama.

  43. 43.

    Citizen_X

    DUDE, I WOULD’VE TOTALLY KILLED BIN LADEN IN A COOLER WAY THAN THAT LOOSER OBAMA.

    Whatever, Miniter. Do another bong hit.

  44. 44.

    Paul

    One has to start wonder whose side folks are on, America or Al Queda.

    George W Bush disbanded the CIA unit designed to go after bin Laden. Where the hell was the criticism from the extreme right then?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?_r=1

    Furthermore, as soon as Obama was elected he, unlike Bush, made it a priority to hunt down bin Laden. And now, these low-lifers are criticizing him for not hunting him down the right way. Good grief!

  45. 45.

    SatanicPanic

    This is one of those times that we’re lucky people don’t watch the news or keep up on current events. To the average person Obama killed OBL is pretty much all they care to know.

  46. 46.

    Chris

    @Paul:

    George W Bush disbanded the CIA unit designed to go after bin Laden. Where the hell was the criticism from the extreme right then?

    We had many principled disagreements with George Bush during his time in office. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about them. You’re the guys who worship Obama like the messiah.
    /wingnut.

  47. 47.

    MikeJ

    @Richard:

    There was a crashed helicopter in the compound.

    In addition to being a bad president, Obama is a bad helicopter pilot. I’ll bet he intentionally crashed it.

    You know Obama already crashed five navy planes and set an aircraft carrier on fire.

  48. 48.

    Anya

    I read the whole asinine rant. What a tool this Miniter is. I was hoping against hope that he’ll explain to us how we were supposed to compel Pakistan not to reveal Bin Laden’s demise.

  49. 49.

    Kane

    Given how candidate Obama painted himself into a corner on the issues of rendition…A waterboarded bin Laden could have revealed all of the organization’s secrets—and enabled U.S. forces to end al Qaeda’s existence.

    The torture advocates have learned nothing.

  50. 50.

    The Dangerman

    @Richard:

    There was a crashed helicopter in the compound.

    A crashed helicopter than was blown up, causing real loud boom…

    …plus, a few dead bodies and a bunch of women tied up for the Pakistani’s to go in and resolve.

    I don’t think operational secrecy was breached by Obama.

  51. 51.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Anya:

    I was hoping against hope that he’ll explain to us how we were supposed to compel Pakistan not to reveal Bin Laden’s demise.

    That’s another reason why you need Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, or Ewan McGregor as part of the strike force.

  52. 52.

    Cacti

    But I thought Mitt Romney killed Osama bin Laden.

    “Seal Team 6” was the just the code name for Mitt and his five sons Tagg, Tiff, Taff, Turd, and Snoodle.

  55. 55.

    Suffern ACE

    What I guess they won’t say is that the failure is that now that he’s dead we can’t use his exists xe to club our way in the door around the world

  56. 56.

    trollhattan

    @RSA:
    Let’s try it on for size.
    * Michael Jordan’s greatest failure: scoring too many points.
    * Mother Theresa’s greatest failure: shabby lifestyle.
    * Penelope Cruz’s greatest failure: distracting beauty.
    * Apple’s greatest failure: insufficient iPad supply.
    * Stephen King’s greatest failure: writer’s block.

    I am so not landing that Forbes job.

  60. 60.

    Corner Stone

    I read that article and all of the comments. I swear to FSM that DougJ is posting at least half of the comments on this one.

    How long til we’re all told this was some form of satire or high level snark like that “bitches like being dominated” article we saw recently?

    For God’s fuckin’ sake, this was in Forbes.com ! WTeverlovin’F?!

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    It’s like Hillary said a few years ago: If Obama walked on water, Republicans would day, “He can’t swim!” Their overarching principle is, EVERYTHING OBAMA SAYS/DOES IS WRONG. Even when it’s the obvious thing to do.

  64. 64.

    Paul

    @Cacti:

    But I thought Mitt Romney killed Osama bin Laden.

    Well, on FoxNews they still claim that bush kept us safe during his 8 years in office. From that type of lie it is not a big stretch in their fantasy world to claim that Romney killed OBL.

  66. 66.

    Anya

    Does anyone think Netanyahu’s interview with Dancing Dave will help Mittenz?

    My gym buddy is going all chicken little over this interview. But I think the American people will not be swayed by a foreign leader. In fact, Netanyahu’s interference might actually backfire on him and his buddy.

  67. 67.

    lucslawyer

    @ chris…

    “You’re the guys who worship Obama like the messiah.”

    ROTFLMAO…how about another religious allusion?…..there are far more on the right who consider Obama to be the devil incarnate than those of us on the left who worship him as the messiah….

  68. 68.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Kane:

    I’m going to the well again.

    TARKIN: Princess Leia, before your execution I would like you to be my
    guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No
    star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.

    LEIA: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems
    will slip through your fingers.

    TARKIN: Not after we demonstrate the power of this station. In a way,
    you have determined the choice of the planet that’ll be destroyed
    first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the
    Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station’s destructive power…
    on your home planet of Alderaan.

    LEIA: No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons. You can’t
    possibly…

    TARKIN: You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name
    the system!

    Tarkin waves menacingly toward Leia.

    TARKIN: I grow tired of asking this. So it’ll be the last time. Where
    is the Rebel base?

    Leia overhears an intercom voice announcing the approach to
    Alderaan.

    LEIA: (softly) Dantooine.

    Leia lowers her head.

    LEIA: They’re on Dantooine.

    TARKIN: There. You see Lord Vader, she can be reasonable. (addressing
    Motti) Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.

    LEIA: What?

    TARKIN: You’re far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an
    effective demonstration. But don’t worry. We will deal with your Rebel
    friends soon enough.

    (Later)

    OFFICER CASS: Our scout ships have reached Dantooine. They found the
    remains of a Rebel base, but they estimate that it has been deserted
    for some time. They are now conducting an extensive search of the
    surrounding systems.

    TARKIN: She lied! She lied to us!

    VADER: I told you she would never consciously betray the Rebellion.

    TARKIN: Terminate her…immediately!

  71. 71.

    Cacti

    @Anya:

    My gym buddy is going all chicken little over this interview. But I think the American people will not be swayed by a foreign leader. In fact, Netanyahu’s interference might actually backfire on him and his buddy

    Americans have war fatigue. It’s going to take more than an interview with Bibi to change that dynamic.

  72. 72.

    Cacti

    And speaking of Messianic complexes, Obama’s not the one who believes he’s the subject of a White Horse Prophecy.

  74. 74.

    Publius39

    @Emma: You have to forgive GG; he seems to not understand the difference between the laws of war, and criminal domestic law. IF only he had the educational background to…oh, that’s right, he is a fucking lawyer, and a very disingenuous hack of a writer.

  75. 75.

    Linda Featheringill

    Two things.

    One, I’m not sure that Ben Laden would have allowed himself to be taken alive.

    And two, isn’t it nice that these guys are reminding the country that Obama got OBL? I think they should make a big deal out of it and publicize it and air TV commercials about it and . . .

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    Obama ran to the cameras and raced to tell the world that bin Laden was dead– just hours after his body bobbed beneath the waves in the wake of the USS Carl Vinson. He was anxious for the credit, not realizing that the credit would keep.

    My, my, my. Dubya could swoop down onto the deck of an aircraft carrier wearing military magic underpants and prematurely ejaculate Mission Accomplished, and the nation is supposed to swoon. Obama can actually get the job done, and this goober tries desperately to pull a Romney and lie in the face of an obvious truth.

    And this festering resentment over the false issue of credit echoes the wretched reaction to Jack Johnson’s defeat of the Great White Hope, noted as part of the background to the documentary “Unforgivable Blackness”

    Newspapers by and large reflected the thinking of their readers. There were few racially progressive voices among the press even during this time known as the Progressive Era. After Johnson beat Jeffries, the Los Angeles Times printed this virulent editorial titled “A Word to the Black Man”:
    __
    Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not be puffed up. Let not your ambition be inordinate or take a wrong direction. Remember you have done nothing at all. You are just the same member of society you were last week. You are on no higher plane, deserve no new consideration, and will get none. . . .

    For these despicable, petty little wingnuts, victory only counts if it is presented to you by a Real American White Man. The amazing thing is that Romney is totally dialed into this mindset. He promises that everything will be different even if he follows the same policies, because a white man will be in charge, and everyone will know his or her place, even those pesky Al Quedadians.

  79. 79.

    cckids

    @lucslawyer:

    there are far more on the right who consider Obama to be the devil incarnate than those of us on the left who worship him as the messiah….

    This. My daughter works at a movie theater; last night 2 old ladies coming out of the “Obama 2016” film cornered her & asked if she’d “accepted Jesus Christ into your heart”. As she stared, dumbfounded, one disdainfully said “I can see by your face you haven’t. You need to; Obama is taking this world straight to hell”. They left bitching about the Antichrist & other worries.

    The times you wish you had some cutting-edge snark ready to mind.

    Edit to add: She says she’s never seen anyone under 50 at that film; most are closer to 70.

  80. 80.

    dance around in your bones

    @Cacti:

    “Seal Team 6” was the just the code name for Mitt and his five sons Tagg, Tiff, Taff, Turd, and Snoodle.

    Biff, Bang, Boom, Bum, and Bummerest.

    I just fucking cringe when I have to watch clips of the Deciderer.

    Can’t even bring myself to read the Miniter piece of shit. Life’s too short.

  81. 81.

    Lyrebird

    Hey do any of you have Wikipedia skillz?

    He studied philosophy at Vassar College, graduating in 1990.[2] He was an editor of the Vassar Spectator, one of the school’s student periodicals.[1]

    Miniter’s site has true things in it, hooray, only one cited to his own web site (that’s [1] there), but there’s no mention of how the Spectator was a Buckley-funded character-assassinating journal provocateur. Which it was.

    Seems like he hasn’t changed his MO.

    Let see, how to restore my sanity here?

    “no protesten… VOTEN!!”

  83. 83.

    cckids

    @Chris: Good one! She was a little afraid to snap anything back; she’s 17, its her first job, she was brought up to not be a smart ass to adults. Mostly, though, they were understaffed for a Friday, & she was having to turn/clean 4 theaters in 15 minutes by herself. Her brain wasn’t exactly in snark mode.

  84. 84.

    AHH onna Droid

    @efgoldman: I thought slashfic was about peace and love.

    I mean except for the fics involving hate fucks, or preadolescent chanfics with rape, xutting and suicide, or those zines about the Star Trek Mirror Universe.

    On second thought, never mind. Tis a silly place.

  85. 85.

    Cap'n Magic

    @EconWatcher: Yet Bush II had the last clear chance to take out bin Laden and he failed. He can heap all the scorn he wants against Clinton, but he ignored it. The next time Hannity and their ilk bleat the Clinton lie I’ll just laugh my ass off at ’em, saying that they’re nothing but a bunch of well-paid tools who have no intelligence or morality whatsoever.

  86. 86.

    Chris

    @cckids:

    Well, snark is easier over the Interwebs. And of course you don’t want to get yourself fired by offending a customer. (They’re always right, you know).

  87. 87.

    weaselone

    It’s lucky that I really like this laptop. Is this what it takes to be a writer for Forbes, an IQ lower than a jar of Mayonnaise?

    1. It’s unlikely that Osama would have allowed himself to be taken alive.

    2. Osama’s capture involved a gunfight, an exploding helicopter and took place in a reasonably populated area not far from a Pakistani Military Academy. Word of his capture/death was inevitably going to find its way to Al Queda and sooner as opposed to later.

    3. It’s not as though Osama was tracking all members of Al Queda on his cell phone and had all the secret Al Queda lairs marked with pins on a wall map. Al Queda is a decentralized organization. The damage which can be done by out their leaders, obtaining their papers and interrogating them is limited.

  88. 88.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @weaselone:

    Al Queda is a decentralized organization. The damage which can be done by out their leaders, obtaining their papers and interrogating them is limited.

    Furthermore, it is so BY DESIGN. These people are not as stupid as Miniter here. They had an elaborate non-electronic, courier based communications system set up that avoided channels that were monitored by US COMINT assets.

    Twits like Miniter just can’t imagine that these Islamic monkeys can out think them. It’s like the imaginary Obama that they think of as Stepin Fetchit. There’s no way these Muslim barbarians can be that sophisticated, can be that elusive. They’re Muslims, after all. They’re not brilliant neocons like me!

    I’m reminded of the idiot garrison of Rome commander in Spartacus who ignored all the doctrinal “settle down for the night” precautions because he was only fighting slaves.

  89. 89.

    Chris

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Twits like Miniter just can’t imagine that these Islamic monkeys can out think them. It’s like the imaginary Obama that they think of as Stepin Fetchit. There’s no way these Muslim barbarians can be that sophisticated, can be that elusive. They’re Muslims, after all. They’re not brilliant neocons like me!

    I was greeted by a fairly incredible facebook comment this morning in which my wingnut uncle asserted that the reason Libya couldn’t get its militias under control was because the locals…

    … oh hell, this is too good, let me check facebook… “because the notions of nationalism/patriotism/self-sacrifice for a higher authority under the law, etc that are so much a part of the Western ethos are simply not part of the fabric of the Arab culture.” He went on to say that while you could dress them up like Western soldiers, you could never get them to THINK like them, and therefore turn them into soldiers like ours. “Can not, will not, and I believe never will happen in Arab culture.”

    The degree of hubris these people have is fucking breathtaking, and that’s AFTER ten years of watching the U.S. military blunder around Iraq and Afghanistan like a beached whale.

  91. 91.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Chris:

    nationalism/patriotism/self-sacrifice for a higher authority under the law, etc that are so much a part of the Western ethos are simply not part of the fabric of the Arab culture.

    The stupid and ignorance contained in this word salad is monumental.

    IT BURNS!

  92. 92.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    …Sooo… Arab nationalism never existed? Wow, does this guy even remember who we deposed in Iraq?

    An Islamic fundamentalist and agent of al-Qaeda.

    Don’t you remember?

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Tell me about it.

    Think of all the bandwidth that could’ve been saved by the use of the simpler “Our People are better than Their People because I was born among Our People.”

  93. 93.

    cmorenc

    One of the VERY few things I’ll give Glenn Beck positive credit for is that the next day after the night Obama announced the success of the mission to get Bin Laden, Beck genuinely gave Obama praise, appropriate credit, and recognition for pulling off such an important accomplishment for the nation. Beck’s general take was that although this accomplishment didn’t negate or outweigh the huge array of other matters on which Obama was terrible as President, but that for at least the moment, Obama deserved high kudos from the nation regarding this one extremely important accomplishment. Beck at least managed to be genuinely gracious for that one day, without any trace of snarkiness.

    Rush Limbaugh, by contrast, couldn’t restrain himself, even the very next day, from spewing bitter sarcastic bile at Obama and withholding any credit to him.

  95. 95.

    rea

    Mid-way through planning his next terrorist operation, Osama is surprised to discover that he’s been dead for a month . . .

  96. 96.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brother Maynard:

    You think you’re kidding, but one of our local trolls really does believe that the entire SEAL operation was an elaborate hoax to make people believe that Bin Laden was killed.

    He of course has absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back this “theory” up, but he’s under the impression that all he has to do is say “nuh-uh!” to any actual evidence and he totally wins the argument.

  97. 97.

    Redleg

    When does the democrat get to swagger about smokin’ some bad dude’s ass? It seems to me that the Rethugs always talk about how tough they are but when Obama announces that U.S. troops killed Bin Laden, he should have kept his mouth shut.

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