Various news organizations are reporting that Osama Bin Laden is dead. President Obama is expected to announce the news. Bin Laden was reportedly killed in Pakistan by an operation involving Navy Seals but the story is still unfolding. YahooReports indicate that he was shot in the head after he and his bodyboards resisted an attack by the elite unit.
The fact that he reportedly went down fighting will likely add to his image as a martyr — though people who follow him need little encouragement or reason.
Bin Laden was a murderous fanatic who used religion to spread hate. His passing from this Earth would be welcomed news and, even for the most agnostic or atheist among us, there is a lingering wish that there is place for the damned to greet men like Bin Laden after the untold harm that he caused not just to his country but to many countries. Hundreds of thousands of dead can be credited to his dark legacy and beliefs.
While liberals and conservatives differed on the means used to fight Bin Laden, there was never any division on the commitment to fight terrorism or the shared loss from his crimes. On September 11th, the plane that hit the Pentagon struck just after I passed the building on my way to work. I made it about a mile away after blowing my tire on the curb and changing the tire as huge columns of smoke filled the air.
In the end, Bin Laden remained the authentic symbol of radical Islam — an extremist filled with hate living with fellow troglodytes in caves and crevices.
Bin Laden’s death will force some accounting of what has been gained and what has been lost since his infamous wave of terror began. Too much of the damage of 9-11 proved to be self-inflicted, including our use of torture and the launching of two wars that have cost thousands of more American lives and hundreds of billions as the nation sinks into debt and economic distress.
There is no indication that our continued loss of money or personnel in Afghanistan will decrease in any way as a result of the news. While the Afghanistan war seemed personality driven with Bin Laden as the face of evil, it has taken on a type perpetual war due to a lack of political courage to end it.
The world is far better without the likes of Osama Bin Laden. However, he left an ample legacy (and legions) to guarantee that religious hate will continue to shape the future of that region and the world at large.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5680724572/in/photostream
In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in
a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13512344&page=1
Swarthmore,
remind me to take Lindsey Graham off my Christmas card list. What an idiot. How did this guy every become a military judge?
Elaine,
Ouch! That sucks …
Well, at any rate, Not-So-Bright, of course, didn’t take responsibility for anything he’s said or done; in typical GOP fashion, he always had someone else to blame.
So much for all that “accountability” …
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/158599-sen-graham-questions-bin-ladens-burial-
freddyc,
“You mean to say that you would actually believe your press after all the horse shit that has been floated as news?”
Not necessarily!
Stamford Liberal,
We don’t get HBO any longer. Our Comcast bill had gotten ridiculous. I DO miss Maher’s show!
Elaine,
“Meet The Deathers: Andrew Brietbart Website Pushing Conspiracy Theory That Osama Might Not Be Dead”
Did you happen to catch him on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night? I could just feel through the TV screen the scum oozing out of his every pore … Poor Lara Flanders had to sit next to him on the panel … bet she took a shower as soon as she got out of there.
Flanders told him he needs to apologize to Shirley Sherrod … he gave a half-assed apology … I hope Sherrod takes everything Andy Not-So-Bright has … down to his last clean pair of tighty-whiteys …
The tail wags the dog again…I find it unbelievable that people are so willing to swallow what their state sponsored news agencies present as news. In our part of the world we call it “being a house plant” ….Ah yes…blissfully ignorant, yet ready to lash out when the fallacy of their reasoning is pointed out. You mean to say that you would actually believe your press after all the horse shit that has been floated as news? No wonder the great red white and blue is “circlin the drain”…
Patric,
The Ipecac moment actually belongs to OS, not me. But it is a good one!
The Reverse Birthers are out in full force now. The death of OBL is the new rallying cry for the birthers who were proven wrong…again. The black man in the White House can’t be right twice, can he?
Elaine,
Breitbart is a piece of scum. He constantly “edits” the truth out of his videos and for some reason gets away with it. The latest victim being the professors. I wonder if they have a cause of action against him. Are they public figures??
A few thoughts:
Puzzling said:
“We’ll quickly need a new #1 enemy to target, preferably with deep oil reserves.”
Boy, do you have THAT right.
Former Federal LEO said:
“Many of our civil liberties, enormous sums of Treasury, and thousands of lives—foreign and domestic—have been lost during the Global War on Terror; henceforth, a large balance of each will succumb in the name of endless flag-waving counter-terrorism.”
And,
“While I will not question anyone’s reasons, I cannot share in the jubilation over Bin Laden’s martyrdom.”
Amen to that.
Dredd said:
“Buried at sea so no one could see, but so that the faith of the weak could be strengthened.”
Truer words are yet to be spoken.
Larry –
I seldom agree with your points of view. But I once worked for the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, and thanks to that little experience, I no longer assume that official statements are true. I do assume that official announcements are expedient.
Bin Laden may well have just been killed. None of us have seen him, alive or dead. But based upon my time in Southeast Asia, I would say it isn’t impossible that he’s locked away somewhere, being “asked” some very interesting questions.
Carlyle Moulton said:
“Anti US terrorism is not going to end as long as the US is killing third world citizens by the hundreds of thousand in the “War Against Terror.”
Sure good to see people who ‘get it.’
And then there’s Rafflaw gift to the thread – “Ipecac moment.”
Priceless.
You all have a great weekend.
Update Responding to ThinkProgress on Twitter, Breitbart wrote, “I am not a friggin’ ‘deather'” and noted that he doesn’t agree with everything written by other authors on his web sites. He said he is merely providing a forum for an “open debate” on whether or not Bin Laden is alive.
Meet The Deathers: Andrew Brietbart Website Pushing Conspiracy Theory That Osama Might Not Be Dead
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/02/breitbart-bin-laden-deathers/
Mere hours after President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, supported by incontrovertible DNA evidence, the conspiracy theorists are hard at work. Andrew Breitbart, a prominent right-wing commentator with close ties to the Republican Party and the Tea Party, is pushing the theory on his website Big Peace.
On Breitbart’s website, J. Michael Walker, suggests Obama take a number of extraordinary steps so he can “make sure [Osama] is dead.” Pictures are apparently not enough. Walker asserts that he needs to be able to “walk right up to bin Laden’s corpse and view it.” More:
The free world, particularly the United States, has a right to make sure Osama bin Laden is really dead. Every American has a right to walk right up to bin Laden’s corpse and view it. We are entitled to know for a fact that the witch is dead. No shroud for dignity’s sake, please – bin Laden’s naked, bullet-riddled corpse should be put on display in lower Manhattan for all the world to see. The entire body should be digitally scanned, inside and out – and made available for everyone to take his or her own picture.
Walker ads that “For us Doubting Thomases out there – we need to see in order to believe.”
Brietbart isn’t alone. On Twitter, Emily Miller, a senior editor at the Washington Times demanded “proof” that Osama is dead.
With birtherism quickly losing steam after the release of Obama’s long form birth certificate, will the right-wing follow Brietbart’s lead?
Bdaman,
And has it been proven that torture led to the information?
**********
I’m against the torture of human beings. There are interrogation methods that are much better at extracting factual information from people. Torture can result in false “information.” Do you believe the United States should torture detainees–or do you think our country should abide by the treaties of the Geneva Conventions? Shouldn’t our country stand on moral high ground and set an example?
Both
August 13, 2007
The circumstances surrounding the confession of Mohammed, whom law-enforcement officials refer to as K.S.M., were perplexing. He had no lawyer. After his capture in Pakistan, in March of 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency had detained him in undisclosed locations for more than two years;last fall, he was transferred to military custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There were no named witnesses to his initial confession, and no solid information about what form of interrogation might have prodded him to talk, although reports had been published, in the Times and elsewhere, suggesting that C.I.A. officers had tortured him.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1LE80b4ne
Bdaman,
A. “Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.”
B. “Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.”
************
Which is true–A or B or both?
Forgot 🙂 Ms. Blouise
Yes ma’am
Raff
but it does not say that those harsh interrogations recovered this information.
it doesn’t say it did and doesn’t say it didn’t.