Osama Bin Laden is Dead

While there were certainly wasteful things about the Iraq war, I don't think the effort was a waste. Would we have found Bin Laden if he was in Iraq under Saddam's protection? No way.
 
spidergoat said:
While there were certainly wasteful things about the Iraq war, I don't think the effort was a waste. Would we have found Bin Laden if he was in Iraq under Saddam's protection? No way.
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But he wasn't in Iraq, are you saying the Iraq war was good because hypothetical it made one less country for osama the hid in?
 
ElectricFetus said:
But he wasn't in Iraq, are you saying the Iraq war was good because hypothetical it made one less country for osama the hid in?
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... if only he wasn't already dead, I was going to demand that we invade Canada on this pretext immediately... dangit...
 
Anyone post his death picture as yet? If not then here ya go. If so please delete.


Osama-bin-Laden-Death-Picture.jpg
 
ElectricFetus said:
But he wasn't in Iraq, are you saying the Iraq war was good because hypothetical it made one less country for osama the hid in?
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That is one aspect, yes. Saddma might have given weapons to Al Quida. We know there are ties between the Baathists and Al Quida, I don't believe that just started with our invasion.
 
spidergoat said:
That is one aspect, yes. Saddma might have given weapons to Al Quida. We know there are ties between the Baathists and Al Quida, I don't believe that just started with our invasion.
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Unlikely. A US military report in 2002 and the 9/11 commission both stated that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Saddam would have thought Osama and Al Qaeda a threat to his secular leadership.
 
S.A.M. said:
Moreover any Americans executed and waterboarded by their own government without due process will find themselves coming against the glass wall of national security and legal precedent against threats to the same.

Welcome to the American autumn.
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And when has an american ever been executed and waterboarded without due process by the US government?
 
Mrs.Lucysnow said:
Unlikely. A US military report in 2002 and the 9/11 commission both stated that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Saddam would have thought Osama and Al Qaeda a threat to his secular leadership.
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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Quida in Iraq was there before we invaded. He was already part of a jihadi insurgent group.

Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.

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To say that the attempt to Talibanize Iraq would not be happening at all if coalition forces were not present is to make ...unsafe assumption.... The first assumption is that the vultures would never have gathered to feast on the decaying cadaver of the Saddamist state, a state that was in a process of implosion well before 2003. All our experience of countries like Somalia and Sudan, and indeed of Afghanistan, argues that such an assumption is idiotic. It is in the absence of international attention that such nightmarish abnormalities flourish.

Christopher Hitchens
 
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International Perspectives—UK

Source: The Independent
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...dern-jihadist-must-be-on-twitter-2278389.html
Title: "The modern jihadist must be on Twitter", by Mark Steel
Date: May 4, 2011

Some jokes are better left to write themselves. For more on those, we turn to The Independent's Mark Steel:

What seems strange is that if this raid was watched live on film, wouldn't someone have bought the rights and released it on DVD by now? Americans aren't usually slow with a commercial opportunity. They probably arranged a three-minute gap between the two shots fired at Bin Laden, to allow for a commercial break. It would become the best-selling film ever. But so far, they've not even put a tiny clip on YouTube.

We've seen that photo of them in the White House, looking tense as they apparently watch the raid live, but for all we know they're watching the snooker, and Hillary Clinton's gasping because Judd Trump missed a crucial blue. Some newspapers might be happier if the film isn't seen, as it leaves them free to make up whatever they like. So it's reported Bin Laden "was a coward to the end", and died "cowering behind his wife". By the weekend it will be revealed that he "crawled along the floor dribbling, saying: 'The Twin Towers stunt was her idea, not mine, but she kept nagging me, so in the end I gave in. Shoot her and all my bodyguards instead of me and I'll be good from now on, honest.'"

Because this fits the image we like to have of him, as if it makes any difference. If he'd died "properly", standing on the balcony yelling like Al Pacino in Scarface, would the headlines read: "You may not have agreed with all his policies but fair's fair, he put up a decent fight at the end"?

Other parts of the report could be open to doubt, such as The Sun's quotes from the neighbours. If they followed the routine of when a murderer is discovered on a housing estate, they should have said: "He always kept himself to himself and seemed very polite. It's come as quite a shock that we were next door to a crazed, evil genocidal fundamentalist jihadist lunatic." Instead we're told: "Tractor driver Raza Khan, 34, said: 'I think they were training in there. I heard them say the word jihad." Isn't that always the way? You hear neighbours drilling and saying jihad but think nothing of it, then when it turns out to be a mass-murdering Islamist you wonder why you'd never put two and two together in the first place. Surely there was another neighbour who heard them say: "Mumble mumble evil plan mutter explosives cough take over the world snigger THE FOOLS mwahahahahaha."​

Thank you, Mark. Up next: Terrorism and the salad bar. When and how healthy eating might kill you.
 
DALAI LAMA SAYS US ACTIONS AGAINST BIN LADEN JUSTIFIED:


By Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times
May 4, 2011

As the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama says he practices compassion to such an extent that he tries to avoid swatting mosquitoes "when my mood is good and there is no danger of malaria," sometimes watching with interest as they swell with his blood.

Yet, in an appearance Tuesday at USC, he appeared to suggest that the United States was justified in killing Osama bin Laden.

As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0504-dalai-lama-20110504,0,7229481.story
 
madanthonywayne said:
Have you heard the reports that bin laden used a woman, possibly his wife, as a human shield?
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At first I thought this read: Have you heard reports that Bin Laden used to be a woman... :eek:








Apparently he was shot unarmed and did not use anyone as a shield. Or the US psyopts decided a more heroic ending would help the medicine go down for all those "I saw Elvis in McDonalds" Muslims that think he's still alive.


What I want to know is... WHAT was he doing with the chicken?
family_guy_osama_bin_laden.jpg







Mrs.Lucysnow said:
As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."
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dalai+lama+with+machine+gun.jpg



The Dali Lama needs to lay off the politics and go back to meditation.
 
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spidergoat said:
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Quida in Iraq was there before we invaded. He was already part of a jihadi insurgent group.

Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.

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To say that the attempt to Talibanize Iraq would not be happening at all if coalition forces were not present is to make ...unsafe assumption.... The first assumption is that the vultures would never have gathered to feast on the decaying cadaver of the Saddamist state, a state that was in a process of implosion well before 2003. All our experience of countries like Somalia and Sudan, and indeed of Afghanistan, argues that such an assumption is idiotic. It is in the absence of international attention that such nightmarish abnormalities flourish.

Christopher Hitchens
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But your link reports would have him appear after the invasion of Iraq:

"He first appeared in Iraq as the leader of the Tawhid and Jihad insurgent group, merging it in late 2004 with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network."

This corroborates with much of what the pentagon and other reports which states the insurgency in Iraq after the US invasion did indeed bring in radical groups such as Al Qaeda but there is nothing suggesting Al Qaeda took any refuge in Iraq or had any dealings with Saddam.

Here is a Democracy Now interview with Robert Fisk, long time mid-east journalist from the UK Independent and Loretta Napoleoni, author of a book about the Iraq insurgency and Zarqawi's role, interviewed by Amy Goodman:

LORETTA NAPOLEONI: Well, for a start, al-Zarqawi met Osama Bin Laden in 2000 in Kandahar, and it was a meeting in which he refused to join Al Qaeda because he could not share Osama Bin Laden’s view of far-away enemy, i.e., the United States. He was very much focused on the existing Arab regimes, in particular Jordan. He managed to carve within the Taliban regime a very little niche—–a little camp in Herat, whereby, you know, he started to train future suicide bombers who would be active in Jordan [audio lost]. After the fall of the Taliban regime, he escaped in Iraqi Kurdistan, because he had some contacts there; and it was because of that, because of his presence there, that the Kurdish secret service alerted [audio lost] Al Qaeda man in Iraq had arrived. And, of course you know, that was false information. But the information was embraced by the United States because, in the moment in which they could not find proof of any weapons for mass destruction, the only chance they had to justify intervention in Iraq was to link Saddam Hussein with international terrorism, i.e. Al Qaeda.

So al-Zarqawi became that link, that fictitious link. And that was sufficient to transform a very small leader of an even smaller group of Jihadists into number two member of Al Qaeda in the world. That is really what made al-Zarqawi. From that moment, not only us in the West, but also people in the Muslim world believed that al-Zarqawi was the number two of Al Qaeda. So, people start flocking to join his insurgency. Money starts flowing towards that insurgency. So that was the beginning of the myth. And today we have not at all killed the myth. Unfortunately, because, you know, it’s very easy to create these myths. It’s very, very difficult to destroy them.

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/6/8/will_al_zarqawis_death_fuel_the
 
You didn't read the whole article.

"He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base..."

And today he is very much really dead. Yes, he was a bit of a rival to Bin Laden, but obviously not above cooperation when it came down to it.
 
spidergoat said:
You didn't read the whole article.

"He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base..."

And today he is very much really dead.
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Okay but does his mere presence in the country confirm a link between a growing Al Qaeda in Iraq and a relationship with Saddam? :shrug:

Its the invasion then insurgency which built Zarkawi not any previous Al Qaeda operations coming out of Iraq.

Here is a Frontline documentary on Zarkawi, the Insurgency and Al Qaeda:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/view/
 
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spidergoat said:
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Quida in Iraq was there before we invaded. He was already part of a jihadi insurgent group.

Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.

-------------

To say that the attempt to Talibanize Iraq would not be happening at all if coalition forces were not present is to make ...unsafe assumption.... The first assumption is that the vultures would never have gathered to feast on the decaying cadaver of the Saddamist state, a state that was in a process of implosion well before 2003. All our experience of countries like Somalia and Sudan, and indeed of Afghanistan, argues that such an assumption is idiotic. It is in the absence of international attention that such nightmarish abnormalities flourish.

Christopher Hitchens
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Sorry but that is complete bullshit.

It is difficult to verify whether Zarqawi was in Iraq before the invasion, but that is irrelevant. Saddam Hussein prosecuted and dealt harshly with Muslim fundamentalists. He was very harsh towards the Wahabis/Salafis. The moment Saddam's regime fell, the police and army were disbanded there was a vacuum and that was filled by Sunni extremists, Shia extremists as well as criminal gangs.

Zarqawi's organisation was not called Al-Qaeda, it was something like Front for Jihad in Mesopotamia or something, name escapes me, he pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden in 2004 I believe.

American blunders gave Al-Qaeda a foothold in Iraq.

Another thing, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is pretty much defeated in now, not due to the Americans, but due to Iraqi Sunnis. At first the Americans isolated the Sunnis, they were marginalised and through this Al-Qaeda were able to gain a lot of support, though they were small in number. The Sunnis in Iraq felt under seige, by the Americans, Shias and Iranians. The moment the Americans put their guns away and began reaching out to your everyday Sunni in Iraq, the tide turned. The Sunnis turned against Al-Qaeda.

But your post is just nonsense.

Under Saddam there was zero chance of Al-Qaeda gaining a foothold in the country. And when its all said and done, the Iraq war was all based on lies. There were no WMD, and there was no link with Al-Qaeda.
 
Mrs.Lucysnow said:
...Its the invasion then insurgency which built Zarkawi not any previous Al Qaeda operations coming out of Iraq....
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Yes, but even if we hadn't invaded, we can know that forces aligned to Al Quida, at least in their broad goals of jihad if not their methods, found refuge in Iraq. I can't believe that the operational ties between AQM and the Baath party sprouted spontaneously only after the invasion, it seemed to well planned and coordinated.
 
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