Osama Bin Laden is Dead

[quadraphonics]

My preference whenever we want the truth is to have a grand jury comprised of random citizens investigate.

Grand juries do not "investigate." They assess the evidence presented and determine whether it is sufficient to merit an indictment.

Regardless, this all misses the point. The primary goal of wartime operations is to defeat the enemy, not to marshall sufficient evidence to convince skeptics on the sidelines that any particular action was well-founded. That's secondary, and only pursued as it figures into the first goal.

 

[adoucette]

I 75% believe that the government killed Bin Laden

Except a "Proof of Life" video of Bin Laden holding a headline proclaiming him dead would be so easy to produce and so damaging if done so, that we simply wouldn't say we killed him if we hadn't.

 

[quadraphonics]

Except a "Proof of Life" video of Bin Laden holding a headline proclaiming him dead would be so easy to produce and so damaging if done so, that we simply wouldn't say we killed him if we hadn't.

Well... the implication would be that we wouldn't say we killed him unless we were in a position to ensure that no such video would be forthcoming. It could be that someone else killed him, or that we actually captured him alive, or that he died of some other causes, or whatever.

But, yeah, I would not expect politicians to stake their careers and reputations on an assertion that Osama is dead, unless they are pretty damned sure they won't get undermined on that.

 

[adoucette]

Well... the implication would be that we wouldn't say we killed him unless we were in a position to ensure that no such video would be forthcoming. It could be that someone else killed him, or that we actually captured him alive, or that he died of some other causes, or whatever.

Not likely.
If he died of some other cause, then still a just as damning "proof of death" video could be released of him getting buried.
If he was captured alive, that would also not be something you could cover up, given the ubiquitness of cell phone cameras/videos, too many people would know about it to risk doing so and having your lie exposed on YouTube.

Arthur

 

[Pinwheel]

Turn out he lived there 5 years. And the Pakistan authorities never knew? Wow.

 

[Trippy]

Those channels you mention aren't exactly standard packages for every television viewer.

They are here. I think you have to pay to get CNN and Faux News here.

 

[quadraphonics]

They are here. I think you have to pay to get CNN and Faux News here.

Right - the presentation of cable news stations as representing the norm for US television news is stilted to begin with. People have been widely complaining that such are lowest-common-denominator trash since the 1990's (if not longer). CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined only boast a prime-time news viewership of about 10 million people - roughly 3% of the US population.

If the question is the "standard package" of news programming available to Americans, we should be discussing the big three networks and PBS. Everyone with a TV has access to these. And all of them boast prime-time news viewership greater than any cable news channel - NBC has as many prime-time viewers as all cable news shows combined. Even PBS, the least-watched of the four, is easily competitive with the cable news channels. The only times the cable channels show up as more watched than the networks is on certain specific news events where there's a big demand for around-the-clock coverage (elections, or a war breaks out).

Cable news remains a niche market, and that's why it's so bad and stilted. To make a profit - remember, they are charging people to watch - they have to cater to some combination of an appetite for around-the-clock news coverage and reportage that caters to certain energetic biases. Otherwise, people will just watch the mainstream news for free (which is what most people do anyway). All of which is fine, so long as people don't get confused and start thinking that these crap cable channels represent the mainstream. The real draw of cable is sports, movies, various comedic and dramatic programming, etc., not so much news.

 

[Repo Man]

Though I cannot know this for certain, I've a hunch that all of the people who are now downplaying Obama's role in this operation (such as this moronic Facebook status copy and paste ) would have been more than willing to put all of the blame on Obama had the operation gone badly. If there had been casualties, or the mission had failed to achieve its objective (or worst of all, both had happened), they would have been calling for President Obama to be impeached. It seems to me that the boost Pres. Obama will receive from this success will be modest, but the political consequences for failure would have been severe.

 

[Trippy]

Right - the presentation of cable news stations as representing the norm for US television news is stilted to begin with. People have been widely complaining that such are lowest-common-denominator trash since the 1990's (if not longer). CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined only boast a prime-time news viewership of about 10 million people - roughly 3% of the US population.

If the question is the "standard package" of news programming available to Americans, we should be discussing the big three networks and PBS. Everyone with a TV has access to these. And all of them boast prime-time news viewership greater than any cable news channel - NBC has as many prime-time viewers as all cable news shows combined. Even PBS, the least-watched of the four, is easily competitive with the cable news channels. The only times the cable channels show up as more watched than the networks is on certain specific news events where there's a big demand for around-the-clock coverage (elections, or a war breaks out).

Cable news remains a niche market, and that's why it's so bad and stilted. To make a profit - remember, they are charging people to watch - they have to cater to some combination of an appetite for around-the-clock news coverage and reportage that caters to certain energetic biases. Otherwise, people will just watch the mainstream news for free (which is what most people do anyway). All of which is fine, so long as people don't get confused and start thinking that these crap cable channels represent the mainstream. The real draw of cable is sports, movies, various comedic and dramatic programming, etc., not so much news.

Right, and I think I understand what you meant, but it seems I should clarify my point a little.

In New Zealand, we have two digital satelite services, and will be phasing out analog television in the near future (I forget exactly what the time table for the phase out is). One of the Digital services is free to air - 'FreeView', there's no ongoing costs to utilize it, there's only the initial cost of buying the decoder, which is now standard in new TV's (or seems to be). The other is "SKY TV", which, as I understand it, is roughly analagous to Cable in the US, although it seems to have a higher uptake here. To get Sky, you have to purchase a decoder, and pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to their channels. Which channels you get access to depends on which subscription package you purchase.

CNN, and Faux News, are, to the best of my recollection, available only through Sky in NZ, however, al Jazeera and BBC World (along with CTV) are available through one of the FreeView Channels.

 

[nirakar]

Except a "Proof of Life" video of Bin Laden holding a headline proclaiming him dead would be so easy to produce and so damaging if done so, that we simply wouldn't say we killed him if we hadn't.

I don't suspect Bin Laden of being alive, I suspect that the US or it's Afghan allies actually managed to kill Bin laden long ago but they never released they had killed him and did not gain access to his body or perhaps he died from disease. This would require that some videos and tapes were fakes and they were suspected of being fake. In this scenario US intelligence due to it's informants and communications intercepts would have come to know that Bin Laden was dead many years after he died.

I agree that Obama would never fake kill Bin Laden if there was more than a very slight chance of Bin Laden being alive.

 

[nirakar]

Grand juries do not "investigate." They assess the evidence presented and determine whether it is sufficient to merit an indictment.

Regardless, this all misses the point. The primary goal of wartime operations is to defeat the enemy, not to marshall sufficient evidence to convince skeptics on the sidelines that any particular action was well-founded. That's secondary, and only pursued as it figures into the first goal.

I did not really mean a "Grand Jury". I meant a judicial/investigative group of random citizens, which would be something new. Grand juries are just the closest existing group to what I want.

The US has sort of been at war forever and will be sort of at war for ever more unless the citizens put a stop to this knee jerk interventionalism. So when are the American people supposed to pass judgement on American foreign policy if that foreign policy is always secret because we are always involved in other nations conflicts and if it always taboo, traitorous and unpatriotic to say anything negative about the foreign policy while we the USA are involved in conflicts (which is always)?

 

[adoucette]

I don't suspect Bin Laden of being alive, I suspect that the US or it's Afghan allies actually managed to kill Bin laden long ago but they never released they had killed him and did not gain access to his body or perhaps he died from disease. This would require that some videos and tapes were fakes and they were suspected of being fake. In this scenario US intelligence due to it's informants and communications intercepts would have come to know that Bin Laden was dead many years after he died.

I agree that Obama would never fake kill Bin Laden if there was more than a very slight chance of Bin Laden being alive.

So what, again you are far down the woo woo conspiracy rabbit hole.

Al Queda wouldn't cooperate and someone would come forward with proof that this was all made up.

A conspiracy that you suggest would involve the cooperation and silence of so many people who who knew Bin Laden was dead but also all the people who sent the latest Seal Team in on a dangerous but totally bogus operation would all have to cooperate in a major conspiracy and that's simply not a rational expectation.

We can't keep anything secret very long, this would have a shelf life of days.

 

[nirakar]

He said that the WMD debate was unnecessary. Just the fact that Saddam did gas the Kurds sacrificed his claim to be a legitimate ruler.

What dictator or King is a legitimate ruler? Saddam is not the only dictator to kill a bunch of their own citizens and the US has allied with many of them. When Saddam gassed the Kurds he was a US ally and the US government tried to pin that gassing of the Kurds on Iran even though he US government knew that Saddam did it.

So how does Hitchens pick and choose who is ad enough that they should be regime changed?

He did hide nuclear centrifuge parts.

what are you or Hitchens referring to. To the best of my knowledge all of that sort of talk post Kuwait invasion has been shown to be Western mistakes and or Western deliberate disinformation. I think that very mistake was one of the reasons I wrote Hitchens off. I vaguely remember hearing talk I think about the centrifuge issue quoting a one of the Bush administration lies that had been conclusively debunked.

He did torture his own people.

Yes he did but did the US go to war for that reason? Is the mayhem, murder and mutilation rate in Iraq from 2003 to now higher or lower than it was under Saddam? I believe it higher post Saddam. Probably it is lower now but I would have to check into that to be sure.

He was undermining the oil for food program.

What the US under Bush 1 and Clinton did to Iraq was criminal. Destroying water treatment plants and power plants and trying to use mass hunger and collective punishment to force a coup was wrong. Saddam staying in power while the US applied collective punishment was criminal. Saddam should have stepped down to spare his people. At least a quarter million people died due to the Clinton vs Saddam cold war. Compliance with oil for food would not have changed that. Since the US and the UN and all the other governments have no moral legitimacy or credibility in my eyes I don't care what International laws Saddam broke I just care what moral laws Saddam and the US presidents and all the other governments broke. They are all criminals. Clinton's actions in Africa probably make him the worst living criminal on earth and being a nice guy who meant no harm does not change that.

Clinton and Saddam should have been hung together for their crimes but that is not how the world works.

What do we do to France and Russia and US corporations that were Saddam's partners in violating oil for food?

He could not be trusted to behave himself,

That is probably why the US went to war but the US also can't be trusted to behave itself.

and this was all the more important since he sat on a crossroads of the world's economy (the oil), which gave him the funding to support terror.

If the US can support Israel then I can't fault anybody for supporting Israel's enemies. Other than Israel's Palestinian enemies and Iran's terrorist enemies (that now receive funding from the USA) what international terrorists did Saddam support? The charge of Saddam is a global threat as a supporter of international terrorism is not quite accurate as long as he restricts his activities to Israel for abusing Arabs, Kuwait for stealing Iraq's oil and reneging on the promises it made to Iraq when Iraq fought Iran and Iran because Iran and Iraq have been screwing with each other for even longer than the Iran regime has existed.

Saddam was a ambitious man and ambitious men are by definition somewhat out of control as their ambition drives them to take chances in order to gain more power. But to some degree this is true of almost every head of state.

He paid rewards to the families of suicide bombers in Palestine.

I have no problem with that so long as Israel considers even substandard justice for Palestinians to be unacceptable and so long as Israel appears to want to break the Palestinians of their hope for even substandard justice. I make no distinction between collateral damage by the strong while attempting to dominate a population and deliberate attacks on civilians. This makes Saddam's support for suicide bombers parallel to US support for Israeli helicopter bombers.

As an argument for getting rid of Saddam it also fails. The Iraqi people probably feel more for the Palestinians than Saddam ever did. Should Iraq ever become a prosperous free democracy it will in all probability support Israel's Palestinian enemies more than Saddam ever did.

The small subset of prominent Neocons who actually believed the democracy in the middle east would increase friendliness towards Israel are having ridiculous fantasies based on their being in a state of denial about Israel having done anything wrong. Free democratic prosperous Arabs would be even more sensitive to the injustice done to the Palestinians as free prosperous Arabs would no longer view oppression as something normal that has to be tolerated.

 

[Cowboy]

Though I cannot know this for certain, I've a hunch that all of the people who are now downplaying Obama's role in this operation (such as this moronic Facebook status copy and paste ) would have been more than willing to put all of the blame on Obama had the operation gone badly. If there had been casualties, or the mission had failed to achieve its objective (or worst of all, both had happened), they would have been calling for President Obama to be impeached. It seems to me that the boost Pres. Obama will receive from this success will be modest, but the political consequences for failure would have been severe.

If Obama had done everything the same, but the mission had ended up a disaster, I wouldn't have blamed him. The fact that it turned out a success indicates that this wasn't a completely retarded plan. And it's war. Sometimes shit happens.

 

[superstring01]

Where are we now, SAM?

It's hard to follow your on-again-off-again sanity when it comes to these thigns.

Have you conceded that it was Bin Laden? Or have you accepted even his wife's and daughter's testimony and moved on to pigeon-holing some piece of minutia that will--ultimately--prove laughably contrived?

~String

 

[S.A.M.]

Where are we now, SAM?

It's hard to follow your on-again-off-again sanity when it comes to these thigns.

Have you conceded that it was Bin Laden?

We still have nothing more than Obama's word on it

have you accepted even his wife's and daughter's testimony

We hear so much about this wife and daughter; except for their name and any evidence that they actually exist outside the imagination of anonymous sources

 

[superstring01]

Ahhhhh. Let us know then, when it all works out.

~String

 

[StrawDog]

Killing enemies in wartime is not "murder."

Wartime? What an odd notion. Shooting unarmed enemies is OK?

But, call Americans whatever you like. The point is that if you threaten them, they'll pursue you to the ends of the Earth and destroy you. You don't wage wars to convince armchair internet moralists that you're a really elevated culture. You do it to convince your enemies that you're dangerous and determined polity.

Which supports my comment around moral bankruptcy. :m:

 

[The Esotericist]

We hear so much about this wife and daughter; except for their name and any evidence that they actually exist outside the imagination of anonymous sources

Ah hahahaha That's what I said earlier. AP and Reuters. You got to love them. They spin tales that would keep my eight year old enthralled.

 

[S.A.M.]

Ah hahahaha That's what I said earlier. AP and Reuters. You got to love them. They spin tales that would keep my eight year old enthralled.

You have to expect some bugs in the beta release versions. The final version will be made available shortly, once they have determined what the story should be; only a few patches will be needed.