Slashdot Mirror
Man Unknowingly Tweets the Osama Raid
Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual, had no idea the helicopters he was complaining about on twitter were part of the top secret mission that killed Osama bin Laden Sunday night. 10 hours before bin Laden's death was announced Athar posted: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” From the article: "During the raid, Athar speculates that he was two or three kilometers away from the shooting that took place. Once news broke that bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Athar tweeted, 'Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.'”
This is good to know. Otherwise his tweet might have ended up on some conspiracy theorist sites with a "black helicopters" tag or something...
A very interesting point is that it is said one of the 4 choppers was hit by enemy fire which I haven't heard about yet. President Obama said "no Americans were injured" so I would assume it was only a minor hit.
On another topic, CNN just announced a few minutes ago that there is a DNA match confirming the body was indeed Osama. They also announced that the FBI has updated its most wanted list, it makes sense I guess...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64783440226168832
This man's story seems to directly contradict the story the news is telling everyone. Should I be surprised or should I be expected to be more cynical by now?
Here's the Google Maps satellite photo of Abbottabad, Pakistan. I can't find his compound. Can you?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Abbottabad&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.854268,56.513672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Abbott%C4%81bad,+Abbottabad,+Khyber+Pakhtunkhwa,+Pakistan&ll=34.146769,73.209769&spn=0.0019,0.005493&t=h&z=18
that's the spirit. no further need for manufactured death, or constant deception. that takes care of that? still be ready to run for cover in case any one is not on board with the joyus world wide disarmament proceedings.
And that they had to confirm the identity (using DNA testing) before announcing it (rather obvious, announce he's dead and having him send out another video would be embarrassing). Don't people writing the news also read the news?
But why would they take the body, promptly bury it at sea, then tell the world? I understand that they would want to minimize the impact in the islamic world by not defiling his body in any way which was recorded, but it seems like this would be something you show on television, that it's REALLY him. Who knows, maybe they made a deal with him and he's now in South America to live out his days in (even more) luxury. But that's the George Noory in me.
And I'm also quite mystified why so many people are celebrating this. It took almost 10 years, trillions of dollars, the invasion of two countries (neither of which he was found in), and an untold number of lives lost to find a 6 foot 6 inch multi-millionaire (with diabetes!) living in a private luxury compound (in a well populated city) which was at least eight times larger then anything nearby. I don't think there is too much to celebrate here.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
I thought I read somewhere that Osama was killed a week ago, not on Sunday. They were waiting for official confirmation before releasing the information that he was killed....
Did I mis-read? Was I mis-informed?
Or is this tweet mis-matched to the event?
and take him out too.
Osama had an iPhone and it kept track of his location. Good job, Steve!
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I read about this dude, he's on vacation, "trying to get away from it all" and after all this breaks he's complaining that he can't get away from it all.
Dude, your problem is your idea of "getting away from it all" is warped, in that you're twittering every 30 minutes when you see a F-ing airplane. Give your cellphone a burial at sea, then chill on a lawn chair (they have those in pakistan, right?) with a religiously appropriate mood enhancing substance and enjoy the solitude.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well, Osama's compound had no internet, anyways, so it's not like he could have gotten any early warning.
Alright, let's move out!
*blam blam blam*
Counter Terrorists Win!
...but how the hell is this news or news for nerds or stuff that matters?
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=34.169293,73.242615&spn=0.00324,0.008256&t=h&z=18
Anagrams of Sohaib Athar include "A Sahib Poker" , "A Sharia Both" and "Aha Rash Obit". Now Sahib in arabic means owner, and OBL was most surely owned in the raid. Sharia is the code of conduct, and the "aha rash obit" anagram could stand for a quickly developing obituary as in "spur of the moment...rash". Yeah. Also if anyone care to read all tweets this guy makes there are some strange tweets made over the last few months including, "Still stuck in Abbotobad working on secret project", some quotation of the author Gibran, who happened to author "The Prophet". He also mentions Chakotay (Star Trek), and stated in one tweet. "when I grow up I want to be diplomat".. Now you go to Google and read about Chakatay, and Gibran, and go read *all* of his tweet stream. It doesn't add up. This fellow is planted to obfuscate the timeline with his tweets.
Now, this guy, whoever he is, was put there to tweets out so we all believe the raid happened yesterday. Plain and simple. We already know they have been watching OBL for months now, and the government surely wouldn't have already killed, DNA tested, and buried him with 24 hours. They have likely had his body for weeks now, and picked a good time to leak the story, made all the more believable with this IT guy in Abbotabad supplying tweets that make it seem like it went down yesterday. We may never know...
Wow, I wonder if that twitter post will end up in our history books?
Of course. But that has nothing to do with my question, which is about the border of Pakistan and which bordering country OBL was closest to. Do you have knowledge of that? Or did you just want to post a conjecture about how narrow minded you think I am?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
To have him buried (as in "in the ground") - and then cover the entire area with cameras to monitor who comes to "revere him"?
Maybe even arrest some of them?
I mean... the entire thing sounds like something out of Pulp Fiction.
Best trained special forces in the world infiltrate a foreign country to get one sick old guy they haven't been able to catch for... what... 13 years?
In the process they manage to crash a helicopter. Or they've failed to maintain it properly so it crashed due to mechanical failure. Can't really say which option is more embarrassing.
Then these super-soldiers fail to capture him and instead shoot him in the head - so there goes visual identification.
So, a helicopter short, they haul his ass on foot, extract him back to their ship, supposedly identify him by his DNA - and then they dump the body overboard.
Cause, you know... that is supposed to be according to Muslim beliefs and so his followers wouldn't have a grave-site to visit and pay their respects.
I suppose they also had an imam on board, so it would be a proper Muslim burial?
I mean... they were obviously paying more attention to his religious beliefs than capturing the man they've spent billions of dollars chasing - for over a decade.
I'm not saying that it was all some conspiracy and that the whole thing was staged or something, but they are REALLY stretching the limits of "what can be adequately explained by incompetence" there.
All they managed to do is simply make him an even shadier figure now - by destroying evidence of his death.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Last I read a DNA test took at least three days to complete. Amazing they were able to pull it off in just a few hours of dumping the body. And what DNA did they compare it too, btw?
:T:R:A:N:S:
He needs to put his hands pierced in the side of the long form before hewill believe.
I wonder why the most wanted man in the world didn't have an escape tunnel? And decided instead to go down fighting after hiding out for ten years.
:T:R:A:N:S:
It's not like it matters...
They have a new bogeyman...and he is the people.
You do know I assume that there's a meta-conspiracy to take out conspiracy theorists just because they're so damned annoying.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Create the crypt but put a high intensity gamma source in it.
It means that everyone knows it was a cluster f**k, but if I can distract people long enough, I'll be dead and won't have to man up and admit it.
And there are going to be some redfaces when all is revealed.
Some college kid just hit the jackpot, as far as 1n74rw3bz hoax-cred goes.
I recall reading during a previous trip to Wikipedia that the Israelis buried Adolf Eichmann at sea to keep supporters from having a grave/shrine for _him_
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
(Did you read my post?) No, I'm thinking that whatever money was spent on the Iraq war, can't be counted toward the cost of killing Bin Laden. MonsterTrimble tried to make it sounds like trillions of dollars were spent to kill Bin Laden. I have heard a lot of whackjob conspiracy theories and I have heard some very plausible explanations for why the Iraq war happened, but so far nobody has suggested that Iraq was invaded as part of Bush's brilliant round-about way of gathering intell about Bin Laden's address or guard-changing schedule.
Just my luck, it'll turn out to be true. Next month we'll read a story that someone in Pakistan knew where Bin Laden was and was willing to cough up the info. But instead of settling for the half-million dollar reward, he said he'd only reveal the coordinates if the US government could make his dream come true of running a profitable ice cream store in Bagdad. But Saddam Hussein hated ice cream and would never let it happen. After much negotiating, Bush reluctantly agreed to invade Iraq.
Some turmoil followed, but was eventually sorted out. The informant was finally able to enter Iraq in 2005 and open the store, but the economy was shit and the store didn't make a profit. After filing Chapter 7 in 2008, the informant tried again and opened a yogurt store and it worked and he made it into a good business. Then in October 2010 he got an idea to use the success of this yogurt business to subsidize the building of a new ice cream campaign. At first it didn't work, but then in mid-April he was going over the 1st quarter 2011 results and realized he made a slight profit on ice cream itself if you ignored the start up costs, and his accountant explained that he had to, since those were written off in 4th quarter 2010. So he called the White House to make good on the deal, got the runaround since the person who answered the phone thought it was a prank call when he asked for President Bush, but it eventually got ironed out and he spoke to President Obama on April 23 and gave him Bin Laden's address. The hit squad sprang into action.
That's believable, but is it true? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, then MonsterTrimble's claim that trillions of dollars were spent to kill Bin Laden will be validated and everyone can say I'm a damn fool for arguing with him. But I submit to you that we don't really have any evidence that Saddam Hussein hated ice cream. So how do you explain that?!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.169284,73.242663&z=19
It's not that it is silly to pay attention to religious conventions when any sane, intelligent and educated person knows that there is no such thing as god(s).
It's silly that they are supposedly adhering to religious conventions of someone they just shot in the head.
Someone whom they present as a reason for waging a war or two.
And it is even sillier if they actually prepared for such an occasion in advance by making sure that they have an imam on board, while apparently failing to bring along a skilled helicopter technician.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm replying to this because I'm out of mod points, and it's a legitimate point made here.