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Leaked Doc May Have Forced US To Speed Up Bin Laden Raid
cf18 writes "Wikileaks released a set of leaked Guantanamo prisoner files to the public last week. Among them is a document dated from 2008, which mentioned both Osama's trusted courier's name and Abbottabad, the city in which Osama had been hiding. There are speculations that, fearing al-Qaida realized their courier may have been tracked and move Osama, the US administration accelerated their plan and attacked the target site over the weekend. This link highlights the relevant section of the document."
Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.
Perhaps you mean something more on the lines of :
For every 1000 documents of embarrassing diplomatic relations, corporate malevolence, and government secrets, perhaps one or two get out that should have been kept secret. What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
I sorta feel like The government is stuffing me from behind and corporate America is forcing my throat by grabbing my ears. All I know for sure is I'm getting screwed and the two seem to be tag teaming me!
The interrogation file was dated "10 September 2008." Is someone seriously claiming that the military was willing to wait more than two years to conduct the attack but then had to rush things by a couple of weeks because of this leak?
Apparently so. We have an article using the passive voice to indicate that someone somewhere is speculating that the military did in fact cut a two-and-a-half year delay down to just 2.5 years minus a week or two because they were worried about the consequences of this leak.
For every improperly classified document they release, they're releasing thousands of things that should be kept secret.
They aren't competent to do what they are doing, and we're not safe as long as they are making these mistakes.
We're not safe as long as the government is improperly hiding vast amounts of information, either. The most practical solution would be for the government to adopt a trustworthy approach to secrecy and build the public's confidence in their honesty. If the people could reasonably trust that classified information legitimately needed to be kept secret and was not just hiding misdeeds, there would be no need for Wikileaks and no demand for the revelation of any classified documents. Until then, Wikileaks serves a need.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
So what's the argument here? That wikileaks got the government to actually get around to going after the most wanted man in the world? HBGary? Is that you?
To play devils advocate here, there may have been indications that Bin Laden *may* be hiding there. But the US Govt might have wanted to have firmer intel on that before sending DEVGRU a 100 miles into Pakistan, wikileaks may have forced them to act on not solid intel. If Bin Laden hadn't been there, wikileaks would have caused a nice win for OBL.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So uh, why did it take so long to plan an attack if they had a lead for more than 2 years? That's only the age of the document as well, the guy in question here (Libi) was captured way back in 2005.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Osama was allowed to keep his life secret. You may believe all secrets are bad, Microlith (if that is your real name) but Wikileaks doesn't fix that - it's too random.
Any problem with trusting the government or other organizations comes from a lack of willingness to engage with them. It's not that we don't know what our government is up to, it's that we'd rather just stand on the sidelines shouting about how evil they are than get our hands dirty, get involved with actual decision making and risk making our own mistakes. It's not a question of trust - if you want to have influence, you have to get involved.
Gee, Robert Gates doesn't agree with you. ([more analysis]).
You've also failed to point out the fact that the main *innocent* people who die are not our Afghani sympathizers, but american soldiers and Afghan civilians. Want to save american lives? Get the fuck out of afghanistan. It's over.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I hope it isn't true, but I really hope that our elected government weren't waiting to do this at a more convenient time... like election time.
If that's the case, I really am glad that WikiLeaks may have fast-tracked this operation.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Representative democracy requires informed voters to be truly functional and not just a facade for a ruling class. The balance of secrecy works the same as all other balances. It doesn't hover in a perfect middle. It pendulums between two sides with an average hopefully near the middle. Without Wikileaks and others like them there would be nothing to balance the over correction into government secrecy after 9/11. The counterweight used to be the traditional press but they got lost chasing profit with water skiing squirrels and drugged up celebrities.
You would rather Osama get away to lead more terrorist attacks than that you not know the name of his courier?
Except that waterboarding gave us nothing, and it was the tried and true non-coercive interrogation methods that provided us with that information, contrary to what Fox News would have you believe.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/the-republican-spin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+andrewsullivan/rApM+(The+Daily+Dish)
"We have met the enemy, and they is us."
- Pogo
- Walt Kelley
Shut up and vote, or bitch and moan and remove all doubt about how it got this way.
At least big media gives you the reach around!
So if the first kill from Wikileaks is OBL, shouldn't we be giving them a medal, rather than complaining about them? Apparently, the US knew where he was for the past 3 years and did nothing until Wikileaks pointed out
How could you know what was exactly going on these last three years?
Where's the line between cautious and negligent? Or have we been tracking him accurately for that long without his knowledge and using that knowledge to dismantle the organization? Though if we were doing that with any efficiency, we should have had much better results than we have had so far.
You sound like an expert at worldwide military and intelligence operations.
Empowering people to start revolt isn't blood on the hands of Wikileaks, but blood on the hands of the corrupt governments oppressing their people. Now, if Wikileaks named an informant who was executed for it, then Wikileaks deserves the blame for that. But starting revolutions that result in dead people in the attempts to overthrow corrupt and oppressive governments? That's not a problem. That's a good thing.
Learn to love Alaska
... the accumulated cultural wisdom of all citizens which allows them to know when to publish a leaked document to expose corruption and when to sit on it. Oh wait, that's what we've got.
No. **If** wikileaks actually did release info related to Abbottabad then we *do not* have the component where people have the wisdom to know when to not release the info, the wisdom to sit on it as you say.
Wikileaks may be as unskilled as the government with respect to classifying info. They merely may be erring on the opposite end of the spectrum and letting too much out. Wikileaks is a bit like a vigilante organization and our "accumulated cultural wisdom" say that courts and the rule of law (logic) are better than vigilantes (emotion).
no, it would be better when national security is at risk that wikileaks grows up and realizes they are endangering lives, and lots of them, by their wanton approach. This isn't a reputable newspaper that tries to make sure they don't cause people to get killed by releasing information, and I'm not talking about the stupid idea of hiding the info because it's unpleasant.
For all we know, we had been using this information to intercept plans and derail them for several years and now with the document out, we had to kill the golden goose of knowing where the enemy leadership was and how they communicated.
and who said this had anything to do with corporations?
The article is balls.
But the concept is valid.
If Osama knew that the name of this courier was known to al Quaeda's enemies, Osama could have stopped using him and prevented us from following him back. Or simply had him killed to prevent any chance of a linkage. Or determined how he was revealed and killed someone else for it.
Keeping secrets about the enemy keeps your people safe and keeps the enemy's status stable so you can find him and destroy him.
But if Julian Assange feels it's right to reveal these secrets in order that we find out what Hillary Clinton said about Nasser's nose-picking, well, then, let Osama go.
I'm sorry, where have you been the past decades? The US you describe might have existed a while ago, but I'm not old enough to remember it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?
Actually, Wikileaks appears to have played a large part in stirring the uprising in Tunisia (cables about corruption), and consequently Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Libya...
So back to that death count...
It appears the Governments there made their own mess. You discount the oppressive people/governments who actually are responsible for their actions thus far. Go back to bed Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Libya.
So about that blaming the victims, not the perpetrators...
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
It's a guys name, you seriously think based on a single couriers name they can determine exactly where Osama is?
Or are you thinking they'll magically know in 2008 where Osama is because five years earlier some other guy moved to Abbottabad for a year? Clearly Osama must be in that town in a building that didn't even exist when the detainee in question lived there.
The name is what is important. They were clearly tracking the courier mention (given he was there when they raided), if Osama find out that you know about the guy he has moving in and out of his hiding place he's going assume you are at least close to working it out and so move ASAP and get another courier. He survived for almost 10 years with the world's largest military after him and a $25 million bounty on his head - he had to be paranoid...
The question seems to be, "Should Wikileaks be complicit in the corruption, and be quiet, or should Wikileads expose the corruption, even though someone might be killed?"
Obviously our government didn't mind being complicit.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Do you REALLY think that killing Osama changed anything? Think of it this way: Would killing the President of the US suddenly halt every operation running? Would killing the CEO of any large corporation make it fold and cease to exist?
We're not talking about a handful of loonies with a Bond-villainesque leader and a structure that would crumble when you remove the head. Ozzy has already been replaced, and I guess it's safe to assume that this "devastating blow" didn't change jack. Considering how "prominent" Bin Laden had been, it's quite likely that the day to day "business" was already in the hands of someone else.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Didn't wikileaks give the government a preview of things they were going to release?
Perhaps you missed it but ***very few*** in government knew the courier's real name and the significance of Abbottabad. However UBL's folks in Abbottabad would and thereby know to flee if they had bothered to do a "find" on the wikileak docs.
This isn't a reputable newspaper that tries to make sure they will increase profits if they cause people to get killed by releasing information
FTFY.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
But the US Govt might have wanted to have firmer intel on that before sending DEVGRU a 100 miles into Pakistan, wikileaks may have forced them to act on not solid intel.
I seriously doubt Wikileaks "forced" them to do anything. The document says that this guy, LY-10017, had communication with Bin Laden's courier, and that in 2003 LY-10017 lived in Abbottabad. He moved somewhere else in 2004 or 2005, before Bin Laden's compound was built. The only connections are that it lists the name of the courier, and indicates that this particular detainee once lived in the same city that Bin Laden turned out to be hiding in (but not at the same time). It's more of a coincidence, the document doesn't even draw a link between Bin Laden's courier and the town, other than a guy who once lived in the town also once communicated (indirectly) with the courier.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Regardless of ones position on the war, your analysis is pretty questionable.
"Why would the military hide information that would turn public opinion against wikileaks?"
Because it's likely that they would figure out who a mole or agent was from indirect references in the documents. They might be sure enough to eliminate them, but not completely sure, just like the US was unsure about Bin Laden being in Abbottabad.
If suddenly, the US then says "insert-name" has been killed because of wiki-leaks, they know they were right.
It gets even better. If you follow the link in the original post, lots of the people mentioned are only identified by a code number (like ZU 100024 or such). If you suspected ZU 100024 was the person you killed as a mole, but weren't sure, now you know that anywhere else in those documents you see ZU 100024, you know who that is with high certainty.
"You don't seem to understand the politics of the situation very well"
Apparently he understand better than you seem to understand intel analysis.
As to what Gates said, do you really expect the Secretary of Defense to say publicly "Wow, there's a real blockbuster piece of information in those documents."
The Al Qaeda intel people may have missed a big one when they didn't catch on to this. If the US had missed something like that, we'd be talking about a major intelligence failure.
Even if they weren't sure enough to move Bin Laden, they could have raised his security level, or had an escape plan ready.
Ahhh, using government secrecy and a gut feeling ("somebody died! they just won't tell us!") to prove government secrecy is valid. Nice circular logic. Buy tinfoil.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
They had a couple YEARS to get firmer intel. The only thing Wikileaks might have done is push the raid to "sooner" rather than "closer to the next election."
Yes, I'm that jaded about politicians. And I mean all of them, not just the person in the White House today... If WikiLeaks pushed them to actually act on the intel, then hail WikiLeaks!
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Well, you're true to your nickname. Only a right wing nutjob is getting what they want in this day and age.
Get it straight: We have nothing like democracy in this country and I'm not convinced we ever have had. Since Teddy Roosevelt there have been only three presidents who have not been total tools of the status quo, and one of them was only out for himself.
Manning is a patriot, Assange is a useful idiot. However instead of being useful to the power elite, he is useful to all of us.
The only way we will get accountability is when men like Assange and Manning do what they have done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because they're not intelligence analysts - or at least, they're not interested in really clearing these things up.
I'd say that about sums it up. Wikileaks are not really interested in anything but their own agenda with this entire diplomatic cable document dump. They wouldn't know sensitive information if it bit them in the ass. And saying they asked the U.S. Government to help redact any sensitive information is disingenuous. If the U.S. Government had specified concern about any particular documents as being especially sensitive I'm certain there are those at Wikileaks who, rather than withholding those documents, would have been even more intent on releasing them.
Your continual Ad Hominem attacks against Manning do nothing to him, but they make you look like an asshole.
Manning was trained to betray his countrymen in the name of serving his country. He instead betrayed his fellow servicemen in the act of serving his nation.
You're pissy because he went against his training, but we should instead discuss whether he did the right thing. There are still no reports of anyone dying because of what he did. But the information he delivered contains reports of wrongful death. He did more good than harm, except to the status quo, which needs harm in the worst way.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wikileaks also revealed that they knew Bin Laden was alive all along - so when we had members of the administration stating that he died in Tora Bora, they were indeed hiding secrets that could endanger me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
being mindlessly cynical doesn't do anyone any good, and it may be worth mod points, but doesn't add much to the discussion. Many serious newspapers spend a great deal of money and time reviewing their work to make sure it doesn't cause the problems Wikileaks does. Read up on some of the procedures at the New York Times or other reputable sources. Considering their are trying to stay in business, it's pretty incredible what they go through to maintain integrity.
>>>here in America, we've had it going in more or less working order for several hundred years,
Nothing to brag about really. Rome had a democracy (the Senate) for 500 years, and yet still succumbed to a tyrant (Julius Caesar and his offspring).
The UK democracy (Parliament) is about 200 years older than the american democracy. As for Assange, he serves the original purpose envisioned by the First amendment "freedom of press" clause. The citizens use the power of speech and writing to keep the spotlight on corrupt politicians, in order to keep them from becoming like the 1770s parliament we rebelled against.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"they planned to raid Osama's hideout on April 31"
I am sure that would have been a surprise for Osama - nobody expects to be raided on April 31
>>>Wikileaks appears to have played a large part in stirring the uprisings...So back to that death count...
The Declaration of Independence killed about 1 million British citizens, due to the uprising it stirred. Maybe you believe Thomas Jefferson should not have written it, and the US still be a bunch of British colonies? Maybe Thomas Jefferson is as "evil" as Assange for all the trouble he stirred-up?
(I disagree - I think they are of like character. They both believed the people deserve to know.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
wikileaks grows up and realizes they are endangering lives
The only life they seem to have endangered to date is Ossama Bin Laden's.
You can't take the sky from me...
False dichotomy much? I want both reasonable state secrets and eventual declassification of previously classified material. That's something similar to the present system, maybe with the declassification knob turned up a little.
I'm with the GP, mostly.
The real question is not whether you or I, or the next guy thinks killing Osama will accomplish anything. It is whether the general public will think so.
The US culture has, for the past few decades, evolved to expect the "Good Guys Always Win" ending. It has been hammered into our heads by practically every movie, TV series, and book targeted for the mainstream audience. You and I may know perfectly well that the world is a complex inter-related network of challenging problems, but for the average Joe there is only a bad guy that needs to be defeated, and a world/girl that needs to be saved. Such a view may be depressing for those of us that can see through the illusion, but that does not change the fact that a huge section of the US society thinks this way.
Killing Osama simply plays right into this mentality; Yet again the US is the stereotypical "Good Guy" that killed the "Big Evil Villain." There was then a big party with a ton of booze and women, and now the credits are rolling, and everyone is getting up to leave the theater. This is a huge milestone not in terms of world events, but in the minds of millions of people in the US that wanted nothing more than to go to Afghanistan and kick one guy in the face.
So again, you can analyze the hell out of the problems of the world. You can create model after model and scenario after scenario for what will happen in all the various organizations. You can point out that the terrorists are still terrorists. However, you can not ignore how all of these things will sail straight over the heads of a good 95% of the population. Given that unfortunately these are the people that decide the elections, I will say that damn right this changed something.
>>>Secrets won World War II for the Allies.
The difference is that we were at War and different rules apply (wartime law). At present we are still at Peace, so peacetime law (i.e. the constitution) applies in all things. the fact you are so blind as to believe you can trust the president (or congress) makes me wonder if you slept through history class.
Maybe you ought to watch the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" so you can get a reminder. The best part is when the German judge admits he loved Hitler, but also that was a fool to trust him, and should have refused to cooperate (i.e. refuse to send people to death or sterilization).
And no I don't give a damn about godwin. Hitler was not an anomaly. There have been several hundred Hitlers throughout history - Napoleon, Pol pot, Mao, Stalin, Genghis Khan, and on and on. You can NOT trust leaders.
You are fool to believe you can.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Apple and Birkshire-Hathaway's success is, for better or worse, truer or falser, tied to the leaders of the company in the mind of most investors. If Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet dropped dead tomorrow without having left clear plans for a successor, and having had the markets get used to the idea, I suspect the value would drop out of their stocks in a massive way before recovering.
Killing Bin Laden has changed the political dynamic in the United States. It's given Obama a popularity boost and an improvement in image which he can leverage in his negotiations on domestic policies. It makes it harder to call him "soft on defense" when he's kept up 2 wars, boosted troop levels in Afganistan, and just sent the Navy SEALS into Pakistan, pretty much unannounced, to bust into a house and cap Bin Laden in the face.
Whether or not getting at Bin Laden is going to have any effect in the "war on terror" is irrelevant. In Afganistan, we've been at it with the Taliban this whole time. There hasn't really been much of a foreign Arab-fighter presence there for several years. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are two different things. The spin-off groups in Iraq and Yemen were basically independent entities which used the name Al Qaeda for brand association hoping that believers in Bin Laden would come fight for them. It's basically trademark infringement.
The fact is that killing Bin Laden put the final cap on the whole 9/11 thing for Americans. Bin Laden can no longer be the boogey man hiding in the wings, because he's gone. Any threat that we might face going forward isn't going to come from him. Killing Bin Laden is a lot like the fall of the Soviet Union, in a way. The monolithic face of terror is gone and now the small operators are going to have to come up with their own spin on things. we'll see how this goes. We all know what a disaster letting the Soviet Union collapse was for us.
Well we certainly can't trust wikileaks either, so who does that leave?
Causing the pace of an operation to accelerate isn't the same thing as putting Bin Laden's life in danger. If anything, it put the lives of the special forces operators at greater risk by having less time to prepare everything before hand. So, pretty much the opposite of what you said.
If everyone really is out to get you, is it still called paranoia? I thought you had to have a delusional belief that everyone was after you to be paranoid.
Do you think they will drill far enough down to find this link that shows that Donald Rumsfeld himself admits the same?
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/02/rumsfeld-bin-laden-gitmo/
for information purposes.
what is actually on wikileaks:
Abbottabad is mentioned 4 times on the site.
twice as someones place of birth.
once as somewhere where someone went to get his masters degree.
once as somewhere someones family lived for a few months.
The real question is not whether you or I, or the next guy thinks killing Osama will accomplish anything. It is whether the general public will think so.
No, the real question is how history will judge this assassination. We are outraged about what he took responsibility for, and likely blinded by it, justifying our blood thirst by having lived through his.
Future generations might not be so biased, and think that the right to a trial is universal and should be stronger protected the more atrocious the acts were, and the surer we are of the guilt.
History might judge this as government sanctioned vigilante justice, which takes away any moral high ground we might have had.
a million? You're off by almost two orders of magnitude. About 40,000 british soldiers and sailors died in the revolution, according to wikipedia. Or did you mean that Britain lost about a million subjects by virtue of them forming their own country?
The UK democracy (Parliament) is about 200 years older than the american democracy.
Kids! The Icelandic Althing is 1081 years and still going. The US is a mere child when it comes to democracy. The right to vote is still not universal, which is a big obstacle on the road to the US ever becoming a democracy.
But then spits on you with commercials.
They are not spitting on your back. They are faking an orgasm.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
For every improperly classified document they release, they're releasing thousands of things that should be kept secret.
They aren't competent to do what they are doing, and we're not safe as long as they are making these mistakes.
Are you crazy?! Thanks to Wikileaks, the operation to capture one of America's most wanted criminals, which had lagged for more than two years, happened in a couple of days. If only my projects were the same...
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
that's not spit.
Funny, I was thinking of an entirely different Star Wars quote - "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine." Martyrs are particularly difficult to deal with, after all.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
Our government can obviously be trusted to never endanger lives through its recklessness.
> Or are you thinking they'll magically know in 2008 where Osama is because five years earlier some other guy moved to Abbottabad for a year?
They seemed to magically know exactly where he was within a week of the Wikileak being released.
Some people argue that they knew long before and didn't want anyone to know because they were gaining valuable intel. To that I have to ask: why didn't they just perform the raid right away, capture him, gather all his materials, and take down the al Qaeda from the top?
Some people argue that they didn't know anything but what was in the Wikileak and figured everything out in a panicked rush after the leak. To that I have to ask: why did the government fail to do anything with this very important lead for the 2-6 years that they had it?
Some people argue that the government had been meticulously gathering information and was coincidentally very close to capturing him when the leak was released. To that I have to ask: would you like to buy a bridge?
Sorry, where have I been granted more freedom in the last 30 years? Everywhere you look more is being taken away by both the war on drugs and terrorism. Remember times when a warrant was necessary to collect evidence? Remember when you had a right to speedy trial and didn't have to rot in jail for years on end without charge?
I'm amazed that you choose to blind yourself of the politics of the last 30 years and then have the balls to declare someone else deluded. Remember when I couldn't get a DUI for driving while sober? Now adays you can fail a piss test being bone sober and still end up with a DUI because a cop says you drove funny and even though you blow 0.0.
Parent wasn't a brave soul fighting anything, there is a big difference between acknowledging reality and doing something to fix it. Parent also said nothing about being persecuted.
You neglect the most obvious question, if we knew how to get to Osama Bin Laden, why hadn't we done it already?
I don't recall that incident, when did Wikileaks publish the atomic bomb schematics? OH, YEAH, that happened decades before Wikileaks even existed, back when the internet was a curiosity available to DoD and a few universities only. They printed it in the newspaper. Nothing happened.
Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.
I will give you a hint, this is not about sending seals to kill a guy in the middle of the night. Justice implies presumption of innocence, trial and conviction, even for the Big Bad Guy.
Why do left wingers always say that "dissent is patriotic". That's literally an oxymoron."
No, it's not. They're simply not as bloody stupid as you. Neither were the founding fathers. They had few illusions about what governments were and how wrong they could go. The government is a tool of the people, not the other way around. As soon as you think like a fascist, that the state is all that matters, then it's all over. Dissent is how you keep the government in check and ensure that the ideals on which the country was founded persist.
That's what other people understand and you don't.
No, the real question is how history will judge this assassination. We are outraged about what he took responsibility for, and likely blinded by it, justifying our blood thirst by having lived through his. Future generations might not be so biased, and think that the right to a trial is universal and should be stronger protected the more atrocious the acts were, and the surer we are of the guilt.
That's ridiculous. When you gloat about killing 3000 people and promise to kill more, your life is forfeit and you can expect to be dead as soon as those you've attacked get their hands on you. I couldn't care less how history judges it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Well, as long as we have worthless pop culture references to toss at it, let's keep it simple; "He's dead, Jim".
Moving on...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think the point GP was raising that it would have been more appropriate to capture the guy alive, put him on trial, and then - if (heh) he is found guilty - execute him right and proper. Then it wouldn't have been assassination.
This is not unprecedented - Israel did just that to Eichmann. He was directly responsible for so many deaths of their people that 3000 is chump change in comparison - and yet they felt that capturing him alive and putting them on trial is preferable to covert assassination.
Personally, I don't see how it makes any difference in the end in terms of justice - Osama is clearly guilty, never denied it, and would have gotten the death penalty anyway. But I think that putting him on trial would have been a much more prominent propaganda win than merely killing him.
the doc only states that the detainee moved there in 2003. A couple a lines down it also states he moved away from there a year later.
Basically, it's that randomest and least remarkable mention of the place.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Yes, this is a big problem, because many felonies are political in nature (like recreational drug use), which gives the people in power an opportunity to reduce the votes for the opposition.
Also, anyone who is arrested for a possible felony at the time of the election, whether the charges later get dropped or not. In certain southern states, it wasn't uncommon for the sheriff to round up the "undesirables" for the election, to prevent them from voting, and then let them go later.
In addition, you have to register to vote, which effectively disenfranchises the very poorest who have fallen completely out of the system. An added complication here are that in many district, any homeless who HAVE registered (through the help of others) consistently get their votes challenged by republicans and thrown away, since they seldom can prove residency.
Plus, of course, enforced voter registration prevents anyone who changes their mind and decides to vote just before the election from voting.
Oh, and let's not forget that any permanent resident of the United States can NOT become a citizen and vote if they ever directly OR indirectly have ever been affiliated with the communist party. Even if they've lived here for fifty years and are as American as apple pie.
Then there are related problems, like no minimum requirements for voter turnout, meaning that elections are never disqualified due to not having a majority.
This is made worse by the system not allowing blank votes -- if you have the choice between A and B, you can't say "neither" by voting blank, and even if 90% of the adult citizens refuse to vote for either A or B, whichever gets the most votes of the alternatives will win. Even if that's 2 votes against 1 with a million refusing to choose either.
And guess who sets up the alternatives? Yep, the ones in power.
All in all, it's no more a democracy than the voting system in the Soviet Union was. It's a farce.
Please elaborate. So far I can't see anything that could possibly change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And figureheads are important, we wouldn't have them if they weren't. His death sends many messages to people who would engage in activities like he did things like we will track you down no matter how long it takes, you will not be safe, ever.
It is massively demoralizing for his followers as well. Their figurehead goes out not in a blaze of glory killing infidels, but taken out by a special ops team while hiding in his mansion.
Capturing or killing Bin Laden had a great deal of symbolic value and that is worthwhile.
Historically, it has been a part of the image of "good civilized guys" (which I hope we're still trying to project) that even the most vile scum is only put to death after a trial. If that courtesy was extended to the perpetrators of the Holocaust, I don't see why it shouldn't be applicable to Osama. The end result is the same, but symbolically it does make a big difference.
So, in other words, you do not think Justicia should be blind and provide _everyone_ with the same rights -- that the right to a fair trial can be waived if the commander in chief says so?
Had he surrendered, then sure, give him a trial. Maybe a military tribunal. But they were in a long firefight in a dangerous place, and he didn't surrender. If he wanted to be captured and wanted a trial, then he should have surrendered. I'm not going to ask that those guys put themselves at any more risk than necessary, and I'm not going to ask that they put a more priority on capturing rather than killing him if he isn't going to surrender. Better him dying than any one of them.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
According to news stories I've read, Osama was unarmed. Yet he was shot in the head, point blank. It's pretty clear that it was a planned assassination from the get go.
Getting back to the example of Eichmann - Israelis went so far as to craft an elaborate undercover operation all for the sake of capturing him alive and getting him into Israel. Assassinating him would be much easier to them (as evidenced by other cases where they did just that).
In fact, there's also an interesting point to consider. Hamas commanders who mastermind terrorist acts which kill, at most, a few dozen, eventually just get a bullet to the head, quiet like. But a guy who masterminded the murder of millions - him they got on trial, which many consider to be more fair than e.g. Nuremberg trials, and then hanged him right and proper - the only civilian ever executed in the history of Israel. Why? Because the trial was part of setting it an example for everyone to remember - here's what the man did and how, in rigorous detail; and here's what he gets for doing all that. A bullet to the head in the heat of the battle does not have quite the same effect.
Personally, I think it would have probably been even better to capture Osama and keep him alive. A dead man is a martyr, a shahid - doubly so as now he actually gloriously died in battle against the "infidels".
Please elaborate. So far I can't see anything that could possibly change.
About five stories back was the real news: the US got ahold of bin Laden's computer. Regardless of the symbolism of killing the man himself, the seizure of his files may turn out to be the beginning of the end of at least the Pakistan/Afghanistan chapter of Al Queda.
Shit shit shit oSama goddamnit. Now I'm probably on a watch list. Sigh.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
You're exactly right, there is a principal involved in this that most people are overlooking. Even before the news broke that Usama was actually unarmed at the time, I found it very suspect that the best trained military team in the world, as the American media is telling us, was unable to capture an individual without killing him. There are any number of non lethal ways to take someone down who is armed with a weapon. But the fact now that they are telling me that he actually wasn't armed and yet they shot him in the head tells me that they were never interested in capturing him alive.
However I am fundamentally opposed to capital punishment. It has shown to not be a detererant, it doesn't bring justice only revenge (the two are not the same thing) and, most importantly in my eyes, the state doesn't have the right to kill anyone where it can be avoided.
I acknowledge that this view isn't the most popular idea right now, but historical trends are showing that capital punishment is becoming less and less acceptable and that is exactly what this was, an untried execution of a person. Whatever way you break it down, the US government acted no differently to a gang in the street
There is no -1 disagree
Wait, what? Isn't that the entire point of WikiLeaks - that without leaks we don't know what they're up to?
You realize the recent WikiLeaks dump revealed all kinds of ludicrous "decisions" (using the term loosely) were being made, right?
Um, Israel has also carried out assassinations. The approach chosen depends on many other factors, not least of which is that Eichmann did not have tens of millions of sympathisers around the world who would be motivated to launch repeated terrorist attacks to free him.
Sir, You've nailed the point. People are too worried about correcting the symptoms, even if it involves doing wrong things. Here in Brazil, there's huge support for a quite unconstitutional law that prohibits politicians under investigation to be candidates. The problem is, unless you've gone to trial, you're supposed to be innocent. What people should be questioning is why it takes so much time to condemn corrupt public agents. Governments got their secrets, but the kind of secret a government has is the real problem, if only crooks involve themselves on the political process, if only crooks get elected, you've got crook's secrets, no matter how much you scream on twitter or Facebook. Really, if you really want to change the government, you've got to seriously consider being part of the government, or at least thinking on supporting directly people you trust. Electing a president is not enough, you've got to be part of lowest level, from city councils up.
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Shoot the messenger. That'll make it all better.
He's a patriot (or falsely accused) because he revealed the truth to the electorate. It's not guaranteed to make things better but lies can pretty much be guaranteed to make things worse.
"...fearing al-Qaida realized their courier may have been tracked and move Osama, the US administration accelerated their plan and attacked the target site over the weekend."
Awww, so sorry Obama. You couldn't perfectly time the killing of OBL to match your re-election and get that popularity vote behind you. (Sorry, but the more I read about how we've known about/tracked his courier for literally years now, the more I question why the hell we waited this damn long to take action if NOT for some other benefit such as re-election timing.)
Actually he was shot at a distance in the chest, and then shot in the head afterwards to ensure he was dead. And you say the word 'assassination' as if anyone gives a shit, which assumes a lot. An assassination is just a death sentence handed down with the accused in abstentia, when transgressions and identity are well known and a trial would change nothing (and just end up being a spectacle).
Since you keep citing Eichmann, you should know that the Israelis killed several Nazis post WWII without bringing them back. In particular, the first Nazi war criminal hunted down and killed by the Mossad in Argentina was killed on site by four agents, after he had admitted to them who he was, his body left in a trunk with a note stuck to his body. He was unarmed when they put a couple bullets in the back of his head. It was their statement to the world about how they planned on dealing with Nazi war criminals.
Now I would have preferred they bring him back alive to a US aircraft carrier and held a military trial there, as there would be next to no possibility of an attack on the trial and they could have done the entire thing on video, which would have the secondary effect of ensuring nobody could say he wasn't dead. But I didn't know all the details of the operation, and it wasn't me conducting a raid into a foreign country without notifying their military of my presence for fear they might leak the info, so I won't sit here and play armchair critic, pretending I knew what was best.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?