Bin Laden Hideout Recreated In Counter-Strike

dotarray writes "Osama bin Laden's final hiding spot in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has been made into a playable map for Counter-Strike: Source. Honestly, we're a little surprised that it took this long."

Comments

The truth

[redemtionboy]

The real criminal here is that Pakistani realtor who sold that house for $1,000,000.

Re:The truth

[SpankR]

No kidding - 1,000,000 rupees, maybe...

Re:The truth

[M. Baranczak]

Talk Abbottabad place to hide.

Re:The truth

[somersault]

That's what she said :(

Missing option

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a missing option in Counterstrike: the "shoot the fuck out of the house and sort through the rubble later" -playmode

Floor plans...

[Frosty Piss]

I'm interested to know where the floor plans came from. Real or made up?

Re:Floor plans...

[damn_registrars]

I'm interested to know where the floor plans came from. Real or made up?

They look similar to the wikipedia entry for the same - at least the stuff shown in those screen shots.

Re:Floor plans...

[Frosty Piss]

Those are not floor plans. Those are exteriors.

Re:Floor plans...

[Mistlefoot]

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/05/06/the-actuals-plan-for-bin-ladens-pucca-house/

The Floor Plans

Re:Floor plans...

[Dr Max]

uhuh, So you won't mind when an enemy special ops force operates secretly inside the US and assassinates in cold blood your presidents because of the countless international deaths that they ordered.

Re:Floor plans...

[artor3]

No more than I would mind that same force taking our president captive, locking him up on foreign soil, trying and convicting him.

Is your argument seriously that we should never kill any foreigners because their countrymen might not like it? Or are you one of those comic-book-logic people who thinks that the mere act of a trial is the difference between justice and vengeance? Because that is cargo cult justice - tripe intended to make the hero seem morally superior.

The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence. The punishment is the part that brings about justice, and when there can be no doubt of guilt, there is no particular need for a trial. We have trials even in cases of "obvious" guilt because sometimes someone who is "obviously" guilty may in fact be innocent. But OBL was at the point where there could never be even a shadow of doubt of guilt.

Re:Floor plans...

[amicusNYCL]

in military slang, "used his wife as a human shield" no doubt actually means "the wife was closest to the door when we kicked it open, so we shot her first".

The wife rushed the SEALs while OBL was standing there, and they shot her in the leg. They shot OBL in the left side of the head, twice. If they wanted to kill his wife, they would have, especially since she charged them. They didn't kill her though, they left her there with a wounded leg. At any rate, the "human shield" woman, regardless of whether or not she was being used involuntarily, was not the wife in his bedroom and wasn't covering OBL, she was covering one of the other men who died (possibly the courier who fired on the SEALs when they landed, or OBL's son).

Re:Floor plans...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I agree, I mean taking credit for 3,000+ deaths in one swoop who were also unarmed should give him the right to a fair trial

A few considerations:

First, if in fact somebody is particularly, notoriously, heinous, surely they won't exactly be looking forward to a fair trial? All those cases where the 'obvious' guilt of the suspect offends the public should be cakewalks for the prosecution, given the value of rule of law, is the short procedural delay really a big deal?

Second, there are situations(almost certainly not his; but that isn't the point) where the public/media are incorrect. That's sort of the reason that rule of law is considered superior to lynch mobs.

The third is more pragmatic: Against certain classes of opponent(internationally notorious mediagenic terrorist figureheads definitely being among them) fair trials are among the most powerful things you can do to them, the more boring, the better. You don't want the last few pages of their upcoming hagiography to be something out of an action thriller: 'went down in hail of bullets during a shootout with sinister international assassin squad, a true martyr of the movement'. You want it to be as unbelievably dull as possible. 'Taken into custody, charged with X,Y,Z, went before FOO district court, convicted, sentenced, just like any common criminal.' Obviously, getting shot kind of ruins your day; but it buffs the hell out of your legacy. Only cool people get assassinated. They more shadowy and badass the assassins, the better. Getting tried and convicted like any common scumbag, though, especially if the authorities stubbornly treat you neither better nor worse than anybody else being processed through the system, is basically the most banal exit possible.

Re:Floor plans...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Honestly, I think that international relations would be a much nicer game if the bulk of the casualties were among the upper echelons of political and military power, on all sides, rather than concentrated among a mixture of civilians and common soldiers who are allocated the overwhelming majority of the killing and the dying.

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

Okay, let's put you in the position of planning this operation. Are you really going to be the guy who says "take him alive at any cost" when he might be armed, might have a suicide bomb strapped to his chest, might be holding a detonator to blow up the whole compound, or any other number of very likely scenarios? This guy is a terrorist, after all, who said that he'd never be taken alive, and so on with the usual terrorist rhetoric.

I'm sorry, but a US Navy SEAL's life is worth more than a mass murderer. Enough people have died because of bin Laden. Take no chances. If he doesn't immediately have his hands up and be face down on the floor spread-eagled and screaming "I surrender" when you burst into that room, yeah, you shoot him. You make that very clear to the men you send into harm's way to get him, and at the end of the day you trust their judgement on the battlefield when they kick down that door and have to make a split-second decision. We who are Monday morning quarterbacking are lucky that we didn't have to make that decision, but I think 99% of people would neutralize the threat when they see he's not prone with his hands up, and the other 1% probably doesn't live long enough to feel smug and superior about it.

I am not for the death penalty, but in a military operation, you do what you have to do to come home safe. If Osama bin Laden wanted a fair trial, he could have turned himself in to the nearest US Embassy on 9/12. Let's stop with the silly idealist nonsense and recognize we're living in the real world, with real consequences to our men and women on the battlefield. I'll say it again, an American soldier's life is worth more than bin Laden's, and any operation to get bin Laden had to have recognized that basic truth.

Re:Floor plans...

[symbolset]

He had two guns: a pistol and an AK. They were just out of reach in the room. The only good having the guns to hand would have done him is to die with the gun in his hand and maybe taking an American with him on the way out. He'd have died anyway. When they kicked in the door he was asleep and surprised - which is the freaking point of using a Navy SEAL team and top-secret stealth helicopters deep in foreign territory. He declared himself a combatant in war on the US, and acted on that. He was "under arms."

You're offended they didn't fight fair. Well boo freaking hoo. The goal is not to fight fair. It's not to die for your country. The goal is to secure the objective. It's to make the other poor bastard die for his. How this went down was right and proper. The SEAL team doesn't have to let the bad guy pop some rounds off to make you feel better about this.

Re:Floor plans...

[Cochonou]

There is a thing called the separation of powers. Executive power should not act as if it were judiciary power.

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

In theory I agree about a fair trial too. The best outcome possible, in my opinion, was have this guy rot in solitary for the rest of his life in a Federal prison, in the dark, never hearing a single human voice ever again. I wish just such a fate on every terrorist arrested by the police.

This was not a police action, however. These were military soldiers going into an unknown situation, and I have no doubt in my mind they did what they had to to be safe, and come home alive and well afterwards. Osama bin Laden could have been wearing a suicide vest, his finger on the detonator behind his back. He could have rigged the whole compound to explode. He could have had a weapon in his hand, obscured by the woman rushing the SEALs. There are so many different scenarios, each more dangerous than the last, and while I'm against the death penalty, including summary executions, I recognize that in the battlefield, a soldier has to do what a soldier has to do to come home safe. Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and the difference of a split second might mean death for you, and your whole team. By all means, if he's not spread-eagled, his hands up in the air, and his face on the ground screaming "I surrender" in perfect American English, don't risk it and pull the trigger. These are highly trained operators, and I would never question the split-second decisions they make in that situation.

The fact of the matter is, Osama bin Laden chose to be a terrorist, chose not to turn himself in to the nearest US Embassy to be arrested and taken to trial, and chose not to surrender when we finally caught up to him. His death was entirely of his choosing, he just didn't get to pick the time and date.

Re:Floor plans...

[Dr Max]

Really? Let’s change president for you, would you prefer to be shot in cold blood right where you stand or taken alive. I agree it’s a kangaroo court system once your on foreign soil but its better than being in a body bag, and at least you get to have your say. You have many more chances of escape, not to mention how much harder it would be to kidnap a person than it would be to just shoot them. It’s no wonder the military wanted Osama dead with no trial, because if he did go to trial (sure he would be found guilty) he would of exposed decades of dodgy CIA practices and the reasons he hates America so much. We have the Geneva Convention for a reason not just so we can claim the Nazis were super evil.

and yes i think america should stop killing people, especially in cold blood.

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

Let's drop you from a helicopter in a terrorist compound, and see if you meekly ask the leader there if he'll kindly surrender and go back with you to a trial, or if you'd rather have a gun and shoot anybody who doesn't beg to be arrested the instant your boots hit the ground.

This was a military operation, not a police operation. There were time concerns, there were threat concerns, and the list of situational unknowns is a mile long. Rather than quoting bumper stickers, try to imagine yourself in the position those SEALs were in, or imagine being the one to order those SEALs into harm's way. Are you really going to throw your life or their lives away taking unnecessary risks for some philosophical argument about separation of powers?

None of that matters, of course, because guess what? The founding fathers made the President the Commander in Chief of the US military. That's how they doled out the powers. And guess what? The military's job is to kill people, and protect the lives of Americans (themselves included). If such a concept is uncomfortable to you, perhaps you should surrender your citizenship and go live someplace that doesn't have a military, and doesn't care about protecting its citizens.

If the president ordered the FBI to kill somebody on American soil, then you could argue about separation of powers. But arguing about a military operation, especially one as risky as this one? Seriously?

Re:Floor plans...

[jd]

Ignoring the legalities of what you're saying (because that won't get anyone anywhere), what you are saying is that the President lied when he said there were no orders to kill Bin Laden. Orders can be implicit as well as explicit, but we'll go with your scenario that they were very explicit indeed. Since he couldn't have known in advance that the door was going to get kicked in, and since no general giving orders was likely to have taken chances on him not having a concealed detonation device, what you are saying is that the orders were indeed to kill him on sight and to not take him alive. There's simply no other way to read your post.

I am not saying here whether I agree or disagree with that decision, tactically, legally, politically or by any other measure. What I am saying is that I find the idea of concealing any such order in order to avoid tactical, legal, political or other consequence, to be highly denigrating and insulting to both the office of the President and to the US itself. If the highest in the land is not willing to face up to their own actions and take full responsibility for them, publicly and honestly, what chance those who model themselves after the nation's selected role-model?

If, on the other hand, NO such order was given, implicitly OR explicitly, by the President or any person of appropriate authority beneath him, I would want a full, honest, complete and realistic account of how the soldiers would have accepted a surrender or affected a capture of any kind.

In other words, someone is not taking full responsibility. I don't care whom, I don't care why. These are adults, they should be expected to behave like adults. (Ok, they should behave like society asks adults to behave, as we all know that no adult ever actually does and that lying, cheating and swindling are indeed indicators of behaving like adults actually behave.)

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

The procedural delay would have been a big deal to the soldiers in that compound, if their delay resulted in a notorious terrorist who had sent many on suicide bombings activating a suicide bomb of his own. Going into that room, they had to make a split second decision with a great many situational unknowns. Osama bin Laden was not immediately surrendering, as he most certainly could have, and thus any threat he might have posed to those soldiers was swiftly eliminated. A show trial (and that's all it would be, since everyone knows the outcome already) isn't more valuable than the lives of those soldiers.

This wasn't a lynch mob, this was a military operation conducted by honorable soldiers well versed in the rules of war and military justice. Is there anybody who isn't a complete loon actually saying otherwise? Bottom line, on a battlefield, you are well within your rights to shoot the enemy if they enemy hasn't surrendered. You don't stand around waiting to see if they'll surrender if the enemy is before you. Rules of engagement to the contrary just gets good soldiers killed. The enemy is your enemy whether they're currently shooting at you or not.

I agree with you on your third point, but for decidedly non-pragmatic reasons. Philosophically, Osama bin Laden living out the rest of his days in a jail cell would be so much better than him being dead. But pragmatically, to capture him alive would be an extreme risk to our soldiers in that compound, and a lightning rod for future violence. Yes, he's a martyr now, but there's no shortage of those anyway.

Again, bottom line, he was a military target, not somebody we were serving a warrant to. Our soldiers did what they had to to come home safe in a very dangerous situation. The operation was a massive success, and a charismatic voice for terror has been silenced. This is such a huge win for everyone but an increasingly irrelevant group of murderers. Why is this in any way controversial?

Re:Floor plans...

[ArsenneLupin]

The best outcome possible, in my opinion, was have this guy rot in solitary for the rest of his life in a Federal prison...

In solitary? Why let such a nice hot piece of Arabian ass go wasted in such a way?

Re:Floor plans...

[metacell]

I agree, I mean taking credit for 3,000+ deaths in one swoop who were also unarmed should give him the right to a fair trial

Actually, Osama never took credit for those deaths, which is why he wasn't formally wanted by FBI for the 9/11 bombings (FBI most wanted). The video which was shown on television shortly after the bombings, where he allegedly took the blame, was badly translated.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure if Osama had his hand in the 9/11 bombings, or if other people did it inspired by him

Re:Floor plans...

[cold fjord]

There is a thing called the separation of powers. Executive power should not act as if it were judiciary power.

They weren't. Bin Laden declared war on the United States in the 1990s. After treating the problem of Al Qaeda essentially as a police problem until the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress issued the Authorization for Use of Military Force which is functionally equivalent to a declaration of war on Al Qaeda. This is now a military problem. Bin Laden was killed as the head of Al Qaeda in a military operation in a war zone. No need for judicial involvement, which is very limited on the battlefield anyway. Admiral Yamamoto suffered a similar fate in WW2.

In case you think there could be peace, read Bin Laden's Letter to America to see his demands. The short version: everyone convert to Islam, then abolish your Constitution and govern the country under Sharia law... in every detail. (Beheading, stoning, crucifixion, whipping, ban alcohol, .... the works.)

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

I was not in any top secret meetings where the mission was planned and discussed, nor was I in the room when orders were given to the soldiers who carried out the mission. For what it's worth, the understanding I've gotten is that there was a contingency plan to capture him and extract him alive, however nobody really expected that plan would be needed. After all, he was a terrorist who claimed he'd never be taken alive, and had sent many others out into the world to blow themselves up. Still, somewhere, someone, figured out what to do if he surrendered, and the conclusion, I can't imagine, was to summarily execute him. Somebody in the government would at least want to ask him where his #2 is hiding. Even if he lies, or refuses to say anything about anybody, there's some analysis to be made. Getting Osama bin Laden, was after all, a triumph of intelligence analysis.

I think it's safe to say, regardless, that on a battlefield, it's understood as a matter of course that soldiers should defend themselves from any threat to their own lives. It's also understood that in war you shoot at your enemies, and keep shooting them until they throw up the white flag. There was no indication that I've heard that Osama bin Laden made any attempt to surrender. Whether or not he was armed, whether or not he was wearing a suicide vest, whether or not he made any threatening move when those soldiers came into the room, is entirely irrelevant. He was an enemy on the field of battle, and his life was forfeit unless he explicitly tried to surrender. Running and trying to hide behind your wife is not the same thing as surrendering. It may be cowardly, it may even be non-hostile, but he was still an enemy on the field of battle, and shooting him is okay until he explicitly surrenders.

My point though, is not about legalities, or who should take responsibility for any orders. Frankly, I think everyone's taken responsibility, rather proudly. My point is that you trust the snap decision a solider has to make on a battlefield to come home safe. You want your realistic account of what happened, that's it. Soldiers came in, Osama bin Laden didn't have his hands up, so they neutralized the threat before he could do any of them harm. Doesn't matter what their strategic orders are, in that split second they had to decide what to do when faced with an enemy. I'm going to do them the honor of not second-guessing that tactical decision. Since all of them came home safe, with valuable intelligence gathered at the site, I'd say they did the right thing all around.

Re:Floor plans...

[novium]

Roper: "So now you'd give the devil the benefit of law?"

More: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"

Roper: "I'd cut down every law in England to do that."

More: "Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

Re:Floor plans...

[cold fjord]

Actually, Osama never took credit for those deaths, which is why he wasn't formally wanted by FBI for the 9/11 bombings (FBI most wanted [fbi.gov]). The video which was shown on television shortly after the bombings, where he allegedly took the blame, was badly translated.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure if Osama had his hand in the 9/11 bombings, or if other people did it inspired by him

Actually, Bin Laden did take responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, on more than one occasion. Here is one:
Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11

Here are some videos of him with some of the 9/11 attackers:
Video Shows Bin Laden, 9/11 Hijackers
Bin Laden '9/11 video' broadcast

And maybe you should try another page:

Bin Laden was a suspect in a number of terrorist attacks around the world in addition to the 9/11 attacks.

The link you provide is apparently based solely on the federal indictments - that is, a matter of criminal law. More details here.

After the mass attacks of 9/11, Congress responded with the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and Al Qaeda became a military problem. I don't know that the FBI continually updates the crimes section on the most wanted list.

Bin Laden's demands? Americans must convert to Islam, discard the Constitution, and govern with Sharia law, or Al Qaeda will keep attacking the US. Bin Laden's offier - convert or die. Some choice, eh?

For those in need: Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Re:Floor plans...

[metacell]

I'm one of those foreigners who're a little worried about what USA will do next in the name of "justice".

Wikileaks has exposed corruption in my own government, is perfectly legal, and is basically doing the job our newspaper journalists should do, so I want to support them. But according to the logic of many Americans, anyone who indirectly helps their enemies is also an enemy. If I donate money to Wikileaks, will I also be put on the list for "supporting terrorists"? Will the US government try to seize my foreign assets and arrest me if I put my foot on US soil?

The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence. The punishment is the part that brings about justice, and when there can be no doubt of guilt, there is no particular need for a trial.

There are a number of reasons there should always be a trial:

1. People are "certain" of someone's guilt and turn out to be wrong all the time.
Osama Bin Laden is actually a good example of this. Everybody's assuming he's behind the 9/11 bombings, but there wasn't enough evidence for FBI to put out an arrest warrant. Until his death, Obama was formally only wanted for the bombings against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. (FBI Most Wanted)
The video released shortly after the 9/11 bombings, where he allegedly took the blame for the attacks, was badly translated. Osama certainly seemd to applaud the bombings after the fact, but it's not clear what part, if any, he took in actutally perpetrating them.
The Guantanamo prisoners are another example. American politicians assured us they were "the worst of the worst", and now it turns out some of them weren't even held because they were suspected of terrorism; they were held only because the US military wanted information from them.

2. Allowing assassinations without trial provides the people in power with a convenient way to do away with their political enemies, as long as they can whip up a public frenzy against them. This can and will be abused.

3. A trial lets all the facts on the table.
Perhaps Osama is guilty, but not of what he is accused of. Perhaps there are more guilty parties, but the people in power wants some of them to go free. Executing someone without trial is a convenient way to punish your guilty enemy, while letting your guilty friends get away.
In this particular case, embarassing facts that may surface during a trial include
a) Incompetence on the part of Homeland Security
b) Facts regarding the close ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family
c) The US government's previous support to the terrorists they are now fighting
... plus everything else which has been going on behind the scenes and we don't know about yet.

4. Legality. If we start making exceptions to the law when someone is "obviously guilty", people will start abusing it for their own ends, or simply do it out of laziness, and point to the previous cases as justification. The only way to avoid this is to err on the side of caution and always follow the law, even when someone IS obviously guilty.

Re:Floor plans...

[drolli]

you should not compare the life of the soldier to the life of bin Laden but to the lives which could have been saved by interrogating him.

Re:Floor plans...

[mrxak]

Again, I'd like to have seen us interrogate him, put him on trial, and lock him up in solitary for the rest of a long, miserable life in the dark, forgotten.

That's idealism speaking, though. The reality is, the odds of that happening were very small. The man himself said he would never be taken alive. He was a terrorist, the head of a terrorist group specializing in suicide bombings. Between shooting him quickly when he didn't immediately surrender, and waiting to see if he'd shoot some of our soldiers first, or blow himself up, shooting him is the safest outcome.

As skilled as these SEALs were, I cannot imagine any possible scenario in which we took bin Laden alive if he didn't immediately surrender. The only difference hesitation would have made was some wounded or killed SEALs, with bin Laden still dead. That's not an acceptable alternative.

Again, I believe if he had legitimately surrendered, we would have accepted that surrender. It just didn't happen though. It's very easy to look back with even a partial picture of the inside of that room, and say what should and shouldn't have happened, but until Osama bin Laden was lying dead on the floor, and all other threats were neutralized, the entire situation was filled with unknown variables. Maybe we could've gotten lucky, maybe it could have been a nightmare that served as a propaganda piece for our enemies and an embarrassment for the US around the world, with soldiers dead that are thankfully alive today.

Re:Floor plans...

[Stiletto]

When we waltz into someone's country and kill their people, we're no better than the people who waltzed onto our planes to kill ours.

We've also set a terrible precedent: "It's A-OK to assassinate someone on foreign soil." But only when we do it, I guess...

Re:Floor plans...

[insertwackynamehere]

Osama had a body guard who was ordered to shoot him if he ever were to be captured. Hope that helps :)

Re:Floor plans...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact of the matter is, Osama bin Laden chose to be a terrorist, chose not to turn himself in to the nearest US Embassy to be arrested and taken to trial, and chose not to surrender when we finally caught up to him. His death was entirely of his choosing, he just didn't get to pick the time and date.

president Obama chose to be president and chose to continue killing innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, because he hasn't turned himself in to the nearest Iraqi embassy to be arrested and taken to trial then he is to be killed in cold blood after his wife is shot, and its his own fault.

Re:Floor plans...

[sqrt(2)]

It's what I admire most about foreign governments, their outward secularism. They may be religious, just as much as an American politician, but the difference between Europe and Asia (Japan at least) is that it's not a liability to not talk about your faith when running for office. In America, if you came out as an atheist you'd never make it beyond local levels of elected offices, and only in very liberal areas. Religion should be a private matter between a man and his god, or man and whatever he believes, it's no one's business and has no place in civil society. But in America, we want our politicians to be "good Christians", which leads to many socially and economic regressive policies.

Re:Floor plans...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Don't worry. Bin Laden has been given all the weapons he always used : women and children hide behind, and babies to throw at the soldiers. Oh and you have to walk through the local kindergarten, which is booby-trapped. I don't mean an empty kindergarten, of course. And, of course, at the end of the level you get blamed for every kid that died by all lefties worldwide, as it's so obviously your fault that Bin Laden likes to bomb toddlers.

Sounds like fun ?

Re:Floor plans...

[metacell]

When your allies are working against you, why should we treat them any better than enemies?

You define "working against us" as "not doing what we tell them". It's a quick and efficient way to make friends into enemies.

Actually, this is how the world works, with nations looking out for their own best interests. Being friendly and politically correct with everyone is not how the world works, and I'm glad nobody so deluded is in charge of the US government.

True, that's how it works - for the USA. Other nations have to be friendly and politically correct, or face the consequences. The USA is the only nation which can send their troops into foreign territory to apprehend someone and get away with it, because of its superior military force and large economic influence.

It only works up to a point, though. I think the USA is heading for two big problems down the road:

1. Accumulating enemies and bad-will across the world. The USA may be militarily stronger than any other nation on Earth, but they're not stronger than all the others combined.
2. A large and growing national debt. The USA has the largest military budget in the world, several times larger than the closest contender, and sooner or later they'll reach a point where they can't afford it.

Re:Floor plans...

[horza]

I don't think the USA did it in the name of justice, they did it in the name of security. They took 9/11 as an act of war, and then vowed to pursue Bin Laden and his group until the threat had been neutralised. Taking out their symbolic head was one of their objectives to achieve this.

Admittedly the USA justice system is flawed, for example their pursuit of Assange and perverting the Swedish and English justice system via their influence or arresting Skylarov on behalf of Adobe. It shows they are not above petty vengeance. However in this case I think most people will agree that this particular terrorist group has enough of a track record to show they are a real threat.

It's a shame he couldn't be brought to trial, but they had one helicopter that crashed and limited men on the ground. They only had one chance to get him, dead or alive. If he'd managed to slip out the back then it could be another 10 years before the Americans found him again, especially as he was being sheltered by the Pakistan government.

Phillip.

Re:Floor plans...

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Those two countries are irrelevant,their GDP too small to talk about. Taiwan you don't need to talk about your faith. Japan you don't need it. Singapore you don't need it. And of course, obviously, China.

Re:Floor plans...

[jmac_the_man]

Separation of powers? Like the fact that the Chief Executive is also the Commander in Chief of the military, and can therefore order military operations (yes, even ones that kill people) against an enemy that declared war on us in 1996? Especially one who Congress voted for an Authorization for the Use of Force against?

I'm not a huge fan of the current President, but come on. The judiciary has no place in the process of making war. Two Presidents and six Congresses did this by the books.

Re:Floor plans...

[jmac_the_man]

Good negotiation technique: Bid high, with a plan to lower your bid to something reasonable. Bad negotiation technique: Crash airplanes into buildings.

Seriously. Where should we, as America, start compromising on Sharia law? Should we abolish the Constitution? Should we stone adulterers? Ban alcohol? Abolish religious freedom? (Or from a moral standpoint, Osama wasn't a US citizen. I am, and I don't get to demand any of that shit. Why should my government listen to this guy and not me?)

I'm not a fan of Obama, but I agree with the counterproposal he used in the negotiation with bin Laden. You know, the proposal that was most likely 5.56 mm wide and delivered at about 3500 feet per second by a SEAL "negotiation team."

Re:Floor plans...

[metacell]

You know what I mean...

Re:Floor plans...

[olderchurch]

From the link the parent provided:
CAUTION
Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.

So I would agree with the parent that the FBI didn't have enough evidence to tie him to 9/11. Otherwise the FBI would have certainly mentioned it.

Re:Floor plans...

[metacell]

If someone had told me ten years ago that the USA would set up detention camps where they brought in foreign nationals for questioning and torture without trial, I would have dismissed that as a ridiculous conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, reality has a way of catching up to you.

In case you don't know, a number of non-US citizens have had their assets seized without trial because they were believed to finance terrorism, or have some other kind of connection to terrorism, but without being charged with any form of concrete accusations.

Leading American politicians have seriously suggested that Assange should be assassinated because he (they believe) indirectly aided USA:s enemies by publishing classified information.

Re:Floor plans...

[imikem]

Seriously?

Which of the 3000 people in the World Trade Center towers had spent decades organizing and carrying out mass murder, and publicly declared war on, well anyone? I'll wait here while you never answer.

OBL was a self-declared lawful combatant. He waived his right to due process. Period.

As for the violation of Pakistani sovereignty, the fact this mass murderer was living in their country for years while their military, police and intelligence services were unable or unwilling to do basic investigative work on what should be a quite suspicious property, indicates that the rule of law in Pakistan falls considerably short of a level warranting full sovereign rights. Particularly when US taxpayers are funding a sizable fraction of their government apparatus.

Your equation of these two events is so offensive and wrong that I can only assume you are mentally ill. Please seek psychiatric treatment.

Re:Floor plans...

[Myopic]

I'm just curious whether you merely used that example to make a rhetorical point, or whether you actually equate using highly trained military agents to do a precision operation designed to eliminate one well-known evil mastermind, to using several commercial airliners full of innocent civilians to destroy skyscrapers full of more innocent civilians, causing them to collapse onto even more innocent civilians, just because both the military operation and the terrorism operation both occurred over the political boundaries of the people who planned them? Are those really really equal in your mind? Really?

To be clear, my opinion is that even though there are a small number of superficial similarities between the two events, that the rest of the vast majority of event characteristics hugely overwhelm the minor details in terms of making moral judgements. I don't even think they are close, not by a long shot.

Re:Floor plans...

[delinear]

The case is closed. Everything was done in accordance with international law.

I guess you missed the whole unsanctioned-military-operation-within-the-border-of-a-country-that's-technically-an-ally part, then?

Re:Floor plans...

[Hognoxious]

I've heard hearsay

Yeah, it tends to work like that

they pulled him out, took him to another floor, and shot him there along with his family.

The latest scuttlebutt is that Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked his head clean off. Apparently it flew through the air like a bloody shuttlecock.

Re:Floor plans...

[Dr Max]

That's a very convenient view of your enemy, takes all the hard work out of convincing people to kill them without question. But from my limited grasp on psychology these people are just like you and me if our country was being invaded or raped from afar and we would go to the same levels.

Re:Floor plans...

[delinear]

When it's enemy soil during a war there are strict rules of engagement that are internationally recognised. When it's the soil of someone who is ostensibly your ally and you do it without their knowledge or permission, it sets a very dangerous precedent. It's easy to say he was a monster so it doesn't matter, but the point with creating exceptions to defined rules is that they might not always work in your favour. What if it had been Julian Assange - plenty of people in the US were calling him a terrorist or a traitor (despite him not being from the US) and saying Wikileaks could cost lives, how do you think a secret military incursion into the UK to gun him down would have played out?

Re:Floor plans...

[mbkennel]

If the suspect is a known-to-be-extremely-dangerous-mass-murderer that's pretty much what they do.

Re:Floor plans...

[Have Brain Will Rent]

The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence.

No, there are other functions of a trial. For example to demonstrate to "the people" that they live in a society of laws and due process. Just like free speech is protected by letting Neo-Nazis spew hate the benefits the law affords citizens is protected by observing due process even in cases when you "know he is guilty."

And for example there is the right, in most western countries of which I am aware, of the accused to face their accuser in a court of law.

The trial, the conviction (if any), the sentencing etc. are not just for the benefit of the accused they are for the benefit of us all. Modern history demonstrates quite clearly why we all need those protections.

Re:Floor plans...

[Paltin]

And he should still have had a trial.

The problem is - who decides "beyond shadow of a doubt"?

Do you trust the President to do that? Maybe our current president makes good decisions, but it sets a bad precedent. Maybe the next president decides that the entire liberal wing of the senate is guilty of treason, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Oops! The problem isn't that Osama was guilty. The trial wouldn't be for him. The problem is that, well, no one should have the power to unilaterally execute whoever they want to.

Re:Floor plans...

[jd]

Which boils down to what I was saying. Either the President lied about ordering his capture if possible or the army is lying in that all rules of engagement were followed. Can't have both.

I am not judging one way or the other the action of the SEALs. They did the job they were sent to do and the results were the only ones possible given the metholdology they were ordered to use.

My beef isn't with the outcome, at least not in this debate. In this debate, I'm focussed entirely on the issue that the collection of statements and evidence we have been given indicate that we aren't being told the parts of the story that matters: who made the decision to make surrender impossible? If it was from high-up, then I want the President to admit that NO order that permitted capture was given and to say why. If it was by the troops on the ground, I want an explanation as to why they believed it to be necessary, from them and no-one else.

In the case of the troops, they'd faced one armed person (everyone else in the building was unarmed) and he had been killed the moment the SEALs fired. There was no firefight. I'll accept - for now - that this may have been claimed through the fog of war. I'll also accept that the SEALs may well have expected a firefight at any moment, giving them an itchy trigger finger. I'll accept that when they found Bin Laden's room, they expected some sort of suicide system or for him to be armed. He hadn't and he wasn't.

But did the troops get a briefing that psyched them specifically to be so neurotic as to make any other results possible? Was the President's order phrased such that even if the SEALs were rational and calm, they had a Presidential command to kill this man? If they didn't get such a briefing and their orders WERE to try and capture Bin Laden, I want a full, workable explanation on how they would have carried it out.

This is the important part of the equation that most discussions totally miss out on. The rights and wrongs are incidental at this point, they have to be because we don't know whose rights and whose wrongs created the outcome. This is like blaming an illness on a fever. Until we have better information, blame needs to be thrown out the window.

Of course, half of what I'm insisting we should know is heavily classsified, the rest is even more heavily classified, mostly for operational reasons. That information won't be seen in 50 years, the US government has been heavily reluctant to declassify information over a hundred years old. (The CIA only just revealed that you could use lemon juice as a secret ink, and other World War I spy secrets.) It is possible won't ever be known.

Without it, though, we're copying the Charge of the Light Brigade - charging the heavily-armed, heavily-fortified walls of military procedure and military secrecy with a means that is neither appropriate nor intelligent.

A better solution would be a review board that is quasi-independent of not just the military but the government as well whose purvue would be to see such classified information and ensure that there's better accountability. The military are horribly reluctant (Tillman). Besides which, self-awareness is suicide on a battlefield. You don't have the time for that kind of analysis. Because of the way the system works, generals are under-trained on the nuances and long-term effects of their actions - again, a trait that is likely to ensure a soldier never lives to see that rank. A second pair of eyes that is sufficiently on the outside as to not be limited to a sole type of thinking (and also to not cause turf wars) and yet sufficiently on the inside to be able to reduce bogus public statements and possibly suugest bugfixes for mission plans... that could work.

It wouldn't be acceptable to the military, as it stands, the right-wing would consider it larger not smaller government, the left who like war don't want to see cleaner communication if it could damage their chances in elections, and the left who don't like war don't want to see war that is more ethical and better communicated as that could damage their position.

Boom Headshot!

[cosm]

[SERVER] MOTD - WHAT UP INFIDELS
[STS6] - Lock n' loaded
[STS6] - dey r camping tspawn watch out for ak-nubs
[UBL] - I hear something!
[UBL] - hey who teamflashe------
Boom Headshot!
[STS6 -> UBL] [984 HP]
[Announcer] - Counter Terrorist Win
[UBL] - fcking awp nubs
[STS6] - wanna join r clan? not!!!
[SERVER] - User UBL teamkicked reason/trolling

Re:Been here a while...

[1u3hr]

the president was left outside the loop because he was so hesitant

And he was born in Kenya. Yeah, whatever. It's not like the Tea Party/Birthers are going to give Obama credit for anything he does.

satellite imagery and more

[shuz]

It is fairly amazing what someone can piece together using well known sources. 30 seconds on google maps gave me satellite imagery and many images from the ground including the downed US helicopter.
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9294138184493326603&q=Abbott%C4%81bad,+Abbottabad,+Khyber+Pakhtunkhwa,+Pakistan+compound&hl=en&dtab=0&sll=34.169215,73.242433&sspn=0.049606,0.057297&ie=UTF8&ll=34.169848,73.240979&spn=0,0&t=h&z=19&lci=com.panoramio.all

Re:Navy SEALs

[artor3]

Actually, word is that they built a full scale replica and trained in it until they knew the layout like their own home. Retired SEALs have been saying that that's the standard practice for missions like this, whenever there's sufficient time.

Well, it is an fy_ map

[Anonymous Coward]

The map in TFA uses the "fy_" prefix, which is a long-standing way of denoting community maps with no particular objective. The two letters were originally an initialism for "Fuck You" – often bowdlerized to "Frag Yard" or similar.

Re:Been here a while...

[philljcool]

Osama would be dead if he was put on trial in any country on earth.

Where any country on earth = Belarus; China; Ecuador; Egypt; India; Iran; Iraq; Israel; Japan; Malaysia; Mongolia; North Korea; Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; South Korea; Taiwan; Tonga; United States.
Here in Australia as well as most of the world he would not be put to death.

Re:Been here a while...

[downhole]

Yes, they're not at all like the left wingers attacking Sarah Palin and her children, who are the epitome of class and independent thinking...

Fark totally killed this one.

[symbolset]

Bin Laden's mansion only worth 25 percent of what he paid for it, meaning he'll be underwater for a long time.

Once in a while Fark.com is a beautiful thing.

Re:Been here a while...

[amiga3D]

I don't know....I think California might let him off.

WHENNNN

[mustPushCart]

when is the world going to move on from counterstrike!?!!?

Re:WHENNNN

[sqrt(2)]

It's still one of the best online FPS games for the PC, and has a large player base and active community. PC games have more longevity, the original Starcraft was only recently replaced with a sequel, and people still play the first one.

Re:Been here a while...

[metacell]

If we're talking about rules, a war on an abstract concept is not a real war. A war is an armed conflict between states. The rules of war become meaningless when you're fighting an abstract concept. Whom are you going to declare war against? How do you know when the war ends and you're obligated to send home the prisoners?

The US government's talk about "war on terror", terrorists who are "enemy combatants", "war zones" in countries they are not at war with, and so on, are nonsense from the perspective of, for example, the Geneva convention. It's just rhetorics to make the armed conflict more palatable to the public.

For example, the US government calls it "terrorism" when they want to justify holding people prisoners indfeinitely and torturing them, then "war" when they want to justify holding them without trial, invading other countries, and justify endangering innocent bystanders.

Basically, the US does what it damn well pleases, because nobody else has the military to stand up to them.

Re:Cool!

[Hadlock]

Generally any company that sells their engine offers up the dev tooks (i.e.SDK) for free - because it's good, free, time proven marketing. There are only a couple of high end game engines that are completely closed source.