In the aftermath of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid the contradictory reports from the Obama administration about the event, I came to believe that the Isalmist was likely assassinated deliberately. The stories about resistance put up by Bin Laden made little sense since they were immediately withdrawn and replaced by an equally implausible scenario.
The new book, No Easy Day, by a member of the SEAL team which murdered Bin Laden confirms my conviction. According to the NY Times:
According to the account in the book…Bin Laden was shot in the head when he peered out of his bedroom door into a top-floor hallway of his compound as the SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell toward him.
The author, whom military officials have identified as Matt Bissonnette, 36, said he was directly behind the “point man,” or lead commando, as the SEALs followed Bin Laden into the room, where they found him on the floor at the foot of his bed with “blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull,” and two women wailing over his body, which was “still twitching and convulsing.”
The author said he and another member then trained their weapons on Bin Laden’s chest and fired several rounds, until he was motionless.
This account doesn’t clarify whether the SEALs were under orders to execute him, but it sure seems that way. The “kill shots” too are a “nice” touch since they would obviate any need to evacuate a fatally wounded man from the compound. Claims like these seem patently false:
Military officials have said that the SEALs made split-second decisions, fearing that Bin Laden, though unarmed, could have exploded a suicide vest or other booby trap.
If they feared a booby trap, why did they follow him into the room and execute him? Couldn’t the entrance to the room have been booby-trapped?
The Obama administration’s response to all this lauded the SEALs for their “unparalleled courage.” How much courage does it take to fire a bullet into the brain of an unarmed man and then finish him off with a “kill shot?”
There’s a reason why the government is pissed at this book. It doesn’t want to spoil the rosy atmospherics around the Bin Laden killing especially as Obama goes into the home stretch of a presidential campaign. He’d rather maintain the fiction that we went in to get Bin Laden, but not necessarily kill him outright.
At the time of Bin Laden’s execution, many of us were more naive than we are now. Now we know that Obama has eagerly embraced targeted killings by drone and other means. Now we know he is a devout believer in such assassinations. Now we know that he doesn’t believe in international law or basic decency. He believes in the power of the gun. The man so many placed so much faith and hope in–now little more than warmed-over Dick Cheney.
RE: “Claims like these seem patently false: ‘Military officials have said that the SEALs made split-second decisions, fearing that Bin Laden, though unarmed, could have exploded a suicide vest or other booby trap.'”
TO BORROW FROM DAVID BYRNE: “Same as it ever was…Same as it ever was…Same as it ever was…”
Talking Heads: Once In A Lifetime (VIDEO, 05:19) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-io-kZKl_BI
I.F. STONE (1967): “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.” ~ In a Time of Torment, 1961-1967 (1967), p. 317
P.S. No more battered
spousevoter syndrome for me!• Jill Stein for President (Stein/Honkala 2012) – http://www.jillstein.org/
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I remain convinced all these conflicting accounts with arguments around the ‘righteousness’ of the supposed kill are disinformation/distraction around the fact the guy died in late 2001.
It was interesting seeing the story unfold via the BBC, because one of their newsreaders went to school in Abbotadad, (don’t worry: this couldn’t happen on any American or Israeli channel whatsoever) and her eyebrows didn’t half tell a story.
There was somebody resembling Osama in the house, but no dialysis machine. If he did die in 2001 or thereabouts, as a lot of people in Pakistan have always said, then there was a double keeping the myth going. Given that the bin Ladens are a large family of largely Yemeni origin, with all sorts of cousins back in the Yemen, this isn’t at all implausible.
On none of the several occasions where British Special forces (SAS or SBS) had a tall man looking like Osama and being treated like a “sheikh” located and under observation, did US forces and intelligence services respond to urgent reports. Either the Bush administration didn’t want to catch him, or they already knew it had to be a double, possibly baiting a trap. The only firm response from “DC” was that they didn’t want British forces actually capturing “Osama” so they didn’t.
Meanwhile, Abu Hamza’s son has been convicted of a remarkably violent robbery in King’s Lynn; the jury having been kept ignorant of his real identity until they had reached their verdict. Rather than liberating the oppressed peoples of the world, Hamza junior seems to have used his Al Qaeda training to liberate the contents of a Jewelers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-19429762
Despite all the political hysteria about Abu Hamza, his son seems to be the bigger actual public danger: all the old man does is talk bollocks in an aggressive manner, which street corner act is finding fewer and fewer takers.
Sentencing will be in a few weeks: given that they tossed smoke grenades liberally in all directions as they made their getaway, I sense an “indeterminate sentence for public protection” coming on, although a life sentence is theoretically possible. I think that Junior tired of all his father’s empty rhetoric and decided to actually do something, albeit in a place with probably the lowest security alert level in Western Europe.
King’s Lynn is policed mainly by the permanent traffic jam on the landward side preventing access by impatient criminals.
Susan, bingo. You hit it head on.
OBL was a decorated CIA operative and died in 2001. Obama’s decision to axe Geronimo had to do with Petraeus racing to do the same — Petraeus’ thunder was stolen.
This was all about ending the fabricated story line started for the Neocon plan to reshape the Middle East on behalf of Israel and their New World Order.
Touché! I’m with Susan Campbell. How can anyone believe all this crap?
> If they feared a booby trap, why did they follow him into the room and execute him? Couldn’t the entrance to the room have been booby-trapped?
Are you really that stupid? The guy had just gone through the doorway. In the split second it happened, and with a bullet already in him, he wouldn’t be able to arm a booby-trap.
A suicide vest on the other hand would be promptly available.
No, I’m not that stupid. But you apparently are because you don’t bother reading the comment rules. I presume you’re just another hasbarista jetting in from Hasbara Central. Just in case you return, you’ll be moderated to ensure you write a comment without taking a dump here in the process. No insults. Just substance. If you don’t have substance don’t bother.
The notion that the SEALs shot Bin Laden because thy believed he was a threat is bogus. The notion they believed the room was booby trapped is bogus. You know it & I know it. They executed him in cold blood: an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Law of the jungle. Courtesy of Barack Obama.
So they set out to kill him. A perfectly reasonable and justified course of action. So what?
Or are you anti-American as well as anti-Israel?
Perfectly reasonable if you believe in blood vengeance and reject the rule of law or democratic values as you apparently do. I’m a constitutionalist. I believe in the Bill of Rights & constitution. I don’t believe anyone has the right to decide to execute someone in cold blood.
If anyone is anti American it is Barack Obama. As for Israel, I’m not anti-Israel, just anti-Simone.
You’re not anti-Israel? Yet you reject the idea of Israel as a Jewish state.
This is such a tiresome stupid discussion with Hasbaristas like you. I support Israel as a State for all its citizens, which makes it a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Do I support a Jewish supremacist state in which Jews have supremacy over every other ethnic group? No. But that not a “Jewish state,” that’s a Jewish exclusivist state.
Call me anti-Israel once more & I’ll ban your a%$, again.
Let me understand – do you accept the idea of a state whose Jewish and Arab citizens have equal rights, but to which Jews (but not Arabs) have the Right of Return? Because if not, then you ARE opposed to the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state, since the higher Arab birthrate would mean that within at most two generations, it would be an Arab state with a Jewish minority, not even a “non-supremacist Jewish state”. You know this, you are not stupid.
Let you understand? Me? I think that’s highly unlikely. At any rate, I don’t share your definitions or terms regarding anything related to Israel. So what you really need to say is that according to your highly constrained and ideologically extreme terms of reference my views are anti-Israel. Which doesn’t mean that objectively according to any reasonable terms of reference that I am anti-Israel. Only by your standards, which are no standards at all.
Of course if there is a Law of Return there must be Right of Return as well. How else would Jews and Palestinians have equal rights? As for your demographic predictions about Jews being overwhelming by a Palestinian minority, unless you can show me your advanced degree in demography or statistics, I think I’ll choose to be skeptical about any claim you make in that regard.
My entire point about Israel’s future is that it must become a state that guarantees equal rights to both majority & miniority communities. Then it won’t much matter who is in the majority & who is in the minority. Everyone’s rights will be guaranteed. In your view, the only way to guarantee Jewish rights is for Jews to have superior power. That’s a recipe for unending dysfunction.
Osama Bin Laden died in 2001. Larry Silverstein made $7.2 billion in insurance off of property he entered the low bid for and STILL won on July 2001, only months before he was given security control over steel buildings that emptied into their footprints like dust when getting hit by 600 mph several ton flaming fireballs from the sides.
Just a theory.
erase this comment from OperationRedPill and webhost problems will be over
Frankly, I’d rather erase you…entirely…at least from these threads.
For your information, Simone, the pro-American course of action would have been to apprehend Bin Laden and then give him a civilian trial with an initial presumption of innocence.
What’s up with that??
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-secret-reason-for-netanyahu-s-timing-on-iran-war.premium-1.461300
The secret reason for Netanyahu’s timing on Iran war
In private conversations, Netanyahu has said there is nothing after Election Day, which falls on November 6. If Obama wins, Netanyahu says, he will take revenge for the overt efforts to defeat him and will prevent Netanyahu from attacking Iran. For this reason, and only this reason, Netanyahu must go on the offensive over Iran now -[b] some reliable sources say he will probably do it during the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina next week [/b]- when the timing is the worst for Israel. That’s the price of getting portrayed as being a member of the Romney-Netanyahu-Sheldon Adelson trinity.
If Romney wins, he doesn’t actually take power until January, so Obama still has two months to deal with Netanyahu. It’s almost as if nobody in the Israeli government understands how the American system works. The results are known in November, barring challenges, but the new president isn’t formally elected until the electoral college has convened and he has no authority until he has been inaugurated and sworn in. The process is deliberately drawn out, in order to ensure it all runs smoothly and without argument when power is actually transferred.
Even the American electorate is going to smell the manipulation if Israel starts a war during the Democratic Convention.
The other issue is going to be whether or not Berlin welcomes a new war being started when they are trying to prevent their own empire flying apart in the financial hurricane. Germany does have some clout left.
In any case, the new Egyptian President is clearly prepared to challenge the Iranian regime’s pretence to leadership of the Muslim world, so it’s a time for Israel to look at alliance-building (which admittedly requires goodwill that the far right isn’t capable of) rather than war-starting. Many of the security threats to Israel are threats to Egypt: friendship is possible, but nobody wants to be friends with the neighbourhood psychopath. It’s also noteworthy that a visceral distaste for President Assad seems to be a unifying force amongst and within many Arab nations.
Israel couldn’t beat Hezbollah after they invaded Lebanon illegally (again) in 2006. They got their asses handed to them by a rag-tag militia that had zero tanks, zero planes, and no navy, army, nor air force to speak of. Netanyahu and Barak can say all they want, but it won’t change the hard facts: Israel would commit public suicide in a fight against a country, Iran, the size of UK, France, Spain and Germany combined (4x Iraq).
Iranians may have been victims in the 20th century, but at the turn of the 21st things changed. Look forward to a future of accountability.
How many lives were saved by this “cold blood execution”?
Maybe your life too?
Oh sure. Bin Laden was on the run, in seclusion & ignored by his comrades for 5 yrs. Yet this recluse was going to kill me. Right.
so by your logic, NO terrorist should ever be eliminated???? And by the same logic the Sword of Gideon should not exist??
clarification please
Shauva Tov
No one should be eliminated by the law of bullet & gun. Alleged terrorists should be apprehended, tried & convicted. If a terrorist is committing an act of terror, then of course he should be stopped by violent means if necessary. But only while he is committing the act or if he’s apprehended & fires on his pursuers.
have you tried telling the Islamists that???? They seem to have a differing world view than you do…. and given the choice… i think YOUR the naive one that is “head in sand”….. READ THE QUARAN…. for criying in the night… sheeesh….then read the TORAH….. ** i have the opinion that you havent, wont and dont believe**
Which Islamists are you talking about? The ones creeping under your bed late at night seeking to slit your throat as you sleep??
As for reading the Quran, the day when you can read the Quran in Arabic or when you can tell me you’ve taken an academic course in Islam, will be the day when I believe you know shit from shinola regarding that subject. Till then, natter away. No one will care.
“… The man so many placed so much faith and hope in–now little more than warmed-over Dick Cheney…”
I do not agree. Had Bush and Cheney followed Obama’s game plan the invasion of Afghanistan would have been unnecessary, Iraq would never have happened, hundreds of thousands of lives would not have been wasted and trillions in treasure saved.
Im all for democratic laws and so forth, but honestly- there are much worse things one could write human-rights oriented articles about.
Assasination was probably chosen to avoid retaliatory action by terrorists in order to release him.
But even if there was no reason at all other than pure justice and revenge, i still find assasination a legitamite course of action. There are extreme situations where comman sense and worldwide concensus can override due justice in my mind. And osama bin laden would be one of those cases.