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Originally Posted by Sarah Skinner:
Great video, Dennis!  I am hoping that since this was our "objective" in Afghanistan, (getting OBL) and that has finally been acomplished that this will be a good time to get our troops out & start using more intel to deal with terrorism.  

I had heard that they weren't 100% sure OBL was there, but pretty sure it was a high level al Queda leader.  Maybe it all happened so fast & was kind of crazy that we are just getting conflicting reports. Maybe they didn't plan to kill him, but it happened.  Who knows?  Maybe that's why they hadn't made any decisions like showing photos of OBL dead... Maybe the plan wasn't to kill him?  

I am relieved that there is one less terrorist in the world. I'm not saying OBL was wrong for feeling the way he did, I'm simply sick of people dying as these wars have dragged on & on.  Bin Laden said he would bleed us dry, & he's done a pretty good job.  By the way, Bob said they should have burried him with cans of spam.  (pork)

I just read an article in Time mag about the FBI & how they are improving communication, etc, & getting better at uncovering terrorist plots.  I had just started reading it when this news broke.  How timely!

We cannot leave A-stan yet. It would leave the same exact power vacuum that led to UBL's creation.

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Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:

We cannot leave A-stan yet. It would leave the same exact power vacuum that led to UBL's creation.

yeah. sadly, uber-rino colin powell was right. we broke it, and we bought it. if we had stopped with the original ouster of the taliban, then perhaps we could have gone home, but we would've had to re-fight the battle again one day, and it's way past that point, 10 years later.

and  when the taliban was to retake afghanistan (following our exit), they would next set their sights on islamabad. and the payback for pakistan's efforts against the taliban would be ugly (remember the swat valley?), and the taliban would have its hands on a nuclear arsenal. unfortunately, this leaves us in a much tougher position than when we were considering an iraq pullout.

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
uber-rino colin powell was right. we broke it, and we bought it. if we had stopped with the original ouster of the taliban, then perhaps we could have gone home, but we would've had to re-fight the battle again one day, and it's way past that point, 10 years later.

Not wanting to re-open old arguments here, but maybe in hindsight it would have been better to finish the job in Afghanistan before opening a "second front" in Iraq? Or even then, would there really ever have been a good time to say that the job in Afghanistan was done, given that when the Taliban were pushed back they could always just melt back into the highlands, or at worst, over the border into Pakistan? They didn't call Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires" for nothing....  

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Yeah, you guys are right.  It would leave a power vacuum.  But I sure wish we could abandon the entire region and let em rot.

Btw...I think it has come out that the pic of UBL in the video I posted of Pakistanis criticizing us was actually fake.  The video was accurate, but the photo in the Pakistani newspaper was fake after all.

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Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:

Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
uber-rino colin powell was right. we broke it, and we bought it. if we had stopped with the original ouster of the taliban, then perhaps we could have gone home, but we would've had to re-fight the battle again one day, and it's way past that point, 10 years later.

Not wanting to re-open old arguments here, but maybe in hindsight it would have been better to finish the job in Afghanistan before opening a "second front" in Iraq? Or even then, would there really ever have been a good time to say that the job in Afghanistan was done, given that when the Taliban were pushed back they could always just melt back into the highlands, or at worst, over the border into Pakistan? They didn't call Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires" for nothing....  

Actually they do call A-stan the graveyard of empires for nothing. Several empires did indeed flourish there.

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:

Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:

We cannot leave A-stan yet. It would leave the same exact power vacuum that led to UBL's creation.

yeah. sadly, uber-rino colin powell was right. we broke it, and we bought it. if we had stopped with the original ouster of the taliban, then perhaps we could have gone home, but we would've had to re-fight the battle again one day, and it's way past that point, 10 years later.

and  when the taliban was to retake afghanistan (following our exit), they would next set their sights on islamabad. and the payback for pakistan's efforts against the taliban would be ugly (remember the swat valley?), and the taliban would have its hands on a nuclear arsenal. unfortunately, this leaves us in a much tougher position than when we were considering an iraq pullout.

Dod, we never leave a country once we have fought there.....unless the name of that country is Vietnam. We will have a military presence there for years and years to come.

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Geez I hope not...

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
But I sure wish we could abandon the entire region and let em rot.

you and me both. it's just such a muddied issue that there is no easy way out.

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kind of pissed about this. yesterday there were reports of a loud explosion in abbottabad, yet today i can't find any news on it. wondering if they found the CIA safehouse that the administration let known was in the area watching bin laden. why does the AP do crap like that. breaking news one day, and then nothing anywhere in the media since.

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oh and the pakistanis have released the name of the CIA station chief in islamabad.

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interesting article

President Barack Obama’s May 1 raid and assassination of America’s Most Wanted, Osama bin Laden, wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Obama’s ordered kill and subsequent dumping of Osama’s body into the Indian Ocean has become George W. Bush’s Mission Accomplished: so full of holes and controversy that the conspiracy theorists are having a field day with it. To some, their version of Osama’s death is making sense. To the rest of us, we’re already growing tired of hearing about it.

Beyond a doubt, when it comes to that historic shoot-out in Abbottabad, Obama needs a do-over.

For starters, the Jessica Lynching of the Osama raid has already been proven another Washington screenplay. There was no gun slinging fight inside the property. Bin Laden, we are told, went from being armed with his signature Ak-47 and firing back rounds, to being unarmed.

Although the bin Laden gun fight story didn’t last long enough to become a country music song, the fact that the facts keep changing fuels conspiracy theories.

Why are official stories always full of holes? Maybe because that is the nature of complex historical events. If you look at them through a microscope, there are inevitable gaps and unexplained coincidences. That’s why scientists, not politicians, do actual experiments instead of taking videotapes of the world or soliciting opinion from their favorite pundit.

Power systems probably don’t mind conspiracy theories, either, one well known pundit told me recently. The government might even be fostering conspiracy theories, he says, citing an internal government report that surfaced years ago from a study on declassification. The study showed that government released information periodically on the John F. Kennedy assassination, so as to stimulate conspiracy theories and keep critics from inquiring into matters that the government really wanted to keep secret. Fomenting alternative narratives within the public are discussed in the major scholarly work on British intelligence written by University of Warwick professor Richard Aldrich (The Hidden Hand: Britian, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence).

On May 6, writing in a small, New York-based arts and politics magazine called Guernica, well-known critic of the establishment and of US foreign policy, Noam Chomsky, chimed in with his thoughts on the death of bin Laden:

"It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial.”

On May 7, Sept. 11 truther Michael Ruppert came out of the wilderness to ad his thoughts on Obama’s Osama assassination. Ruppert writes on Quebec based Global Research website:

“First, bin Laden was shooting. Then he wasn’t. Now, no pictures are going to be released. Ridiculous arguments on CNN, by House members stating that releasing photos would inflame and invite retaliation, flatly contradict what I suspect every grunt who ever earned a Combat Infantry Badge would say: Release the damn pictures. Give us some to hand out to the ‘indigs’. We got our man and that’s a message to anyone who would mess with us…Hoo Ah!”

It is the inconsistencies that matter here. Obama needs a “do-over” because the legend of bin Laden’s death is being quickly taken over by fiction authors like Steve Pieczenik, who claims he knows CIA officials who told him that bin Laden died in 2001. We’re not going to get a reset on this one. We’re just not going to know all the facts, or why they were spun the way they were, or what it all means to the war on terrorism or our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan until it is time for us to know. Nothing’s changed.

What’s occurring now in all of this is the Roswellian conspiracy surrounding Osama’s death is becoming realer than the reality; Sept 11 is making a comeback and can easily bring us back to a time stood still, when American needs to be moving forward.

With that it mind, it was actually surprising and a relief to read the full ABC News transcript with former Vice President Dick Cheney. He was asked by reporter Jonathan Karl the day after the bin Laden raid in Pakistan, “Are we safer now?”

“I think so,” he said…only to add that there will be further attacks attempted on the United States.

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Yeah its been weird.  Obama had this victory in the palm of his hand.  Public approval was his.  But somehow...he has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  YEs, I believe he got Osama and I praise the Lord justice was served.  (Now let God decide what to do with him).  

But then came the explanations.  what happened.  When it happened.  How it happened. Etc...

The only think I can think that would cause so many different explanations and versions fo the story to come out is that something happened the White House doesnt want us to know.  Also Leon Pineta (CIA) sez waterboarding led to  the info that led us to Bin Laden.  Others say this is not true.  Mrs Clinton (Sec of State) said the mission was made possible through the cooperation of the Pakistanis.  But apparently they 'forgot' to tell the Pakistanis!  And then the story was that it was a 49 minute firefight.  Then we find that only 1 or 2 people were armed.  And then we learn Bin Laden wasnt armed at all (but looked like he was going for his gun).

I dunno.  they arent telling us something.  But as long as this thug is dead, I'm fine with it.  I dont care if he was unarmed.  I dont care if he was petting his dog or feeding a baby at the time of his killing.  He is one dog that needed to die.  

And yes...i do suspect the SEALS killed him so he couldnt lawyer up with the ACLU and drag this thing through the mud for 10 years.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:

And yes...i do suspect the SEALS killed him so he couldnt lawyer up with the ACLU and drag this thing through the mud for 10 years.

i think that's what it's all about, right there. they don't want it out that this was a hit mission from the start. also, i think there was such a rush to ride the bounce that would come, that they basically blew their load before they got it in. i mean you have robert gates saying that it was agreed in the sitch. room that they wouldn't discuss any of the specifics of the raid, and by monday morning, you have two dozen people giving out different info. really, it all goes back to the question of whether or not this admin is completely inept, or dastardly.