I'm not buying the quick burial at sea. I don't see how they would just toss over the body of the most wanted man for the last 10 years within a few hours of killing him. Wouldn't they at least do an autopsy just for information purposes?
I'd be very surprised if they DIDN'T do an autopsy. They had the body for a while. After that, why would you want to keep it? Have it stuffed and mounted? Not really good for much else.
Except that one of the known problems with torture is that those being tortured will say anything. Its very likely that there have been a lot of false intel produced from enhanced interrogation that has had to be sorted through. Consider that we have had KSM and other hi ranking Al Qaeda figures for years but it still took almost 10 years to catch OBL. If torture was so effective then shouldn't OBL been caught much sooner?
Let's go back to the 2008 campaign when Obama spoke about this very thing, and many folks on this board were lambasting him for saying that he'd go into Pakistan with US troops even if they had actionable intel. I'm glad Obama went in to Pakistan with troops, and acted on the intel. He did what many here, McCain, and others said he shouldn't do. And as a result Osama has been brought to justice.
I am not quite sure I follow your reasoning here. Based upon your earlier posts are you saying that Al Qaeda hasn't launched a large scale on attack because we hadn't caught OBL but now that we have caught and killed us they will come after us? Also isn't that a rather cynical and uncaring position that it is fine that Al Qaeda attack foreign targets as long as they don't attack us? Lets not forget the fact they launched three massive attacks on us and the attacks on foreign targets are designed to attack allies or kill Americans overseas. I agree that our values are that we should have trial by jury and personally I would've liked to see him captured and tried but your argument seems unrealistic. Police in the US frequently launch raids in the middle night and are justified under the law. OBL is both the subject of an international manhunt and is also an enemy as noted in the Authorization of Force by Congress. Going after him is fully justified under both the laws of war and international law. As far as shooting him US police frequently are forced to shoot people. That is fully justified under both self-defense and the law of war. We're different because there was a legal justification for this action. This wasn't a religious vendetta or an act of political terrorism targeted at a legitimate leader but both a law enforcement and act of war targeted at an someone who was both an outlaw and an enemy. The reports are that he died with a gun in his hand as SamFisher noted what did you expect the SEALs to do? Let him shoot at them? That is because they are soldiers and that is what soldiers do. I am not sure what the point of this comment is. Did you follow the efforts to try other enemy combatants? There have been a lot of resistance among Congress and local officials to try them on US soldiers regarding concerns about security. There are also many questions regarding due process and admissibility of evidence obtained from torture and other extra legal means. I think all of those can be addressed but holding a trial for someone like OBL would not be easy. Personally I agree but I don't think is a realistic expectation and I am not going to criticize the troops and the mission for killing OBL based upon my personal preference. Did you think that Al Qaeda had stopped trying to get us but now remembered that they hate Americans? IN that case do you think we shouldn't have gone after OBL since as you note above that Al Qaeda wouldn't be less upset if we had captured OBL alive and put him on trial? Based on their own rhetoric Al Qaeda hasn't stopped hating America and while some attacks have been foiled the actions of Abdulmuttallab the Underwear Bomber and Nidal Hassan the Fort Hood shooter shows that they didn't need to wait for OBL to be captured or killed to come after Americans.
I doubt that McCain or Hillary Clinton wouldn't have done the exact same thing in Obama's situation. What a lot of the criticism was about was that you don't publicly humiliate an ally that way, even an admittedly shaky ally.
Pippen does not match Bin Laden in the degree of evil. Throw in Karl Malone, though, and you might have a deal.
yes of course, it is completely logical that George Bush kept the death of Bin laden quiet for all this years (when he was president) just so he could increase the popularity of Obama. brilliant plan.
This is because clerics don't have the authority to declare someone a Muslim/nonMuslim unless they declare it themselves - therefore they have to treat him as a Muslim. No amount of sin can change that. Ultimately according to Islamic faith, only God knows who is Muslim and who is not - regardless of what humans claim about themselves or others. This is actually one of the biggest gripes with Osama - he declared many people non-Muslim as a result of their alliance with his enemies, which he saw as enemies of Islam. It also shows that he's not a sheikh, imam, mufti, scholar, nothing. He's just an extremely religious dude.
Not that simple- some of the critical info that led to OBL's death came from al-quedafihters captured in Iraq. http://abcnews.go.com/US/t/story?id=13512344
I hope everyone is clear on OBL's goals. These are/were OBL's beliefs: His goal was to free the country designated as the protector of the Holy Kaaba, ensuring that it remains independent and governs according to Islamic law. He viewed the Saudi royal family as the protectors. He saw them as evil and corrupt, but not unique or having enough power to be a decision maker in the political arena. He saw the presence of US troops within the kingdom and US-KSA relations as a violation of the duties and responsibilities of the protector of the Kaaba. He believed that, incidentally, the reason for this alleged violation was the relationship of the Saudi royal family with the USA. Furthermore, he didn't see it as an alliance - he saw this as forced alliance whereby KSA is submissive to the USA. There are no issues with this if it were a normal alliance where both sides benefit and keep their promises. For him, the problem arises where the US essentially imposes its will on KSA, whereby they milk KSA for benefits, and all this is possible because the USA is happy to reimburse the royal family handsomely to maintain this relationship. His initial attempt to meet his goals was to offer his services to the royal family to defend the kingdom from Iraqi invasion. The royal family declined and ultimately went with operation desert shield. This was in 1990. His second attempt was a call to revamp the political leadership of the country. He contended that the king is not acting in accordance with sharia in his role, and therefore there needed to be a change in leadership. This was in 1992. After that he fled to Sudan and the rest is history. His disdain for the US is purely related to Saudi Arabia. He did not care if Americans were having a giant orgy while eating pork chops in a pool of alcohol - as long as Saudi Arabia becomes an independent sovereign nation. He did not forsee the royal family becoming loyal to its people. He did not see the US allowing Saudi to become an independent sovereign nation. This is where it went wrong and he became a terrorist and masterminded the murder of so many people. He does not value some lives over others, be it by religion or race. He was equally willing to murder Muslims and non-Muslims, Middle Easterners and others alike as long as he accomplished his goal. This is why he was also an enemy of Muslims and Arabs. The guy was a murderer and I can't even bother to begin to perceive any kind of justification for the lives he took and the terror he caused. It's just completely disgusting, and I'm glad that there is some closure, and I hope it brings positive change. There's no reason to be idiotic and think that his agenda was to hate Americans just for being Americans, or to hate non-Muslims just because they are non-Muslims. We must be aware of the mentality of terrorists, lest we all one day come face to face with a Bahraini Shi'ite who does not forget how his King dealt with a similar situation in Bahrain in 2011, and how his King's King reacted (or didn't react) to that situation. The goal remains to educate the uneducated and to sincerely seek to further human rights causes around the world. That's the best way IMO to ensure that people don't resort to violence as often as they currently do. One could very well argue that OBL would not have ended up killing those people if he was able to set up his own official political party in Saudi Arabia - is that something we can fix for the future? I doubt it, but who knows. It all rests in the hands of the socio-political masters of the world I guess.
I think most of this is explainable as mixups due to the secrecy involved but the WH is correcting some statements...
Actually it was reported yesterday that the information came from standard police-style interrogation - not illegal torture. In fact, it was reported that specifically did not work Pro-illegal torture repubs = epically wrong, again.
