Osama Bin Laden is Dead

[MACH1]

Deather.

[tony hipchest]

Originally Posted by SteelersinCA

I miss Tony.

That being said, I'm pissed because they tell me it takes months to get DNA evidence in my trials and I sat here and watched them get it in a day on Osama. Then they tell me he's dead? Shiiiiiiiiiit. Lying bastards.

so i watched hannity the other night desperately plead with every guest (all who happened to be republican) to agree with him that former prez bush deserved atleast half the credit.

what a worm.

if clinton can carry all the blame for missing osama with the tomahawks in 98 i guess bush can carry all the blame for tora bora.

[SH-Rock]

I think this is a good article to read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela..._b_856184.html

The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death

While the killing of Osama Bin Laden is being enthusiastically celebrated throughout America and some parts of the world, to say that such merriment is out of order will surely be considered heresy. Nonetheless, I'm saying it--because it needs to be said. For starters, let me say this: "Those of you who are celebrating--could you just pause for a moment and consider: What message are you sending the world?"

I certainly understand how those who have suffered from the events of 9/11 may feel relieved, even happy, to have "closure" after ten years of waiting for "justice to be done"--and I don't quarrel with such feelings. Closure is a natural yearning and can help people move on from serious trauma. And, of course, feelings are feelings. If you feel joyful, you feel joyful.

But celebration in the streets and on the airwaves is neither appropriate nor advisable--really--no matter what your feelings of elation. Here's why.

"Celebrating" the killing of any member of our species--for example, by chanting USA! USA! and singing The Star Spangled Banner outside the White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets--is a violation of human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of "good" or "evil" in any of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life, any life, is a failure to honor life's inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama Bin Laden did not respect the sanctity of others' lives. To that I would ask, "What relevance does that have to our own actions?" One aspect of being human is our ability to choose our own behavior; more specifically, our capacity to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While Osama Bin Laden was widely considered to be the personification of evil, he was nonetheless a human being. A more peaceable response to his killing would be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death and the thousands of violent deaths that occurred in the attempt to eliminate him from the face of the Earth; and to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play a role in killing another. This kind of compassion can be cultivated, as practitioners of many different spiritual traditions and humanistic philosophies will attest.

We are not a peaceful species. Nor are we a peaceful nation. The public celebrations of this killing throughout the country draw attention to these facts.

The death of Osama Bin Laden gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves: What kind of nation and what kind of species do we want to be? Do we want to become a species that honors life? Do we want to become a species that embodies peace? If that is what we want, then why not start now to examine our own hearts and actions, and begin to consciously evolve in that direction? We could start by not celebrating the killing of another.

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate "justice being done" may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge--not just "closure" but "getting even." The world is not safer with Osama Bin Laden's violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down); evil has not been finally removed from the Earth; the War on Terror goes on--so any celebration must be tempered with the sobering fact that much work still needs to be done to establish peace. The truth is that "celebrating justice" when one person is killed--as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities--only incites further desire for revenge, which, from "the other side's" viewpoint, is usually called "justice."

Consider this: If a leader in our country were killed in the manner in which Osama Bin Laden was killed, as "justice" for his acts of aggression in the War on Terror--and supporters of that act were shown proudly chanting their country's name, singing their national anthem, and demonstrating in the streets--Americans would likely feel more sickened than joyful, wouldn't you think? The impulse to celebrate a death depends on what side you're on.

The bottom line is that we cannot even begin to have peace until we stop the cycle of jubilation over acts of violence.

So isn't it time to ask: Who will stop the cycle? If not us, who? If not you and I, who will it be?


Do not ask for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
--John Donne

[Atlanta Dan]

Originally Posted by tony hipchest

so i watched hannity the other night desperately plead with every guest (all who happened to be republican) to agree with him that former prez bush deserved atleast half the credit..

Deal with it Sean

[Atlanta Dan]

Released photo of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad watching a game between his two favorite teams, the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens, on NFL Sunday Ticket

[ricardisimo]

Weekend Edition
May 6 -8, 2011

CounterPunch Diary

A Volcano of Lies

By ALEXANDER ****BURN
Barack Obama, who pledged to restore ethical honor to the White House after the Bush years, is now burying himself under an active volcano of lies, mostly but not exclusively concerning the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
There was scarcely a sentence in the President's Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records.
• The White House photograph of Obama, Clinton and top security advisors supposedly watching real-time footage of the Navy Seals' onslaught on the Abbottabad compound, their killing of two men and a woman (excuse for the latter killing: the standard "caught in crossfire") and liquidation of OBL himself turns out to have been a phony. BO and friends could have been watching basketball replays. Panetta has admitted the real-time video link stopped working before the Seals got into the compound.
• Panetta also admits Osama bin Laden was not armed, and that he did not hide behind his young wife's skirt. He conceded that under military rules of engagement Osama should have been taken prisoner, but then added vaguely that he showed some unspecified form of resistance. He probably reached for his walking stick, since he has been ailing from kidney and liver problems. As any black or brown resident in, say, the purview of the Ramparts Division of the LAPD knows full well, reaching for a walking stick or even holding a cell phone can be a death warrant; multiply that likelihood by a factor of 100 if you are the world’s most wanted terrorist in front of a score of heavily armed and homicidal Navy SEALs, no doubt amped up on amphetamine.
An admitted fan of the herb, Osama may have been stoned as part of his pain management program since there was a marijuana patch outside in the allotment and, like any world star in retirement, Osama liked to smoke a lot of weed and made DVDs of important speeches which stacked up forlornly on the bookshelf next to the bottles of pills and the Koran, hoping to get picked up by Al Jazeera or HBO. How his lieutenants must have yearned for his summary martyrdom as they received his importunate bulletins that they derail a train during Obama’s State of the Union and other madcap schemes.
• The White House claims that issues of delicacy prohibit the release of photographs of Osama's bullet-riddled face and required that after an alleged match with a relative's DNA he be given a swift but formal sea burial in a weighted body bag dropped from the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson into the north Arabian Sea, presumably awaiting retrieval by salvagers with a fix on the Vinson's position at the time of burial.
Maybe the Navy Seal photographer forgot to take his lens cap off. Obama's claims of ethical sensitivity certainly ring hollow. He's battling the wimp factor, and "Lo! The head of Osama" would be a nifty prop. There was lengthy display back in Bush-time of the mutilated bodies of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US special forces in 2003, plus filming of Saddam's own execution by hanging.
Further back, when DNA matches were unknown, US special forces verified Che Guevara's execution by permitting many photographs immediately post-mortem. They also cut off Che's hands, for subsequent verification by the CIA. We're not talking Miss Manners here.
• The official "back story" released Sunday night by Obama is that US intelligence learned of the Abbottabad compound only last August and spent the following months watching the place, following Osama's trusted couriers and concluding that it was highly likely, though not certain, that Osama was there.
This is bunk. The three-storey house has been a well-known feature of Abbottabad. Shaukat Qadir, a well-connected Pakistan Army officer, reported to CounterPunch from Pakistan: "For the record, this house has been under ISI surveillance while it was under construction. It was first raided in 2003, and the ISI just missed capturing al-Libi (he was later captured by the ISI close to Mardan in K-P Province). It has been raided on numerous occasions since."
Shaukat tells me that contrary to a report in the New York Times by Carlotta Gall on May 5, neither of the two trusted couriers were among the dead in the compound.

Shaukat: “The house where Osama had sought refuge belonged to two brothers from Mardan (a Pashtun dominated region of K-P) who had numerous aliases; locally they were known as Arshad (or Bara—meaning elder) and Chota (younger) Pathan, who have been residents of that house for seven years past. The rub is; neither one has been identified among the dead. If Osama was followed to this house by constant tracking of his courier who, according to CIA reports, shouldn’t one, if not both brothers, should have been present, shouldn’t they? But they weren’t. Of the seven bodies left behind (a female, a child and five men of ages ranging from mid-twenties to mid-thirties), none have been identified as being either brother…. “ Inference: “Osama was sold out. The operation was the result of entrapment. An entrapment organized through one or more of his most trusted aides…”

In fact, specific knowledge by US intelligence of the compound and its likely possible prime denizen goes back to 2005.
This has been established by Israel Shamir, also writing for CounterPunch. Shamir compares certain passages in the WikiLeaks documents on Guantanamo against those recently published by the New York Times and the Guardian.
Shamir reports these newspapers were working from the WikiLeaks files supplied to them (price unknown) by WikiLeaks' former German employee, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, "who went AWOL after this appropriation". Shamir says Domscheit-Berg made a deal with the Guardian which subsequently made a co-publication arrangement with the New York Times. "Both papers published the cables after redacting them, or should we say 'censoring' - removing everything the secret services demanded [they] remove."
When Assange learned that the Guardian and the New York Times planned to publish the Guantanamo files, his WikiLeaks team also prepared the files and began to upload. So did the competitors, possessing the Domscheit-Berg appropriated copy.
The most important redactions by the Guardian and the New York Times, Shamir writes, "were directly dictated by the US intelligence services. The name of Nashwan Abd Al Razzaq Abd Al Baqi, or by another name, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi or by his number IZ-10026 was edited away from the file of Abu al-Libi (US9LY-010017DP) and elsewhere."
This is significant because al-Iraqi was in close contact with al-Libi who had been designated by Osama in 2003 as his trusted, official courier, therefore aware of OBL's whereabouts at all times. In the end, at separate times, the US captured both al-Libi and al-Iraqi, had them both tortured and thus became aware of al-Libi's courier duties and hence the possibility that Osama was in Abbottabad.
Comparison of the redacted version of the Guardian and in the uncut version of WikiLeaks shows to what extent all the traces of al-Iraqi, the likely informer-under-torture, were removed at the behest of US intelligence. It was not connected to "caring about informers", for al-Libi was understood at the time to have committed suicide in a Libyan jail just before the arrival of the US Ambassador in Tripoli. The file of al-Iraqi is missing in all databases; he was captured in 2005 and kept in various secret prisons, until transferred to Guantanamo where he remains detained.
So the trail to Abbottabad was known to the US intelligence services at least since 2005, when al-Libi was captured. "Careful reading of the file," Shamir writes, "shows that al-Libi was connected with al-Iraqi since October 2002. In 2003, Osama stated al-Libi would be the official messenger between OBL and others in Pakistan. In mid-2003, al-Libi moved his family to Abbottabad, Pakistan and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar. He maintained contact with al-Iraqi."
We can conclude, from this narrative, that when the unredacted WikiLeaks files surfaced, US intelligence concluded that Osama's associates would soon figure out that the Americans had made the appropriate connections and conjectures and there the associates urged him to move on with all due haste. So Obama decided to send in the Seals.
From this active volcano of lies, we can safely assume that Obama's re-election campaign has been well and truly launched. Lift-off began on April 27 with the White House's release of the long birth certificate. Obama seems to have problems with timely provision of convincing documentation about arrivals (his own) and departures (Bin Laden's).
Release of the full birth certificate could have come in 2008, when it first became a minor issue. Instead Obama refused to authorize release until last week, by which time 25 per cent of all Americans and 50 per cent of all Republicans thought he was hiding something fishy. A photo of the dead Osama would have been useful this week in quelling speculation.
Had it not been for cloud cover over Abbottabad, the raid on Osama's compound could have come on Friday, April 29, the same day as the royal wedding.
Saturday, April 30 was reserved for the attempted assassination of Colonel Gaddafi, with the dropping of precision-guided bombs on the house of his son Saif, who died along with three grandchildren. Saif, then four, was in the Gaddafi family compound on April 15, 1986 when bombs ordered up by Ronald Reagan were dropped from F-111s, killing his 15-month old sister, adopted by Gaddafi 11 months earlier. Thus have Reagan and Obama shared a target. 'Decapitation' - going for the enemy's top guy - is now standard Nato strategy. In the "shock and awe" assaults on Iraq in 2003, the prime mission of US bombers was to target whatever houses Saddam was presumed to be visiting. We can assume electronic eavesdrops or maybe a human observer told the Nato targeteers that Gaddafi himself was in the house that Saturday, and the bombers were swiftly dispatched from Nato's Allied Air Command in Izmir, Turkey, whose overall commander is Lt-Gen Ralph J. Jodice II (US).
Would Obama have been briefed on the plan, or have signed off on a program of targeted assassination of Gaddafi? It seems a sure thing.
Reverse the rationale. If a Libyan bomber had blown up the wedding couple and a goodly tranche of the British upper crust in Westminster Abbey under justification that the whole place and its human contents, down to the grandchildren, not to mention the hats, were fair game because Cameron was there.
As the Oxford historian Mark Almond subsequently wrote in this site, "Little wonder, the royal newlyweds' honeymoon was suddenly cancelled on Saturday. So much of William and Kate's nuptials was choreographed around their parents' and grandparents' weddings that it was a fair guess that like Princess Elizabeth and Philip they were going to fly to Malta to start their honeymoon before going on to Kenya where three generations of Windsors have enjoyed cementing their relations. Malta is too close to Libya for comfort and Kenya's Muslim minority might not be too friendly to a serving Nato officer."
But Gaddafi survived. So Obama only had one bloodied feather in his cap when he gave one of the most morally repellent speeches I have ever heard delivered from the White House. Bush at least had the crude brio of a semi-literate jock when he vaunted America's prowess. Obama's "we nailed him" paragraphs of mendacity concluded with Dickensian Heepishness: "Tonight we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history."
Alas, the actual story of the "our history" is an unrelenting ability to lie about everything, while simultaneously claiming America's superior moral worth.
Footnote: Peering briefly at the royal nuptials in a house high up in the mountains above Malibu, I was surprised to see how spectacularly tacky the British upper classes have become. They looked very vulgar. The appalling cuteness of the Aston Martin supplied the coup de grace. The groom didn’t know how to stand up properly. Contrary to effusive comparisons, the bride’s much touted dress from the atelier of the wildly overpraised late Alexander McQueen, was a far cry from Grace Kelly’s, designed by Helen Rose, who had dressed her in High Society and The Swan. The bride’s headdress hung like a dishrag. The only vestments born with confidence and aplomb were those of the churchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, with his emphatic beard and specs, had a splendid cope. His voice was confident. I’d like to see him in debate with one of Teheran’s ayatollahs. But the Anglo actresses watching the event on our mountain were ecstatic. My daughter Daisy, returning to London two days later, reported that the young women she was encountering were all swept away by the event and eager for marriage.

I caught part of Chris Wallace's interview with National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on Fox News Sunday. I'm paraphrasing, but Wallace asked him what was wrong with "enhanced interrogation methods" like waterboarding ...

Donilon said those kind of methods are inconsistent with America's values. Wallace then asked him if shooting an unarmed man in the face is consistent with America's values.

Donilon's response: We are at war.

[ricardisimo]

Originally Posted by Wallace108

I caught part of Chris Wallace's interview with National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on Fox News Sunday. I'm paraphrasing, but Wallace asked him what was wrong with "enhanced interrogation methods" like waterboarding ...

Donilon said those kind of methods are inconsistent with America's values. Wallace then asked him if shooting an unarmed man in the face is consistent with America's values.

Donilon's response: We are at war.

That is classic.

[ricardisimo]

May 10, 2011

Why It Violated International Law

Assassinating Bin Laden

By MARJORIE COHN
When he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan, President Barack Obama said, "Justice has been done." Mr. Obama misused the word "justice" when he made that statement. He should have said, "Retaliation has been accomplished." A former professor of constitutional law should know the difference between those two concepts. The word "justice" implies an act of applying or upholding the law.
Targeted assassinations violate well-established principles of international law. Also called political assassinations, they are extrajudicial executions. These are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework.
Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that "extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war." The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.
In spite of its illegality, the Obama administration frequently uses targeted assassinations to accomplish its goals. Five days after executing Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama tried to bring "justice" to U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who has not been charged with any crime in the United States. The unmanned drone attack in Yemen missed al-Awlaki and killed two people "believed to be al Qaeda militants," according to a CBS/AP bulletin.
Two days before the Yemen attack, U.S. drones killed 15 people in Pakistan and wounded four. Since the March 17 drone attack that killed 44 people, also in Pakistan, there have been four drone strikes. In 2010, American drones carried out 111 strikes. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 957 civilians were killed in 2010.
The United States disavowed the use of extrajudicial killings under President Gerald Ford. After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Every succeeding president until George W. Bush renewed that order. However, the Clinton administration targeted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him.
In July 2001, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel denounced Israel's policy of targeted killings, or "preemptive operations." He said "the United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that."
Yet after September 11, 2001, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer invited the killing of Saddam Hussein: "The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less" than the cost of war. Shortly thereafter, Bush issued a secret directive, which authorized the CIA to target suspected terrorists for assassination when it would be impractical to capture them and when large-scale civilian casualties could be avoided.
In November 2002, Bush reportedly authorized the CIA to assassinate a suspected Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He and five traveling companions were killed in the hit, which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described as a "very successful tactical operation."
After the Holocaust, Winston Churchill wanted to execute the Nazi leaders without trials. But the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: "We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would . . . not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride."
Osama bin Laden and the "suspected militants" targeted in drone attacks should have been arrested and tried in U.S. courts or an international tribunal. Obama cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. These assassinations are not only illegal; they create a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her latest book is “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse” (NYU Press).

[HAWK]

So?

I like how you can bomb a compound for days killing countless in the process and that's perfectly acceptable. Kill someone in a surgical strike and it's all of a sudden wrong and against the law.

This kind of duality today is astounding.