Family: Osama bin Laden Executed
Safia bin Laden says that her infamous father was caught alive by U.S. forces and murdered in cold blood.
Safia bin Laden says that her infamous father was caught alive by U.S. forces and murdered in cold blood.
UPI (“Bin Laden family narrative surfaces“):
A family member claims al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was captured alive at his compound in Pakistan and executed on the ground floor of the compound.
Safia bin Laden, one of the terrorist leader’s daughters, allegedly told Pakistani interrogators that a special team of U.S. military personnel captured her father alive.
She added that he was initially taken alive but executed at point-blank range on the ground floor of his compound, London’s pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reports.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced that bin Laden was killed early Monday during a firefight at a fortified compound near one of Pakistan’s elite military academies.
The narrative of the assault has evolved, however, and conspiracy theories are developing as the Obama administration refuses to release photographic evidence that bin Laden is dead.
The narrative provided by the White House says bin Laden was killed apparently on the second or third floor of the compound. He wasn’t armed at the time.
The intelligence and military communities did a fantastic job in this mission. And President Obama and his senior team deserve enormous credit for not politicizing it. Key Members of Congress were properly kept in the loop during the planning stages. The courtesy advanced phone call to President Bush and the invitation to join his successor at Ground Zero were the pinnacle of class. And Vice President Biden and others have graciously spread the credit around, emphasizing that this was an American success story several years in the making, not simply an achievement of a Democratic president. The president deserves and will get plenty of credit, regardless.
But the administration has not covered itself in glory in the public handling of the aftermath. As Stephen Green puts it, “The plan for killing Osama Bin Laden was perfectly conceived and as perfectly executed as any special forces operation since Israel’s raid on Entebbe. But the follow-through has been strange at best, sometimes bordering on incompetence.”
I’m not sure whether they got the decision not to release the Osama death photo right, but I understand and respect their reasoning.
Indeed, I don’t have any heartburn with any of the decisions–the burial at sea vice keeping OBL’s body intact, not telling the Pak government ahead of time, or any of it. Hard decisions had to be made and the president made them, seemingly weighing the right considerations.
But they’ve had a difficult time getting their story right. Was this a kill on sight mission, or were the SEALs instructed to capture bin Laden if possible? Was he armed or not? Did he resist or not? Was there a woman standing in front of him or not? Was she his wife or not?
Aside from the last of these, these are easy details to sort out quickly–and before the president and his senior team talks about them to the American public and the world. The fact that they have fumbled the narrative matters considerably, in that they give credence to conspiracy theories and to charges like those being made by Safia bin Laden.
Do I believe Navy SEALs captured Osama alive and then murdered him? No. It would not only be a war crime but a huge intelligence blunder; neither would be in keeping with the best of the best of American fighting men. But the inconsistent stories put out by the administration help plant seeds of doubt.
If there’s one reason to try to bury the Osama bin Laden story as fast as possible it must include not making him any greater to his followers than he already was.
Sure, let Obama be a one-term President, let the masses continue to complain about his presidency, but ultimately it’ll have been worth it if the story of Osama bin Laden ends about now.
There’s only one way to fix this.
Obama needs to release the entire video of the mission, the mission plans, any video from the situation room, etc. If not, Obama will be responsible for the “Killers”? fringe.
I don’t expect to know details. Why would anyone? You want “gray ops” now?
Something very unique happened under a veil of secrecy. As far as I’m concerned there are only two important facts, and they are not in question:
1) US forces raided Pakistan
2) Osama Bin Laden is dead
Details would only become important to me if this were going to be less unique, or worse, SOP, going forward.
Einmal ist kein mall.
PJ, you forgot to include his birth certificate there.
Heh, I shouldn’t take the first google result as my foreign language correction:
einmal ist keinmal
The only contribution the Obama administration made was they didn’t screw up the actual mission. Yes, Obama could have denied permission but the truth would have leaked out. AJStrata has certain indications that Obama himself was carried along in the decision rather than leading it.
But the administration is certainly screwing up their part, which is telling the public and the world. I’m willing to accept much of this screw up is because many of those now running their mouths were kept out of the loop for the actual operation to keep them from tweeting it to their favorite news anchor before the SEALS could board their choppers. So to save face they started spinning yarns using details of which they had no knowledge to make them seem more important than they are.
JKB, I think anyone with a passing knowledge of the Carter administration would know that presidents should keep their hands off midnight raids, “rather than leading it.”
I think it might be a good thing that this “exectution” meme is out there, especially pushed by the bin Laden family themselves. It totally extinguishes the “bin Laden is still alive” meme – and that is the conspiracy theory that probably would have been more annoying in the long run. If a bunch of people want to believe that the SEALS exectuted OBL , so what?
JKB:
You are ignorant of the facts, whether accidentally or deliberately.
Mr. Bush had downgraded the search for Bin Laden. He said so explicitly.
Mr. Obama quite clearly elevated that search, going back to his campaign. He said then he would, if necessary, go into Pakistan. McCain was much more dubious and equivocal. In fact as I recall he attacked Obama as naive for suggesting we’d do any such thing.
Nevertheless, when he took office Mr. Obama took a much more forward-leaning stance with Pakistan. He vastly increased the number of predator missions in Pakistan — over GOP objections — and presumably also increased actual human raids.
The refocus on Bin Laden resulted in locating Bin Laden.
Mr. Obama could have launched an air raid back in October. That’s the sort of politically-timed thing the previous administration liked to do, discovering a need to raise the terror alert level whenever it was politically expedient.
Instead Mr. Obama waited it out. That was a risk. His risk. When he felt he had sufficient information and means he authorized a raid that he had decided should be a black ops raid inside a foreign country. Again, he could have sent the Predators. But then we’d never know for sure, and we might have had more civilian casualties.
Mr. Obama put the major players in place. He gave them the directive. He gave them the resources. He passed on earlier possible raids and waited until the right moment.
The result was a spectacular success. Honor and praise are due to the entire chain of command, from the SEAL who pulled the trigger on up to the President of the United States.
So, how about you be a man and admit, as James does quite freely, that Mr. Obama did a hell of a job, a job we should all be proud of. Try to sound like an American, not just a partisan.
As to the point of the post: the PR machine is clearly not on a level of competence equal to that of the SEALS.
And here’s the real damage of the birther and truther movements. Now everyone who questions the government about anything can be easily dismissed as a cook.
I’m not sure what we gained with a raid, ditching the body, and then not releasing any evidence. In the long run, how is that really any different from the predator raid? In either case, we only know bin Laden is dead because a government figure is telling us so.
Stormy… so navy seals are liars? Feel free to run with that one…
I’m not sure what we gained with a raid, ditching the body, and then not releasing any evidence. In the long run, how is that really any different from the predator raid?
The difference is they are sure they got him. They weren’t 100% sure he was actually there until they went in.
In either case, we only know bin Laden is dead because a government figure is telling us so.
Well, I only know Hitler is dead for the same reason, but I’m not worried about him.
@Stormy Dragon:
What kind of evidence would you need to be sure that he actually is dead?
Would a carnival travelling the country with the body of the dead Osama bin Laden be enough?
@Stormy: We’ve got Osama’s daughter saying that the SEALs killed him. We have the SEALs saying they’ve killed him. We’ve had the president of the United States announce on live television that he’s been killed. The combination of those rather cinches it for me.
Rambobama strikes again. Hell, at this rate Obama will win the Nobel Peace Prize every year he’s in office.
On a serious note, at this juncture you’d really have to be Internet-level naive not to realize this was in fact a hit squad sent over there with specific orders to terminate Bin Laden with extreme prejudice. It’s also become increasingly obvious that Obama was about as ‘connected’ with and ‘in charge’ of this operation as a trust-fund baby is connected with and in charge of their managed investment portfolio.
Ultimately, however, despite all the pre-op dithering by Obama and the post-op incompetence, obfuscation, lying, etc., I’ve never been so proud of a Democrat administration in my lifetime. In my book Team Obama now has gone from the worst in modern history to only the 3rd worst in modern history. For the simple reason that snuffing out Bin Laden clearly puts the Rambobama era well above the dark days of Jimbo Carter and the Keystone Kops era of Wild Bill.
An NBC reporter (woman) said this morning that not one person she has talked to in Abbottabad believes Bin Laden is dead or that he was at the compound in the first place.
🙂
Tsar:
Evidence? What with it being “obvious” it should be easy for you to provide links.
Someone above quoted AJStrata…hahaha…there isn’t a bigger fraud in the blogeshere.
As for OBL’s daughter…what part of “Wanted Dead or Alive” didn’t she understand?
There’s a huge difference. Suppose we had gone in and leveled the compound with a B-2 strike or drones, as was proposed. What would happen next? Well, the Pakistani’s would go through the debris, display the bodies of the two dozen women and children and while quietly getting rid of UBL’s body. After all, they would control the information and the narrative and they certainly would not come out and admit that UBL was there unless they were forced to.
A raid protects the non-combatant residents of the compound, it confirms that UBL was there and confirms that he’s actually dead and it puts Pakistan in a position of having to explain how UBL could live for six years there.
We’ll find out when we hear about any actionable intelligence collected, and I wouldn’t expect to hear too soon unless Julian Assange gets a hold of it some how.
The Diplomad 2.0 at thediplomad.blogspot.com has some interesting reflections on the whole issue.
What Andy said.
Plus, it just makes me happy to know that Osama knew an American serviceman was going to put a bullet in his head. Some messages are best delivered in person.
I am sure he’s dead. I”m just pointing out the weirdness of justifying the raid (vs. bombing) as a need to have proof and then not actually releasing any of the proof that resulted. If in the end all you’re going to do is make an announcement, why not just do it the easy way with a predator?
That seems pretty easy to answer. They wanted to be sure, and then they wouldn’t worry so much about who believed them.
She is a Muslim women, and her word wouldn’t carry much weight in the Islamic world.
http://www.ntpi.org/html/womensrights.html
I do not care that he was killed in cold blood, he was a murderer, and a terrorist and he needed to be murdered too. If Pakistan knew he was there and I have a hard time believing they did not, he should have been dead sooner. Speaker of the house Bone head still think we should be giving Pakistan aid. WHY?
G.A.Phillips : I butt heads with you a lot but I gotta respect how you’ve kept your promise 🙂
I would prefer rumors of us executing OBL to be floating around then OBL having a serious case of Elvis going on..
First the Seals know he was in the house and is dead, the predator operator would not know that. Remember Clinton missed him with cruse missiles. Second, the predator would have produced even more civilian causality, like his 9 wives and 28 children that was alleged to have been there. And third we would have missed all that wonderful intel we collected.
So do you support summary execution without trial for anyone accused of a murder?
Yes, I am sure that there are navy seals who have, like nearly all people, told lies on occasion. Jesse Ventura, for example, is a Navy Seal. Are you suggest he’s never lied about anything in his life?
They’re soldiers, not the incorruptable avatars of the spirit of American honor.
I would have like to have seen him hanging at the end of a rope. But the way our legal system is, a good lawyer would probably have gotten him off with community service.
No Seal has said anything to the press or the public about what happened. All we have is hearsay evidence from Comrade President and his people.
If in the end all you’re going to do is make an announcement, why not just do it the easy way with a predator?
I already explained this.
All we have is hearsay evidence from Comrade President and his people.
Red Dawn II called. You’re late for the casting call.
Hoosier are you a deather now?
WW I ended over 90 years ago and the CIA Declassifies WWI-era Secret Documents. We may have to wait 90 years for the government to declassify the records to find our what really happened. The JFK assassination records were sealed for 75 years. The MLK files are sealed till 2027.
I think “Proofer” is a better term.
No. I’m sure he’s dead. I’m not sure how it happened. The story keeps changing from day to day.
“Safia bin Laden says that her infamous father was caught alive by U.S. forces and murdered in cold blood.”
So, what’s her point?
I understand. We always believer every word the president says, as long as its our man in the White House.
Keep fighting those reds, brave cold warrior!
This is the one problem with making fun of wingnuts. They’re too dumb to understand the jokes.
More like, liberals, progressives and socialists. That war will never be over.
Southern Hoosier’s self-image.
SH, if you think you are at war with your fellow citizens, you are the problem.
@mantis
It’s more like a failure to see the humor in your childish remarks.
Who can keep track of your perceptive failures….
@mantis
I know your upset with me for questioning Comrade President. But your a big boy and you’ll get over it.
@ mantis
Spoken like a true liberal, call someone a racist and your whole world is better.
Spoken like a true liberal, call someone a racist and your whole world is better.
There are only two regular commenters here who have earned that title, in my mind: you and jwest. It’s not something I normally do, but you jokers have tried so damned hard to make it real obvious for us.
And all I’ve done is question Comrade President.
Mantis, you no doubt never had communist shoot at you. Being that you are one of them. Not the shooters but those who side with those who do the shooting. I wish you would move to some communist haven like North Korea to get an idea of a workers paradise.
As to the headline. Bin Ladin is dead. Every one I know would have shot him on sight. No one in that compound should have been left breathing. You see the picture of the poor soul falling from one of the towers? The caption was we do not know your name but know today, you got justice.
I wasn’t referring to today. You earned the title a while ago. You’re stuck with it.
Too much weed for you today, Wiley.
I wonder how many liberals just last week were opposed to the death penalty and torture? And now they are celebrating with the rest of us.
I said “something very unique happened under a veil of secrecy” and worried not about it, but it becoming SOP.
Did Southern just attempt to justify it as SOP?
I know you hang on to every word I say, but that wasn’t me.
I agree. We could probably do away with 1). But Comrade President keeps coming out with a new spin on the story everyday.
Hoosier,
The death penalty is part of the criminal court process. OBL was killed under the AUMF. The fact that you do not know the difference tells us all we need to know.
The Big big BIG dawg has weighed in:
http://www.examiner.com/us-headlines-in-national/osama-bin-laden-deserved-a-trial-says-michael-moore
If nothing else, the part of the mission that should have gone without a hitch is slowly turning into a PR disaster.
As well as Rosa Parks…don’t forget that…
Got it. Liberals are opposed to capital punishment, but support assassination through military action
Speaking for myself, yes I do oppose the death penalty being used against American citizens. It tends to be heavily weighted against poor people of color, and permanent mistakes are made. Also a lot of cops and prosecutors are more interested in closing cases than actually seeing justice done.
Killing a self-declared enemy of our country and mass murderer? I don’t have a problem with it.
Let’s just sum this week up… “bin laden dead, conservatives furious”. There, that covers it.
I’m not questioning Rosa Parks, just stating the facts. Check them out for yourself. The truth may be ugly, but not racist.
1) It was Browder v. Gayle that integrated the Montgomery Bus system, not the boycott. Rosa parks had took no part in the lawsuit.
2) The four Black women that were involved in Browder v. Gayle were all arrested for refusing to give up their seats on bus, long before Rosa Parks did.
3) Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders attended Highlander Folk School. It was founded and run by two communist before it was closed down by the FBI.
4) Rosa Parks in addition to being a “poor seamstress” was also a secretary for the local NAACP. Rosa Parks spontaneous act of defiance was carefully planned out.
Fact check it. Afraid of the truth? Afraid I’m right?
So you support killing foreign born terrorist, but not the killing of local born terrorist?
Southern, you don’t know what happened that night.
You are making up a storyline to troll the liberals.
That’s pretty bad. You and a few others take what should be a win for the country as a whole and break it, split it, into a weapon to use against your countrymen.
Could you have guessed a month ago that you’d sink that low?
Basically Osama is dead, you can actually treat that as the top story.
Anjin,
Can you blame them? For years they have convinced themselves they are the party of national security. After 8 years in the white house they allowed 9.11 to happen, fumbled Afghanistan, invaded Iraq for no reason at all, let OBL get away at Tora bora, lost 4000 troops, spent 2-3 trillion dollars, and all they have to show for it is torturing KSM 183 times and getting no information from it. That’s got to be a huge blow to the psyche.
How many times do I have to standup and scream at the top of my lungs, “I AGREE!”
You need to tell that to Comrade President. Tell Comrade President, that bin Laden is dead and that is all that matters. He doesn’t have to come out with a new spin every day.
And what is this storyline I’m making up? The only people that know the true story were the Seals that were there. After that everything is scrubbed, sanitized and spun dried for public consumption.
I’m not terribly interested in the details of how bin Laden was killed or in seeing photos of his body (as if that would settle any questions). But, as time goes on, I’m becoming glad that he was killed instead of captured, whether by deliberate orders to execute him or in the heat of battle.
Because, I don’t see how the country would benefit from the 1000-ring freakshow of a circus that would result from capturing bin Laden alive. There would be endless arguments about whether we should use “enhanced interrogation” on him, if he should be tried, should it be a civilian trial or military tribunal, where the trial should be held, should it be televised (the people have a right to watch!), should he face the death penalty or not, where would be incarcerated, what sort of statements he should be able to make in his defense, and on and on and on and on. Not to mention how the rest of the world is going to react to watching this spectacle. And if we decide to hold him incommunicado in some secret prison, that’s just going to stir up more speculation and rumor.
“Kill him and quietly dump him in the ocean” seems more and more like the best decision our government has made in a while.
I agree. If only the government had done it quietly.
I have a question. Why are we pretending it is good that he is dead and not captured?
Why are we excited that the dumbest thing possible in the war on terror has happened?
We just disposed of THE source of information of the terrorist’s inner workings.
This is not good. This is devastating.
Anything terror related that happens from here on out falls SQUARELY on Obama’s shoulders.
What The…
That’s been the republican line for 2-1/2 years…Obama owns the war on terror, Obama owns the economy. Republicans can accept no accountibilitybforvtheir screw ups but want all the credit for anything good. Just like little f’ing children. So nothing new.
Ohhhh, I get it.
It would be a PR nightmare to actually know the inner workings of the terrorists in order to STOP them.
Wasn’t STOPPING them the primary objective? You know, WINNING the war on terror?
Stop with the made up BS. This was the WORST THING EVER in the war on terror.
Yeah we wouldn’t of had that TOO if we captured him. And we would have the people to get the passwords from AND tell us what it all means.
It is RIDICULOUS to think this is a good thing.
“What The”,
Yeah, the intelligence opportunity was a reason for capturing him alive, and I have some regret about missing that opportunity. But, given the data the US seized during the raid, and the other information that has been obtained from electronic monitoring, people who have been captured, and other sources over the past 9+ years, bin Laden is far from “THE” source of information.
At this point, the exact circumstances of bin Laden’s death are still not clear — we don’t know what led to him being shot, what the orders were to the troops who performed the raid wrt keeping him alive, and the decision making process behind those orders. So, statements like:
are premature, because we don’t know enough about what happened (though, as President, Obama will naturally gets the blame for a terrorist attack against the US in any case).
Also, it’s pretty silly to think of bin Laden as the all-seeing mastermind behind all terrorism.
You need a little more self-awareness, Southern.
I’m sure the WH wants the “details” part of the story to die quickly. It’s the right, and strange people who think this should be their reality-tv who are demanding more, more, more.
It would have been so easy to simply carry out the mission, get the story straight and provide the evidence, but our unqualified, incompetent president couldn’t bring himself to string two good decisions together.
“Nazar Abbasi, a pharmacist in Abbottabad, says that he was pleased about the news that bin Laden was dead. But then he was surprised that no photos of the body were released as evidence, and that fake photos were circulating instead. “And when I heard that the Americans had thrown the body in the sea, I knew that all of this was just a big show.”
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2011/05/conspiracy-theories-run-amok-no-it-was.html
When will this hapless loser understand the concept that when you hide something, people believe you have something to hide.
Wait, I thought Nazar was the hapless loser. Does he think he deserves photos?
(Anyone in this thread who thinks they are so important that every detail must be laid out for them, is yes … a hapless loser.)
As I say in the newer thread, we have a story. It’s a good story. Good for the country, good for the future:
“he mission was to capture, and to kill him only if he resisted. That he resisted is something we considered likely. Hence, preparations for his disposal.”
As I ask, what’s hard about that?
Why the would so many Americans invest so much in undermining that story?
Are they such crass partisans that they can’t see that it is in the LONG TERM interest of the United States that the story stand?
I see Al Qaeda has confirmed bin laden’s death. Like SH, jwest & what the, and thousands of others on the American right, they are very unhappy about it.
Strange bedfellows.
I am not surprised that there was confusion about what exactly happened during the raid and see no reason to put a paraoid spin on it. It probably would have been better for the administration to have refused to give any details rather than give details that tured out to be inaccurate–but they would have been accused of cover up if they had chosen that option. The fact that the adminitration quickly corrected hte record shows good faith.
It just seems to me to be logical and normal that the reports coming back from an event like the raid would be confused in the minor details. I would expect that iitial reports of any raid would have mistakes and the the correct version would emerge over time. That’s just the way things are when there are multiple people reporting multiple persectives on one complex event.
I sometimes think I should set up a tote board to keep track of how many times each side of the political spectrum has accused me of being aligned with al Qeda. For both the right and the left that seems to have become the standard response to anyone who disagrees with them on a foreign policy matter.
Stormy.. what we are seeing from the far right is not “disagreement on policy”. It is a continuation of the GOPs now lone issue – attack Obama on every issue, by any means.
Putting words in people’s mouths again.
What you fail to understand is the professionalism of the Seals, not just to perform, but to be aware of what is taking place around them. The people that debriefed them were professional. There are two stories, one is the Seals’ story which remains the same and Comrade President’s that changes daily.
So, now that a Democrat is in the office, that’s now suddenly an invalid course of action? After all, that tactic didn’t seem to bother you much when Bush was in office.
.