Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on August 02, 2011, 02:30:37 pm
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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Osama+raid+Classified+details+revealed+SEAL+team/5192777/story.html
The raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan was a mission to kill him, and there was "never any question" he would be captured alive, one of those directly involved has claimed.
The most detailed account so far of the assassination of the world's most wanted man describes the May 1 operation in Abbottabad as a "covert mission into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden".
Published in The New Yorker magazine, it presents the strongest challenge yet to the Obama administration's insistence that the al-Qaida chief, codenamed "Crankshaft", could have been captured had he "conspicuously surrendered".
An unnamed U.S. special operations officer, said to be "deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid", told the magazine that the 23 Navy Seals were clear that this was not the case.
"There was never any question of detaining or capturing him," the officer said. "It wasn't a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees."
The plan, according to the article's author, Nicholas Schmidle, was for the Seals to "overpower bin Laden's guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan".
In May, John Brennan, Mr Obama's counter-terrorism chief, said the commandos would not have killed their target if they were confident he was not carrying an "improvised explosive device on his body" or "some type of hidden weapon".
Schmidle reports the first Seal to find bin Laden believed one or both of the wives guarding him were wearing suicide vests. He shot one in the calf before rugby tackling them to save two colleagues. Neither turned out to have explosives.
A second Seal then shot bin Laden in the chest and again in the head with his M4 rifle, and said over his radio: "For God and country - Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo" - the codeword for a hit on bin Laden.
When he later met them in private, Mr Obama "never asked who fired the kill shot, and the Seals never volunteered to tell him", according to Schmidle.
Hope someone is about to lose their clearance and job after this got published.
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Someone's going for a trip to Guantanamo's
torture reeducation rooms.
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Sigh. He is just as dead and this wont change that. Probably better and cleaner that he is to. yay political mess
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The problem with telling lies, is that you have to keep changing your story.
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"There was never any question of detaining or capturing him," the officer said. "It wasn't a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees."
Prove it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLxGOLaM5dQ&hd=1).
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HerraTohtori gains +5 cool points.
On-topic: He's dead. He has been dead for several months. I really must ask why it's so incredible that it was ordered (if it was ordered) instead of happening accidentally? The outcome is the same.
Note: No slight to you, Ryan, I just find this topic of discussion ultimately meaningless.
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No matter what John Brennan said, this was kind of a given from the beginning.
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No matter what John Brennan said, this was kind of a given from the beginning.
I concur. Who wears explosive vests when they're sitting around at home?
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On-topic: He's dead. He has been dead for several months. I really must ask why it's so incredible that it was ordered (if it was ordered) instead of happening accidentally? The outcome is the same.
I agree.
Does anybody give a damn if the mission was a kill operation rather than a capture operation? We wanted him dead, he's dead, the world is better for it.
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It's illegal? The US sent thugs abroad to go murder someone.
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He was an enemy combatant, admitted himself as such, and actively engaged in acts of terrorism around the world. He was a valid target for assassination, much like a high ranking officer in a combat theater, where in this case the theater was the whole world. The people who carried out the act were highly trained special forces that followed their orders. The only parst of your statement not blatantly in error are "US" and "abroad."
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Hell, he was a high ranking officer in a combat theater. . . although the second part is sketchier.
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He was an enemy combatant, admitted himself as such, and actively engaged in acts of terrorism around the world. He was a valid target for assassination, much like a high ranking officer in a combat theater, where in this case the theater was the whole world. The people who carried out the act were highly trained special forces that followed their orders. The only parst of your statement not blatantly in error are "US" and "abroad."
Exactly.
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On-topic: He's dead. He has been dead for several months. I really must ask why it's so incredible that it was ordered (if it was ordered) instead of happening accidentally? The outcome is the same.
I agree.
Does anybody give a damn if the mission was a kill operation rather than a capture operation? We wanted him dead, he's dead, the world is better for it.
let no good opportunity for a media circus go to waste.
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That's the funny thing about something as amorphous and unwinnable as "The War On Terror". It's always wartime everywhere, so everyone is a potential target no matter where they are or what they're doing.
Murder is murder, no matter how much we think they deserve it.
And what exactly does the term "enemy combatant" entail? Have you considered the origin and the results of that term?
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Are you seriously going to try to tell me to my face that Pakistan doesn't fund terrorist groups? Or that Bin Laden wasn't a member of a terrorist group that committed dozens if not hundreds of terrorist acts all across the world?
Enemy combatant: "Party to the conflict" (as described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions Article 3). Don't even try to tell me Bin Laden wasn't party to the conflict.
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Murder is murder, no matter how much we think they deserve it.
If you are questioning the right of the state to protect itself and its citizens via the use of lethal force, I'm afraid you're **** out of luck since you won't find a country in the world that won't back that premise somehow.
If you are questioning the context, the man openly admitted that he was making war on the United States, and he openly admitted responsibility for a number of deaths that actually rank him ahead of a number of formally declared wars the United States has been involved in.
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Are you seriously going to try to tell me to my face that Pakistan doesn't fund terrorist groups? Or that Bin Laden wasn't a member of a terrorist group that committed dozens if not hundreds of terrorist acts all across the world?
Enemy combatant: "Party to the conflict" (as described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions Article 3). Don't even try to tell me Bin Laden wasn't party to the conflict.
That's a bit of a curve ball. What next, will you quote me as having said that terrorism is good? You drop non sequiturs in there, and this discussion becomes a never ending affair.
What I was seriously trying to tell you is that the kill mission was wrong. He should have been taken prisoner and tried at a tribunal or in a court or something. Doesn't matter if the end result is the same.
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I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that in this case, and for purely pragmatic reasons, a kill mission was a much cleaner and faster way to deal with him. Yes, in theory, you're right - everyone should get a day in court.
In practical terms? You can put a bullet in his head. Terrorist groups will get riled up, then the dust will settle and it'll be anthrax-sniffing-business as usual for them.
Or you can go by the book and take him prisoner. Have a show trial that will drag on for months, during which time the media would be doing a great job at helping to heat the situation up and up as the various terrorist cells activate and start sending messages of their own. In the end it would have likely resulted in more random civilian killings. Of course, I can't prove it, but I think it's a reasonable hypothesis.
By the book is by the book, of course. It's not always wise, however. In this case, you have a man who wouldn't have been rehabilitated anyway. Instead he'd become a reason for someone to abduct a plane to demand his release.
And honestly? Steal a million bucks, run over someone drunk, sure you get your day in court. Kill so many random civilians? Bullet to the head, good riddance.
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Are you seriously going to try to tell me to my face that Pakistan doesn't fund terrorist groups? Or that Bin Laden wasn't a member of a terrorist group that committed dozens if not hundreds of terrorist acts all across the world?
Enemy combatant: "Party to the conflict" (as described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions Article 3). Don't even try to tell me Bin Laden wasn't party to the conflict.
That's a bit of a curve ball. What next, will you quote me as having said that terrorism is good? You drop non sequiturs in there, and this discussion becomes a never ending affair.
I was establishing that Bin Laden was operating in a legitimate and well defined theater of war, even considering the nebulous nature of the War on Terror. As such, it's not a murder, it's a military action.
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There was far, far more than enough cause to believe he, and anyone else in that compound, may have been booby-trapped. In a combat situation, this was the perfect way to deal with that threat.
Remember that marine that shot a wounded enemy combatant a while back, and was tried for murder? His entirely legitimate defense was that he wasn't sure the man wasn't booby trapped. This, after numerous squads had been killed by combatants they had wounded pulled pins on closely-held grenades.
I realize I'm not articulating my argument properly, so I will close with this: That was a dangerous situation to be in. "Conspicuously surrendered" is one thing, but in a combat situation, how are you to be sure that the man who is surrendering, isn't packing explosives in his underpants? You aren't, until he's either dead, or it's too late to do anything about.
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Hope someone is about to lose their clearance and job after this got published.
Well, assuming the story is true, I guess that should be Brennan and everyone else who knowingly lied.
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I'm quite happy to see him dead. He'd willingly admitted to carrying out 9/11. He's guilty beyond the doubt of anyone but those with only the most tenuous grasp of reality. World's a better place without him in it.
What I dispute however is this guy's story. Notice the claim they didn't want "detainees" To claim that they wanted Osama dead - believable. To claim that they planned to kill everyone there rather than make some attempt to gain new sources of information - pretty hard to swallow.
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Besides, this...doesn't actually say anything new.
The article says that they went to kill him.
The administration has said that while they would have liked to capture him, the rules of engagement prohibited it in all but the most unlikely of favorable circumstances.
I'm not seeing a serious difference in those narratives. The people who were shooters on the mission and who are being used as sources wouldn't either. The orders were never "take him alive if practicable".
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Even if their orders had been very specifically to kill him in any conceivable situation, that'd be hardly surprising. The world was his judge, he was his own jury. Seal Team Six was just the executioner.
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The administration has said that while they would have liked to capture him, the rules of engagement prohibited it in all but the most unlikely of favorable circumstances.
I'm not seeing a serious difference in those narratives. The people who were shooters on the mission and who are being used as sources wouldn't either. The orders were never "take him alive if practicable".
Well the source is allegedly claiming that they said "Don't take him alive" which would be a big difference from "Take him alive only if.....". Of course the possibility exists that the reporter doesn't have a clue about the difference between the two.
And we are ignoring the possibility that the administration said "take him alive if........" and the source was an idiot who after listening to all the things that made it impractical assumed they meant "Don't take him alive"
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Well the source is allegedly claiming that they said "Don't take him alive" which would be a big difference from "Take him alive only if.....". Of course the possibility exists that the reporter doesn't have a clue about the difference between the two.
And we are ignoring the possibility that the administration said "take him alive if........" and the source was an idiot who after listening to all the things that made it impractical assumed they meant "Don't take him alive"
Perhaps, but my point was more "take him alive if you find a Muslim man standing nude in the middle of an empty room" which is what was supposedly ordered and "don't take him alive" which is the new claim aren't going to result in different outcomes. The people the reporter talked to would know that and might not consider distinguishing between them meaningful.
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In my opinion it was better they killed him there and then. As stated before, if they had captured him it carried the very large possibility of creating an even larger terrorsit ****storm then we had previously and have now. Everyone knows what would have happened with the trial, he would be found guilty within a week and most likely slated to be executed, and having him formally executed rather than stating he was "Killed In Action" would cause more grief than it was worth, anyway at least with the way it went down he had a home-cooked last meal (meaning the tax payers didn't foot the bastards bill).
Besides the man was a wack-job, he probably had anthrax canisters concealed within his ball-bag or something.
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Killing Bin Laden was indeed somewhat safer than capturing him. Who knows what could he have done if he didn't went down fast, explosives could have been in places where nobody would ever thought to look for them. Also, his trail would most likely cause terrorist attacks, and him being a wealthy person, who knows what he could use that money for, even while in prison.
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If anything, this issue just increases Obama's admin's poll, painting as a BA.
That is, until Fox news finds a way to spin this against him...
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They should have captured him. Much bigger value in having the leader of holy warriors rotting in a jail as opposed to dying a martyr.
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...and running the risk of him speaking to his fans? No thanks. Simple is good.
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More importantly, I'd like to know how anyone would go about staging a public trial for him without someone flying a plane or driving a car bomb into it.
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Pretty much. With him dead, it's less likely that his fanatics would go all fanatical to bust him out or die trying (mostly just die and kill a bunch of innocents though)
Also, it's not like an international trial would make the US look any better. Just look at Saddam.
But hell, why not make a big deal out of this? Let's question the crap out of the Obama administration, since the election's coming up.
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If anything, this issue just increases Obama's admin's poll, painting as a BA.
That is, until Fox news finds a way to spin this against him...
i don't see how this should relate to obama at all, one way or the other. the only involvement he had was being in office at the time and doing the formality of signing/issuing a general order that said something to the effect of 'get osama'.
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You'd think so, but this is the American general public we're talking.
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I think that if there's one thing both the major American political parties can agree on, it's that it's a good thing that Bin Laden's dead.