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Osama Bin Ladin Has Been Killed


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At the back of my mind I have to admit to a strong feeling of cynicism regarding the back story. I realise this might be seen as raining on the parade but ...

I am happy Bin Laden is dead it is just the timings seem convenient. This is with absolutely no research into the detail as I was actually waiting for someone else to raise the thought.

Timings. USA support for regime overthrow in Arab areas goes into mute mode. Strike takes place after Royal Wedding. Now just suppose there was some horsetrading between the Saudi's [paymaster], the "rogue" elements of the Pakistan SS, and the US.

And as to be expected the Pakistanis could not possibly want to know that a raid was scheduled, but they certainly would have wanted Osama dead so he could not talk. A tidy arrangement for the Saudi's and the Americans. And I suspect some more oil money to goes to Pakistani military personnel.

Incidentally a 40 minute firefight with 4 dead - seems light.

If it seems like a tin-foil conspiracy ... well fair enough. I am just thinking what could happen in the real world. ; )

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If it seems like a tin-foil conspiracy ... well fair enough. I am just thinking what could happen in the real world. ; )

you should pop across to "Above Top Secret" - the forum there is full of nutcase ideas that make your look entirely rational.

there's the one where Benazair Bhutto was killed because revealed that OBL was killed years ago, and the release of hte info jsut now is solely to bolster Obama's re-election chances....or the Canadian Govt's chances, or something like that...it's kind of hard to say...

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If you ask me, the death of Osama Bin Laden will lead to a great escalation of violence. By killing him, the US Forces made a martyr out of him. A martyr to be praised by fundamentalists. And I'm not talking about the groups directly connected with Al Queida. I'm sayin': all extremist groups from the middle east. Even the lesser ones will now do anything to raise their status in the terrorists' world. To prove themselves. To show the world that they unite with the deceased. I think that killing Osama Bin Laden was the worst US decision since the invasion of Iraq. Instead of capturing him and putting him in front of the international tribunal (with the League of Arab States - its presence would be vital to the trial! - which would lead to his demise anyway), they've just created a number one martyr of the Muslim fundamentalists of all times! What's worse, every politician seems to be happy about it! For Christ's sake, why they always have to be so short-sighted?

The first thought I had the morning I woke up and heard about his death was: "Great. Now we've done it...". I understand the urge for vengeance of US citizens on that terrorist leader. But I fail to see how his death without a trial will have a positive impact on the whole situation we have since 9/11. It will change nothing at best, and at worst... I just don't want to think about.

The TRIAL was the right thing to do.

Who did we kill to motivate bin Ladin to take up his jihad in the first place? Bin Ladin's death will not change anyone's opinion of him or his cause. I'm sure there will be reprisals, but they will be committed by those who already shared his cause. They would likely have done the same thing had be been captured instead.

The point of terrorism is to change the behavior or policies of the terrorized. If we refrain from killing terrorists who have attacked us in the past purely out of fear that doing so will motivate terrorists to attack us again then their attacks will have succeeded, at least to that extent.

To put it succinctly, if we are too afraid to kill bin Ladin, then the terrorists have won :D

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JonS/ SO

Well if you wish to believe that the recent events in the Arab world have not put pressure on some Arab states who like the current status quo thats fine with me.

Not everyone understans subtle : )

There was a suspicion voiced in the UK media prior to Osama' death that the Royal honeymoon was deferred "for security reasons".

I just mention them as items of interest. The timing in the midst of Trump's show is rather cute. I thought Obama was just being slow in doing his speech but now it looks like exquisite timing.

As to the question - when in the last decade was it not convenient ...... who in the hell do you think was going to spill the beans to the US? Incidentally just to add to the mix - kidney disease?

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The irony of the announcement was that I was in the middle of Birdstrike's CMSF scenario '3:10 to Yuma' and had just secured the terrorist leader 'Bin Wadi'. Within a few minutes of that, my son came down to the computer room and told me that CNN was just announcing that Bin Laden was dead.

That's pretty interesting...

I found out about it through a pretty interesting way... I heard about it via the chat sidebar in a Starcraft 2 tournament live stream between two Koreans with 20,000 internet viewers at night, no joke.

"Osama just got 0wned by a Marine drop. He shoulda stayed burrowed. It's on the news. Terran is OP."

You kinda have to have played Starcraft 1 or 2 to get it but... ya it, was pretty funny :cool:

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My beliefs on the state of the mmiddle East are immaterial, and you misunderstood the question. I'll try again.

Putting all operational considerations to one side, what day - out of the 3,600 in the last decade - could the US have assassinated Bin Laden and NOT been accused of 'convienient timing'?

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Strawman's gotta straw

No, we should hug them and tell them we love them..that may work afterall..

We have this thing, called the rule of law. You may have heard of it. It works quite well. I suggest you look into it.

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Strawman's gotta straw

We have this thing, called the rule of law. You may have heard of it. It works quite well. I suggest you look into it.

I will actually agree with you on this one, I think it would have been better to bring him back to trial. A lot of questions still needed answers that now may never come. However, he was given the opportunity to surrender, and instead shoved his wife in front of him as a shield and opened fire, so, he did get what he had coming at that point I think.

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Putting all operational considerations to one side, what day - out of the 3,600 in the last decade - could the US have assassinated Bin Laden and NOT been accused of 'convienient timing'?

I am bemused. The killing of Osama would have been convenient for the US whenever it happened. The point is why did it happen now. If we assume the US did not just find out and launch an immediate mission then we can say perhaps they chose a date. And we can wonder if they knew OBL was unlikely to be moving.

Lots of hypotheticals as one would expect given that the main parties are not necessarily telling the truth - and very logically should not. As to whether it is exactly as the US says, or if in fact there is more to it, make up your own mind.

Lets consider the option of the guided missile which was rejected - relatively safe for malfunctions. Consider option two running helicoptors across territory and not suffering a crash, meeting very light resistance at the point of disembarkation, no AA missiles etc to make the US look completely stupid. No misunderstandings with local Pakistanis troops who take over ....

Yep. Beautifully executed. : ) Low risk and successful.

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Deez, you are cutely hinting at some unspecified but secret conspiracy based on the 'convenient timing' of the killing. Please; nominate a date any time in the past decade that would be immune to claims of some unspecified but secret conspiracy based on 'convenient timing.'

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Not really. That appears to be your position though.

No it is not. My position is that choosing not to kill him out of fear of reprisals would have been a mistake. How you got from that to thinking that I believe killing him is terrorism is... well, I'd like to know how you came to that conclusion.

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JonS - I think you will find conspiracies are by their nature secret.

As for nominating some past date when it would not have been a "convenient" conspiracy I think you are being a trifle myopic. The Tora Bora mountains leaps immediately to mind as convenient and non-conspiritorial.

If you wish to pursue a game of looking for other dates convenient or inconvenient for conspiracy to kill OBL I am afraid you are on your own. It seems a waste of time to me but please yourself.

If you wish to discuss the upside and downsides of the recent mission in terms of risk then perhaps it might be more interesting. However I am not going to spend a lot of time on it as it is fairly fruitless at this early stage, and in a decade we may now a bit more about it.

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Affy, IF that WERE the case then I would agree it would seem strange not to launch. However we do not know that is truly the case.

BTW how do you rate the risk of running choppers at night across an unreliable friendly territory and the possibility that that OBL has no AA assets local? And that the Pakistani's do not open fire on the wrong people.

Now if I had operatives who were near and had worked out a rough idea of the defence, and also had the ability to bring down a missile if there were people leaving then I might be relaxed enough to go with a helicopter mission. However by your argument Affy they should have launched a missile as soon as they were confident enough.

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BTW how do you rate the risk of running choppers at night across an unreliable friendly territory and the possibility that that OBL has no AA assets local? And that the Pakistani's do not open fire on the wrong people.

.

Totally worth the risk for this sort of pay off. I'm pretty sure they assessed whether there were laser beams in the local minaret.

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