Yes! Was thinking the same thing! Guess we’ll have to wait 100 years for the proof.
The accounts I have read of the raid were pretty clear that capturing him was not the goal. They had several options once they were pretty confident that they knew where he was. Most of the options involved leveling the compound. Obama didn’t like those options because he wanted to be sure that they got bin Laden. The only option that assured that was a raid and the only way to do the raid safely was to disarm or kill anyone who got in the way. When they got to the floor bin Laden lived on they chased him back into the bedroom and shot him immediately. There were no words exchanged according to the accounts I have read. The SEALs went in intending to shoot him on sight and that’s what they did. They wouldn’t have captured him even if he had thrown his hands in the air waving a white flag.
I think that he’s the new bloke who’s taken over from that Elvis feller at my local Fish and Chip shop.
When he was alive everyone whispered that he was dead, now he’s dead people whisper that he’s alive. Poor guy just can’t catch a break, can he?
A break? No. A bullet? Yes.
You have got to be kidding. People can’t be that stupid, can they?
Yes, yes they can, Baker.
'Tis a sad sorry world we live in.
Can I stand you a pint or two?
He was shot in the head (and chest?) and this was witnessed by at least one of his wives. If she thought he was taken alive, you’d think she would have let it be known.
Here’s the official coroner’s report:
He’s not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead.
Are you in NE Kansas?
ISTR some officials claiming afterwards that the goal was to capture him alive if possible, but I just took that as political correctness to satisfy the squeamish. I have no doubt that, besides settling an old score, Obama wanted to send a message: attack the U.S. and we’ll show no mercy.
Really?
If he would have offered himself up naked, spread-eagle (“Travolta Style”?) and they had some kind of high-tech way to ascertain that his body was not booby-trapped in any way, the Seals would have just turned down an offer of surrender (by plugging him in the gulliver with a 9mm) and thus the chance for the various intelligence agencies to harvest a veritable treasure trove of info from him?
I can see how they were certainly (and rightly) 110% ready to shoot him at the very 1st sign of resistance, but in the admittedly unlikely scenario I outlined above (or in a more realistic, real-life situation on the ground) it seems like an incredible opportunity to gather once in a lifetime info squandered if they had NO plans to ever take him alive given the chance to do it safely.
It’s safe to say that that’s either a product of mental defect or someone pulling our leg.:dubious:
Right. “We would have taken him alive if possible” doesn’t mean much because it doesn’t tell you anything about what would have had to happen to make the capture possible. He was evidently unarmed when he was shot; there were some reports that there were weapons in the room but I think the administration refuted rumors that he was reaching for a gun when he was shot. I don’t think it was about sending a message: Obama’s authorized plenty of drone strike killings and 10 years is too long to play the “we’ll show you no mercy” card. Primarily I think Obama wanted to avoid all the complicated problems he would have had to deal with if bin Laden were being held captive: where could he be held? What about all the details of working toward a trial? On and on and on. Determining the legal status and handling of guys like KSM who were captured years ago has been complicated enough. Doing the same with bin Laden starting in 2011 would have been a huge headache.
I think I saw OBL and Elvis at the 7-11 last week.
For sure, killing him was the best practical way of dealing with him. I still like the “no mercy” idea as an added bonus, even if it was unintended. There was a certain satisfaction in the clean, swift and emphatic justice of bin Laden’s death that we (or I, at least) wouldn’t have gotten from a prolonged internment and trial.