When it was reported, I weighed the evidence that I knew and came down with a no vote, but it was a close 51/49. Essentially, I regarded the answer as unknowable with the information we had.
Several points -
when someone is assassinated you expect a body and there was no body
the whole buried at sea after a 1000(?) mi. flight struck me as incredible, and totally unprecedented in the annals of human history, with the body being destoyed before its existence is even demonstrated.
several preposterous ideas were floated as to how Osama was ID’d, first it was the wife, then they laid him out and measured him, OK so far, but that wasn’t all, they did a DNA analysis, that was too much, and the topper was they used face recognition software, that is preposterous.
this is what finally settled my no vote, they captured a raft of videos at the home, and showed us a video of the back of Osama’s head as he watched TV. That was just too little to be believed.
I won’t go over the reasons to believe the govt’s account, perhaps someone else will.
Anyhow, here is the kicker, Seymore Hearsh just did an interview published in the Guardian, and he says it’s a complete hoax …
*Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.*
Luckily, the Republicans who saw the photographs and other reports are so close to Obama that they covered for him. 'Cause, you know, the Republicans love him so much they’d never want to use a scandal to hurt him.
Obviously, we’ll see what Hersh has to say in his book, but evidence seems to suggest that, while Obama didn’t personally kill Osama, he ordered it done and it was done by Navy Seals under his watch. Some of the best evidence is probably negative evidence…after the killing happened (or was supposed to have happened), there haven’t been any more Osama videos, while before, there were.
There was a body. The government did not want to give the U.S. a black eye by releasing pictures of it and having every yahoo on the Internet post LOLDEADTERRORIST photots, nor did they want the opposition to use them as propaganda.
In Islam, the bodies have to be buried within a certain timeframe. [del]Dumping the body[/del] Burial at sea met the requirement. Burying the body on land would have resulted in the terrorists using it as a shrine. No grave on land, no rallying point. The Russians did the same thing with Hitler.
Nobody ever killed anybody! Think about it: have you ever seen a dead person wandering around in public? No? Then they must’ve been relocated somewhere else. Wake up people!
What do you mean by “the same thing?” Here’s what wikipediahas to say about the topic:
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
their [Hitler and Braun’s] remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker’s emergency exit, doused in petrol and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker.[5] The Soviet archives record that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations[6] until 1970 when they were again exhumed, cremated and the ashes scattered.[7]
[/QUOTE]
It’s interesting that the article linked to in the OP isn’t at all clear about when SH claims the NYT is covering for Obama about. If you assume that he means Seal Team 6 killed Osama “in cold blood” instead of in a firefight, the article reads true. There is nothing in that article that speaks to whether ObL is dead or alive.
Again, I propose we use the time-honored tradition that Gack set up in the previous thread.
Step 1: find a non-contentious historical issue.
Step 2: take a position on it which is idiotic to the point that it’s hard to take seriously.
Step 3: Ignore all evidence to the contrary, misinterpret evidence in ridiculous ways to try to twist the facts into supporting it.
Step 4: Defend idea with all of the fervor, intelligence, and self-awareness of Kent Hovind after winning a paint-drinking competition.
With this strategy, yes, there really are real questions about whether or not the Obama administration killed Osama Bin Laden. I await Gack’s thread on the non-existence of the moon with baited breath.