It’s now being reported that a burial at sea has already taken place.
Buried at sea already says CNN.
Seems like a big mistake.
Osama’s body will be the new “birth certificate”
SHOW IT TO ME!!!
Yeah, this is getting weird. No evidence and nobody that was involved is allowed to talk about it?
The NYTimes also reports that the body was buried at sea. Rather matter-of-factly and almost in passing.
Being a non-American who was living in the USA on 9/11, I know what this event will mean to my friends over there. It’s a good day.
I wonder if now is the time to open a sort of placeholder thread in the Pit for all the conspiracy theories that will follow on from a burial at sea.
Well the Pakistani government could never admit to helping to kill a fellow Muslim, even if it did happen, that part wouldn’t get out.
This is also good as now we have no reason to be in Afghanistan anymore. Of course seeing he was in Pakistan, we were off to begin with.
Yeah Bin Laden isn’t the only terrorist, but Capone was only one gangster, but he was A BIG FISH, so this will hurt a lot.
Of course without a body, it’s to be buried at sea, it’s going to be like “Hitler escaped and moved to South America,” all over again, especially since it’s coming nearly ten years exactly after 9-11. It makes all the convenience of a conspiracy theory.
Given Osama’s personality, if he weren’t dead we could expect to see a new video from him saying “Nu-uh!”. I doubt the President would have made an announcement if there were ANY doubt that he were dead and that we could prove it.
But those who do doubt it are going to require proof, real-life dinkum proof. Absence of a body means that the ‘proof’ is absent.
This is not going to bode well. 
I, personally, have no doubt whatsoever that bin Laden is dead. On something this major, no one would dare try to fake it. Too many people involved and too many years ahead. It would come out eventually and Obama and his advisors and military people would know that.
Still, it would be gratifying to see bin Laden laid out on a slab like Hussein’s sons were.
I’m not sure what you mean but: if you think the folks who despise the President would suddenly love and support him if they could be shown solid proof this happened then I must say I couldn’t disagree more. People like that would never accept any ‘proof’.
ETA: Starving Artist actually has it correct in the post preceding mine.
Considering the Helicopters are supposed to have taken off from an airbase near Tarbela, I doubt the conversation went like that at all.
Ok, now here’s hoping some idiot does not try to blow himself up in a market again.
I’m not necessarily talking about US citizens, although I’m sure there’s some radical righty-loons out there. 
What Iam suggesting is that many of the fundie-jihad Muslim folk will be loathe to accept bin-Laden’s death without solid proof. They will (I’m guessing, but open to disagreement) challenge any pronouncement of the death of their leader without a physical body to prove it. Nowadays, even a photo isn’t evidence enough because as we all know, photoshop can do amazing things!
Burying the body (even at sea) was a phenomenally stupid idea.
YMMV, but if you disagree, then you’re dumb too. 
I’m just going to leave this here.
Keeping it classy. :rolleyes:
There are reports that a woman was being used as a human shield and was killed. Where she came from and whether she was in fact an innocent civilian hasn’t been addressed, as far as I’ve heard.
Well, I certainly thought his point was “they’ve already been coming for us, this doesn’t make them any likelier to come for us,” which seems to be your point, so it looks like reiteration from here. I guess he could have been clearer; I might have inserted “It’s not like” just before “They’re not going about their lives, ready for bygones to bygones…” just to be more explicit.
Google Maps has very detailed satellite photos of the whole area. I heard on NPR that the compound was within 100 yards of the military college. Search for Abbottābad, Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan on Google Maps and try your luck at picking it out.
From the Yahoo News article;
“That bin Laden had been living in a specially constructed compound less than an hours’ drive from Pakistani military HQ, and in the same town as the country’s premier military academy, makes the near constant denials by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies that the terror group leader was in the country difficult to swallow.”
“So the idea that absolutely no one but American intelligence knew who was living in that multi-million dollar compound beggars belief.”
There we go. Mere hours before this started being asked, as I suggested earlier. Now the fallout gets more interesting from here.
“Defenders of the ISI say that it is their job to maintain contacts with groups like that as part of their intelligence gathering methods. One spokesman told me that the ISI has infiltrators in the terror groups just like the FBI has people undercover in the Mafia. That may be the case. But either way the ISI isn’t going to come out of this well. Either they knew about bin Laden and waited to inform the U.S., or they were oblivious to the presence of a massive, multi-million dollar compound in their back yard, one so secretive that the residents burned their own trash. That doesn’t augur well for Pakistan’s ability to tackle the next terrorist threat that comes out of the woodwork.”
Unfortunately, given that Afghanistan is landlocked, we are dependent on Pakistan for shipments of fuel and materiel to our people there. We are going to have to do some serious drawdowns in a big hurry if they decide “You know, fuck it. You caught us. Take a walk.”