In this thread here I expounded upon why it does not matter a whit whether Osama Bin Laden is innocent or guilty. However, after hearing President Bush, Tony Blair and George Robertson all speak of the conclusive, damning, irrefutable evidence of his guilt my curiosity is, well piqued to say the least. You’d have thought they’d be falling over themselves to reveal the proof to the masses to get people behind the war effort, right? So why haven’t they? In short: What is the proof? Why haven’t we been shown it yet? Is there anything to gain from keeping it from us?
Gomez: One very compelling reason for classifying information is to protect the life of the source.
Gomez, maybe I’m naive or missing something, but why do you care so much? Just curious.
It wouldn’t do one’s reputation as a skeptic any good to reject the creationists argument that “God doesn’t want us to know” how the universe was created in 6 days to look like it was x billion yrs old and then glibly accept the Gub’ments statements that they have “conclusive, damning, irrefutable evidence” without wondering what it is.
Having said that, Monty has probably given us the answer…
Gp
Presnting evidence to the Taliban is probably also seen as a waste of time.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011004/wl/attack_afghan_zaeef_dc_1.html
So if we do present them with “convincing” evidence, they will try them in their own court, which we don’t trust. And if that court convicts him their respose is “then we will see then what we will do.” Which could result in a stern scolding.
It’s just that I’ve seen Tony Blair, President Bush and George Robertson on TV stating categorically how guilty Osama Bin Laden is and how the Taliban has been funding him etc… due to the vast amount of concrete evidence which obviously proves the guilt of everyone who we originally thought it was because the evidence is so compelling and concrete and irrefutable and blah blah blah blah blah. When I opened this thread I was just thinking that if the evidence is so irrefutable, why oh why haven’t they shown it to us? However, Monty has provided me with a good answer for that question and as such I no longer resent being kept in the dark on this.
Isn’t there a news report out today saying that the Pakistani government has seen the evidence, and agrees that Osama bin Laden is guilty? I would say that’s a fairly strong argument that the proof is positive and not just fudged up…
rjung, I have seen that report from US and Pakistan news sources. Before that we heard that NATO have looked over the evidence and had no doubts.
In each case the evidence was presented to a panel of officials, but not the World at large, for the reason already discussed here. And the Taliban continued to insist that they need evidence for the same reason - they want to know what we know (and possibly through who). They never had any intention to co-operate.
Did anyone really need more evidence on bin Laden since he was already wanted for previous terrorist acts? They did not give him up then.
There are a lot of very good reasons not to release specific information. They could include:
[ul]
[li]Protecting a state from its own citizens. The U.S. is almost certainly getting covert intelligence from countries that must formally maintain either neutrality or even hostility to the effort for political reasons. A state like Syria or Iran might suffer unrest if it was known to be actively taking part in the overthrow of a Muslim regime.[/li][li]Protecting secret methods. If we have hidden assets or techniques that are classified, then any material they gather will also be classified. For instance, if we have a new Satellite that can detect certain types of images, and the world at large doesn’t know about it, then releasing those images would reveal the existance of the satellite. You’d be surprised how many ELINT resources the U.S. has - it’s been the main focus of improvement in information gathering for quite a long time. Even since the Gulf war electronic intelligence has improved tremendously.[/li][li]Hiding the scope of American Knowledge. Related to the last one, but slightly different. We may not want Bin Laden to know how much we know about him, because if he sees the evidence he’ll get an idea of where our intelligence strengths are, and that will give him guidance in how to avoid it in the future.[/li][li]Protecting the lives of informants. Suffice to say that any Muslim in the Middle East who was discovered to have passed sensitive information to the U.S. would be in grave danger at all times, perhaps for years.[/li][/ul]