Presidential address @ 7:30pm Eastern re: US counterterrorism strike

Politics & Elections
1

Just came down the pipe about 10 minutes ago. From the White House:

Speculation:

2

Excellent news. Blown to pieces while standing on a balcony.

3

And reports are even though others were nearby, no one else was injured.

If this is true drone tech has become much more precise than I would have expected.

4

If it is better than you expected, then it might have been better than they expected…which is usually a good thing.

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According to the book Nevermind, We’ll Do It Ourselves, weaponized drones quickly went from “can we hit anything at all?” to “which window do you want us to put the ordnance through?” If Skynet had waited for drone technology, Sarah Connor would be a stain on the sidewalk and she never would have seen it coming. Obligatory:

And if you want some really gory details on what precision munitions can do nowadays, take a look at the Dense Inert Metal Explosive. I don’t know if that is what was used here but that’s the one you drop when you want to turn a target into chunky salsa while mussing the hair (okay, perhaps amputating all the limbs at the joints but who’s counting?) of bystanders.

6

After a bit of reading it appears it was a type of Hellfire missile that shoots long blades at a specific target. The R9X apparently. It has been nicknamed the Flying Ginsu because of the six blades it deploys using kinetic energy in order to slice up the targeted person.

Damn.

7

CNN reports that Joe Biden was adamant that they need to do everything possible to ensure that no one else was killed, including the bad guy’s family.

They appear to have done it.

8

Next week on Iron Chef…

9

I was wondering how Republicans would be spinning this very positive news for Biden. I checked out Fox News (I do these things as a public service, so you don’t have to!) and I got my answer. :roll_eyes:

It seems to have two parts:

  1. Why does Afghanistan continue to be a “safe haven” for terrorists? (Answer: it’s all Joe Biden’s fault. That Al Qaeda was able to plot the entire 9/11 attack there during GWB’s administration was no one’s fault at all.)

  2. Al Qaeda has an endless lineup of replacements for deceased leaders, so killing them is useless.

Also implied: The Orange Peril would have handled this properly, by engineering an unspecified “terrific solution”. Just like he did for health care. :roll_eyes: