yeah well this was NOT a spur of the moment event. It involved intensive training with a mock up of Osama’s compound. The President had ample time to work out the details.
Because we are a free nation which expects transparency of what our government does. If you’re worried about retaliation over the pictures that ship sailed when we killed Bin Laden. There are protests all over the place vowing revenge.
Yeah well they didn’t know for sure that bin Laden was in the compound until the SEALs saw him. Up until that point it was possible they were going to catch someone else or maybe create a major international incident by sending intelligence agents and a military team into a tumultous allied country without telling them ahead of time. He’d escaped capture before and they didn’t know for sure he was going to get caught this time until they shot him. They didn’t know if the SEALs were going to get out of Pakistan without being detained or shot down until they were back in Afghanistan. They didn’t know what the dead bin Laden photos were going to look like until the SEALs took their pictures of him for confirmation.
It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t have prepared for some of the outcomes, at least- like the possibility they’d have to try to get Pakistan to release the SEALs or what to say if the choppers were shot down before or after the raid and the press got a hold of the story and the whole thing turned into a rerun of the Iran hostage crisis. Maybe they thought about what they might do with photos of his corpse and maybe they didn’t because there were a ton of other more important issues to deal with just on this bin Laden thing, nevermind everything else that’s happening.
It’s unfortunate that you were so horrendously inconvenienced that the president took time to review the information and prepare his speech. You’re right: this killing bin Laden thing really made Obama look weak.
Wikileaks to the rescue?
You don’t need a corpse to get DNA evidence. Part of me still thinks he may be getting waterboarded somewhere by the CIA. But I have no doubt that ObL is out of commission
The photo should be release for the sake of transparency? Really? That’s the best you got? So you can see how transparent bin Laden’s head is without its brain inside it? No. The photo in no way would serve the role of “transparency”, not in any way.
The reason not to release the photo is because it can used as a tool against us and we should not hand out such tools gladly. Abu Grabe was used very effectively against us. As awful as the abuses there were, do you really think it would have had the same magnitude of effect without the photos of the abuse televised and posted across the world? Images make for effective propaganda. Bin Laden was operationally probably pretty insignificant, but killing him was an important thing to do for our geopolitical interests because of its symbolic value and the message it sent to various regional actors and to those who al-Qaeda would want to recruit. To offset that accomplish even to a small degree by handing over an image to be used against us would be stupid. Very stupid.
DA and disabusing our enemies of that same notion is not something that we need to do. (I don’t think so if for no other reason than that failing in keeping such information secret is too big of a gamble and between Wikileaks and the leaks previously on “rendition”, we know that such is a very real possibility.)
Don’t you understand? Al Qaeda is in on it! Obama faked bin Laden’s death to make it easier for him to attack America. The fact that Al Qaeda is “confirming” that he’s dead proves it!
I think quite the opposite, actually, I imagine the decision was already made, they had it in mind from the git-go.
Suppose we had his body? Then what? Keep it? Stuff it and mount it?
Perhaps bin Ladin’s relatives would have taken custody, given it the appropriate Islamic rites, etc? But then again, maybe they wouldn’t, and we sure as hell couldn’t ask them beforehand. That might sorta tip our hand.
And then there’s the fact that his family is mostly Saudi, I suspect the Saudis would be less than tickled to have an ObL shrine installed on their soil. Leave it in Pakistan? Not an improvement. So where better than…nowhere.
Getting rid of the corpse seems an eminently sensible solution, leave no trace behind. Not a solution without drawbacks, to be sure, but finally more practical and reasonable than the alternatives. Obama would have figured this out, being at least as smart as me.
Yes, it is hard to believe.
He had all the time in the world to prepare a speech and deal with the media. Any competent person would have been ready to go given the prep-time of the operation. The WH had no control of the information that followed the speech and all kinds of mis-information spilled out.
Serious question. Why did they need to take the body with them back to the ship? Whoever it was, (it was OBL) he was clearly dead. Why not just grab some DNA and be done with it? ISTM that hauling a body back incurred additional risk with no real benefit.
I have to say, looking at this from abroad, this is pretty weak tea as criticism. In fact, while doubtless it must echo well in the hard right echo chambers, to any rational observer (and I am no leftist or sympathiser with the left by a long country mile) it looks like sourpussed whinging on and nitpicking in a desperate hope of scoring points against a fellow you hate regardless of what he does.
So, sorry, the above is really own-goal on your own side mate, because it highlights the empty pettiness.
I would presume to ensure that the body did not fall into the hands of his followers / sympathisers who could then hold a massive martyr’s funeral and create sympathetic imagery. That seems to me quite smart. I don’t know myself about the burial at sea, but probably in a few weeks the whinging on about that will have faded away from all the automatic fault-finders, and only thing that will remain is the fellow is dead. They probably have to raze that compound though.
Everything about the killing was pre-meditated - down to where the body was going to be dumped at sea. There was no plan to take him alive. It was a pre-meditated summary execution without trial.
So?
Are we supposed to be moved to tears? Outrage?
The bastard was a combattant who went to war out of his own choice with the entire west. He was killed in a military operation. Fine by me. He lived by the sword, he died by the sword.
Serious answer. Burial at sea prevents the body from being used as a propaganda tool. Same idea as not releasing the photos but more so.
Are there, perhaps, children who we should be thinking of?
It plays right into the conservatives hands. They were hoping all along that he’d kill OBL and would lose the second term. That’s why Bush let him hang around in the burbs barbecuing with the retired Pakistan Genererals until Obama would walk right into the trap.
God damned incompetent Obama, didn’t even plan how to spin this. Bush would have had Rove direct the whole mission so it wouldn’t fail as miserably as this one. At the very least, Obama should have flown onto the carrier and had a banner saying “Mission Accomplished”. That’s how competent people do things.
I’m not sure how much this helps Obama in the longterm, but it sure does make his detractors look like fucktards. I don’t think you guys will ever recover. You’ve been “Trumped”.
Just like the 3000 murders on 9/11. 
No. the photos aren’t going to convince those who will not be convinced of Bin Laden’s death. Not even AQ’s own press release will.
To quote something I read recently: “This week saw the death of the birthers and the birth of the deathers.”
Hence why I said it “would” be perfectly legitimate, not that it “was”.
It is not a zero-sum game - either people will attack us, or they won’t. There are levels, there are degrees. I’m sorry if you’re tired of kissing ass, but you know what? If the choice is between “provoking more hostility and attacks” and “kissing ass of unpleasant people”, i’m going to pick the second. Because it doesn’t really do us much good if we stand up for rationality and reasonability and standards or whatever the hell it is and then tomorrow there’s a new attack. Because that just starts it all over again.
The most important point, I would say, is not that bin Laden and those who support him get what they deserve. It’s that the horrific acts that the perpetrate are avoided in the future. In the broad scale of things, against the alternatives, i’m afraid to say that I put your personal annoyance at having to kiss ass as pretty low in the overall “things i’d like to avoid” list.
You know what? This really makes me think of someone who goes to a wedding, and instead of being happy for the bride and groom, he complains because the chicken is a little dry. I mean, talk about missing the big picture.
Oh gosh, he took a few minutes to get a speech ready. Oh heck, they didn’t release the pictures. Shoot, darn, shucks, what a failure to control the messahey THEY KILLED HIS ASS AS DEAD AS DOGSHIT.
Barack Obama has Osama’s head in a cooler next to his desk so he can spit on it every now and then. He wins, bin Laden gets eaten by fish, and Bush failed. That’s all, folks.