Ding, dong, Osama bin Laden is dead

[Paffnia]

President Obama will speak on the death of Osama in a second. His body has been found and genetically tested for certainty. All I can say is "Wow."
Thoughts? Should we leave Afghanistan soon now? Will Obama become more popular as a result?

[Bad Infinitum]

Now he's a martyr. Insurgents officially have a mascot now.

The problem I have with the whole "dead or alive" bounty on bin Laden is that a dead Osama is roughly enough to equate 3,000+ American lives lost on 9/11. If I had my way, we'd have captured him and tortured him one day for every victim. And then killed. Slowly.

Anyway, tough break to all my sniper buddies. Word on the street is that a drone got the kill... Waste of money.

[Tanzoria]

It was suprising how he was living in a mansion outside Islamabad and not some cave in the middle of nowhere.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

I have CNN's live stream ready to go for the speech.

(Oddly, today was the day I got around to Obama's speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It's weird that I'm going to watch him twice in one day, with completely opposite levels of seriousness.)

[Bad Infinitum]

I take it back, killed in a firefight. Bravo, USSOC.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

There's going to be a round of medals for that mission.

I wonder if we told the Pakistanis we were sending men in? I somehow doubt it.

[Bad Infinitum]

Nah, they've been cooperating with us for ages. They have been aware that the US would operate inside their borders if we had intelligence indicating Osama's location. No surprises there... Except maybe that he wasn't in a cave.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

Yeah, that's the most shocking thing for me. A mansion near the capital instead of a cave in Waziristan.

[Grub (Lenlyvit)]

Woo Hoo!

[Takaram]

All I can say: 'bout damn time.

[Tanzoria]

[Takaram]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_Bin_Laden
Wish I'd been the SoB who got to edit this one.

[Free Guns For All]

Shit, this got a lot of reponses fast. Well, at least the f**ker's dead now.

[Thanya]

May 1, 2011 22:06:26 GMT -5 Bad Infinitum said:

If I had my way, we'd have captured him and tortured him one day for every victim. And then killed. Slowly.

I agree with that. They should mount his head in the Oval Office.

[Markanite]

Well done to the US forces who took part in this!

Congratulations and hopefully they stay safe!

[Anime Daisuki]

May 1, 2011 23:01:11 GMT -5 Takaram said:

All I can say: 'bout d**n time.

Yeah, on some level, I can't believe it took 10 years to get him.

[Shizensky]

May 1, 2011 22:06:26 GMT -5 Bad Infinitum said:

Now he's a martyr. Insurgents officially have a mascot now.

The problem I have with the whole "dead or alive" bounty on bin Laden is that a dead Osama is roughly enough to equate 3,000+ American lives lost on 9/11. If I had my way, we'd have captured him and tortured him one day for every victim. And then killed. Slowly.

Anyway, tough break to all my sniper buddies. Word on the street is that a drone got the kill... Waste of money.

And I'm sorry if I've been listening to the news wrong for 10 years, but death to this guy isn't the same as death to most of us, right? We're talking about people who blow themselves up as a means of fighting. Maybe it's different for this guy since he was conveniently never involved in the blowing up of the self.

I've never felt right celebrating death, and its use as a penalty for a crime is almost an easy way out to answer for crimes. The same stands true for bin Laden, if not more so because of the severity of his injustices against humanity.

A good justice would have been letting the survivors and family members of 9/11 victims have at him for a little each. But death is too easy, and even a reward for him and those who follow him. I would have wanted him to answer to more than a bullet.

[Cerb]

I also can't celebrate this. Firstly because I can't ever celebrate a death, no matter how well deserved it might be.

If you look at the crowds in front of the White House or in Times Square, it could be just another mob in an Islamic city celebrating the death of an American. I want us to be bigger than that.

My dream would have been for him to be captured and put on trial in some form of world tribunal, as his organization has commited global murder. I would then have liked to keep him happily locked up in solatary and fed him just enough to keep him barely alive, and questioned him with all of the skill and techniques possessed by the CIA, MI6, Mosaad, etc etc etc.

The best thing that can be said about this is it demonstrates to the world that sooner or later, you won't escape vengance. Massive credit goes to the team (Now reported to be SEALs) and an exceptionally well planned and implemented attack.

Oh, and one other thing. The timing bothers me. Bothers me from the top of my skull all the way down to the tips of my tiny toesies. 8 months from the intel to action seems long to me, and it just seems too perfectly timed. Start off your re-election campaign with the death of Usama? Can't get much better than that in this economy.

And finally, this won't change a damn thing about our current deployments or our military personnel. If anything, it's going to be a much more dangerous environment for a few months IMO.

[Bad Infinitum]

May 2, 2011 9:52:57 GMT -5 Cerb said:

Oh, and one other thing. The timing bothers me. Bothers me from the top of my skull all the way down to the tips of my tiny toesies. 8 months from the intel to action seems long to me, and it just seems too perfectly timed. Start off your re-election campaign with the death of Usama? Can't get much better than that in this economy.

Bush did the same thing eight years ago when he declared mission accomplished.

Oh, and OBL's been in that compound for five years. Just now getting intel on it... kind of embarrassing. Taking eight months to verify and develop a raid plan isn't out of the ordinary. It's slow, but it's the norm.

[Cerb]

I think I'd have said the same thing about Bush at the time. I hate people manipulating stories for political gain.

As far as this mission goes, I accept that there may have been other players in that they wanted to get at the same time, and I'm also aware that they aren't going to give us the whole story.

I'm always going to be bothered by "timing". Heh. I was bothered by many things in the speech such as when he said "I directed Leon to make getting Usama the CIA's top priority".

Well duh, like it wasn't already.

My respect goes to the men on the ground. It's a testament to their training and expertise. I can't think of another recent incident where a special forces team has made a more clinical strike without a single casualty. I am sure there a lot we don't know about, but this has to be right up there with the very public SAS strike on the Iranian embassy (which I watched as a kid, very powerful memory).

[MinnaCaroline]

I'm glad he's dead. I hope he's burning in a special kind of Hell.

[Bad Infinitum]

May 2, 2011 10:55:09 GMT -5 Cerb said:

I can't think of another recent incident where a special forces team has made a more clinical strike without a single casualty. I am sure there a lot we don't know about, but this has to be right up there with the very public SAS strike on the Iranian embassy (which I watched as a kid, very powerful memory).

No one hears about the ones that work, and that's just the way we like it

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

I'm especially impressed no Americans were killed considering a helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure. Less impressed that a helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure. (Ground crew: I am disappoint.)

[Bad Infinitum]

May 2, 2011 11:21:40 GMT -5 Tsim Sha Tsui said:

I'm especially impressed no Americans were killed considering a helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure. Less impressed that a helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure. (Ground crew: I am disappoint.)

Until the entire mission debrief is declassified, consider me a skeptic about this whole "crash landing" issue. They took two Blackhawks into the compound. One crash landed, yet they still managed to get both chalks of operators, bin Laden's body, and a bunch of seized computers out on the last bird. Those things have a very specific weight limit, not to mention limited seating capacity.

There's still a lot of holes in the story. The timeline doesn't make sense. Too many news sources are reporting incorrect information, conflicting information, and a lot of it is just downright wrong. I wouldn't trust anything you hear about it for the next couple of days.

[Cerb]

Ah, things happen. Stuff breaks down. I hear the Pakistani PM is now saying how naughty the US were for killing him on their soil.

I can't blame them for the protest. I'm sure they were quite upset to find out that giant Saudi that lived in the big secure compound, who just happened to need all that kidney Dialysis, was in fact Usama. It must have come as a real shock that he was there for five years.

Yes, shocking. I'm sure they didn't notice. It's quite easy for a guy that big, with those special medical needs, with a massive armed guard, to wanter across the entire country without a single person going wow, he looks familiar.

Protest away. Maybe we'll just not notice that we haven't shipped all of the aid that pakistan relies on. It's only thousands of tons of food, medical supplies, and financial support. It's easy to misplace all of that stuff. Probably nobody will notice that it's sitting in the containers on the dock side. Such mistakes are sooooo easy to make. It could happen to anyone...



It

[Anime Daisuki]

Conspiracy Theory

I heard the Pakistani intel services were with the US forces when they moved in... Perhaps the Pakistani military executed him. The "shot to the head" makes you wonder. Also, the building seems to have caught fire after that (it was shown on Pakistani TV)... easy to burn away any paperwork or evidence they were working with Al Q.

[Bad Infinitum]

It's standard operating procedure to destroy any irretrievable US equipment left behind when leaving an operation in unsecured territory... the operators on the ground most likely set charges to destroy the downed Blackhawk. That would explain the fires.

[Cerb]

I dunno. From the extremely contradictory reports it sounds like the US shut out pretty much all other agencies, up to and including groups like MI6. It's unlikely the cards would have been shown to Pakistani Intelligence without every other service on the planet being aware of the Op.

Who can tell though? Any Pakistani Intelligence could be CIA folks and they aren't going to mention it.

I'm thinking that the guy might have tapped himself rather than be taken alive. He's already got his virgins lined up after all. We'll find out one day. The operators have a book sale already sold if they have a mind to write one.

[Cerb]

Oh and I misread the article, it's the former Prime Minister that's griping about the operation on Pakistani soil, rather than the current incumbent. Still, I'm going to leave my rant because I enjoyed it.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

The books, primetime specials, and movies are inevitable.