Obama "Should've taken OBL alive+Shouldn't have dumped body at sea+Wrong to go to Ground Zero" =

Republicans "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WE ARE SO FUCKED NEXT YEAR NO MATTER WHO WE NOMINATE!!!!!"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

They really are fit to be tied, aren't they?

"Let's piss in their tea" - I like that. But I think Obama already did that when he got bin Laden!

I already have one in mind: The Washington Capitals are fast becoming what the Boston Red Sox used to be.

:argh:

And I think I may want to - as long as there's a teabagger walking the earth.

We need that one to stick around for awhile.

:toast:

...I'm thinking of switching loyalties to the Bruins. :cry: (I was born and reared in Maine.)

Take THAT, teaRACISTS! MY guy just nailed bin Laden. What did yours do?

:P (Is there a thumb-your-nose smilie?)

There isn't a pissing one either. ;(

I see those on various back windshields quite often.

Wouldn't that violate some child-protection laws? :shrug:

Can you believe these people? Complaining about why the gubmint did not released the pictures like they did for Saddam's sons. I usually stop what I am doing to try talking to people making stupid statements like that but I figured that "haters are going to hate" regardless.

Their way was failure. You'd think they would just STFU instead of reminding everybody what losers they are.

...what kind of cheese goes with that? ;-)

Laying a wreath at Ground Zero and visiting the firefighters was a dignified and appropriate action. The Repugs are tugging at their own short straws there.

As for dumping his body at sea, that makes little difference other than it fuels wild speculation.

But, it was a mistake to have not captured UBL in order to interrogate him, given the chance. The mass of details can never be matched by a few laptops and thumb drives. Inconvenient details - which is why the mission was to kill him, not capture and interrogate him. See, http://www.nationaljournal.com/for-obama-killing-not-capturing-nobr-bin-laden-nobr-was-goal-20110503

The reason you put kill before capture is to keep the SEAL team alive.

As soon as we need to drop guys from helicopters, with backup helicopters in the air, the target on the ground should be toast.

Putting aside the moral and legal issue, given a choice between the laptops and a breathing bin Laden I would much rather have the laptops. They will be full of details not subject to the transience of memory and outright lying, being notes made for OBL's own use in an environment where he thought he was safe. If you wanted to learn about me you would learn a lot more by stealing my computer than I would probably be able to tell you if you locked me up and threatened me, and I don't have a whole transnational network of operatives to keep straight.

done any professional investigative work. You want both testimony and other evidence because they complement each other in ascertaining facts.

Obviously if you're going after a bank executive you arrest him and seize the ledgers, but if you can only do one or the other it's the ledgers you want.

In this case I think it was pretty reasonable to assume that even if he was given a chance OBL wouldn't surrender and that in the unlikely event he was taken he would be, shall we say, reluctant to give up any useful information. He might have corroborated some things but the computers are the real prize.

Do you actually think his interrogation would be without any value because all he would have to do is invoke the 5th Amendment?

Where have you been for the last nine or ten years?

What I was saying something about was this:

The mass of details can never be matched by a few laptops and thumb drives.

And that is just wrong. The reason people use laptops and thumb drives is to help them remember things. You think OBL had all the email addresses and drop points for his entire organization in his head?. That's what the computers are for. OBL in person might be of help corroborating information or supplying decryption codes, but it appears he was so confident in his own safety that few precautions of any kind were taken. In that situation it's the computers you want.

It appears you haven't.

You're just being obtuse. OBL himself stopped personally using high tech when he nearly got tracked by his sat phone, but he was still using computers and unless you think al Qaeda is entirely held together by carrier pigeons I would guess OBL's computer has a lot of contact information which would be necessary to tell the couriers where to go.

Or are you being intentionally obtuse?

If you want me to speculate, I would say that they've known where UBL has been for years, and followed each and everyone who walks into and out of that compound. But, that would only tell you the most recent part of the story. Only UBL, and a few people in the world, can tell you the who, what, and whys of what he was doing a decade or more ago - that's the important evidence that we will never learn - not from him, anyway.

Look, you obviously are trying to enhance the case that it was a screwup to kill OBL instead of capturing him. Make that case if you want on moral or legal grounds; it will be an uphill battle considering they did to OBL pretty much exactly what they do to American citizens who are suspected of much more trivial crimes. If we had not gotten the computers then you might even have a point about the intelligence. But we got the computers. The computers will tell you where the couriers are sent; you don't need OBL or the couriers for that. Given the either-or proposition to which I originally replied, if you could have only OBL or only the computers, it is the computers you will want every single time.

(And FTR I have been deposed in a couple of court cases. My experience is that the DA goes for the business records first and only bothers interviewing live people when he has a pretty good idea what answers to expect.)

Do you seriously think he'd say a word? He'd lawyer up immediately. But that's all imaginary. He'd kill himself.

I rather doubt we would get a single word of useful intel out of a breathing OBL. Every breath he has drawn for the last 20 years has been directed at balking us. He has more motivation to resist either torture or more humane interrogation techniques than just about anyone who ever lived.

if he was still alive by the time we interrogated him, he would not talk, guaranteed.

Or do you think if he had been captured he would have just rushed to start talking?

No way OBL himself would tell us anything.

Radioactive dumb! (I think s/he unrecced the thread because of the way s/he was owned by the logical counterarguments.)

If they had gotten him alive, we would be in a legal nightmare with all the usual suspects lining up to scream that he can't have a trial here, not in our precious homeland, blah blah blah, and the preliminaries would drag on for years.

The screaming is just politics. You think that's more important than what we might have learned from UBL about his patrons and confederates - the important ones running various governments, global banks, and elite organizations?

OBL has confessed to the crime multiple times on worldwide video releases. We do not need to build a case against him, we need to dismantle the organization he built and identify its members. To do that you do not want the ringleader, you want his records and contact lists. The reason he puts those on a computer is so that he doesn't have to remember them all.

That's how his testimony would have been most valuable, and the evidence indicates, why he was eliminated instead of captured.

You're exactly right, we want to identify his confederates. For that you do not want his testimony, which is likely to be incomplete or false in any case. You want his contact list, preferably captured before he has a chance to wipe it, encrypt it, or substitute a fake one. And that appears to be what we got. So we don't need testimony, we need coordinates and addresses and names. And that is the sort of info you find on the perp's computer because he probably doesn't remember it all anyway, it's why he had the computer.

Or maybe that subject matter doesn't matter, anymore?

We want to dismantle the organization that exists today, not the one that exhisted before our Afghanistan adventure scrambled it all. If you want to arrest me what good does it do to know where I lived two house moves ago?

The original statement that the lost humint is more valuable than the computers is simply wrong. It is wrong by just about any way of looking at the investigative process. It's wrong whether your outcome is to build a case or to dismantle the organization. It's wrong in my fortunately limited experience of a large business customer of mine being investigated by the FBI for fraud.

Yes, we know you'd rather they brought OBL in so we could parade him naked on a cart or whatever fresh horror they're thinking of at Gitmo. But the lost intelligence is not a very good reason to be upset about that.

But this was five-star all the way, baby! And, reportedly---just to show the WH staff what a cool customer he is---Obama celebrated with a cucumber sandwich. No pretzels.

If OBL had been captured and brought to trial...they'd be saying he should have been killed. If the pictures were out there for anyone to see, they'd say they shouldn't have been shown, etc. I remember when you could actually have a discussion with a right-winger...now, they have no credibility. The Republican leadership and the voters are the party of "NO".

Anyway...OBL wanted to die a martyr, he even had a martyr tape prepared. Killing him fulfulled that wish. He was also "buried" in Muslim tradition. Maybe these considerations will placate his followers so that they don't retaliate.

It's wrong because Obama did it that way. Had he done it the way they now say is right, that would be wrong.

:freak:

There's absolutely no way AFAIK they can claim that with a straight face......at least not anymore.

BTW has anybody been surprised that nobody on the right is criticizing Obama for respecting Islamic burial practices? I'm surprising none of them are upset about him burying him in accordance with "Sharia-compliant law"? :eyes:

in-their-face to Muslims. Now suddenly they don't care!

They are apparently very angry at Obama for various things, among them being too respectful of the body.

They are apparently mad at him for getting OBL instead of politely waiting for a GOP administration to do it.

I don't have cable (let alone watch Fox News), so I guess I wouldn't be immediately aware of it. But I had little doubt that SOMEBODY on the right would get around to saying SOMETHING about it.

You'd think that 9/11 family members would just be happy about somebody getting OBL instead of him not being found at all?
:wtf:
I'm personally glad it was "our guy" that got him but it really shouldn't make a difference whether or not a Democrat or Republican gets him- of course, W had a whole EIGHT YEARS to himself to find him and get him but six months after aggressively pursuing him, he and his (mis-)Administration started minimizing his importance and decided to go off on a tangent and invade Iraq- which didn't have WMDs, didn't give WMDs to Al-Queda, and didn't have OBL (or his whereabouts). I would think that even the staunchest anti-Obama 9/11 family members should be mad at Bush over THAT but I guess hatred of somebody can be so intense that the haters completely lose their ability to think straight. :shrug:

Obama being impolite, i.e., erasing bin Laden's ass, seriously fucks up their Jimmy Carter II meme.

Catching Osama bin Laden! All they can do is carp!

A :woohoo: They'll tell us once more/Before they get off the floor/Don't bring 'em down...

Funny thing is: We don't have to. They're doing a marvelous job of bringing their own asses down.

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Talk about synchronicity! ;-)