6 Things We Thought We Knew about the Killing of Osama bin Laden That Turned out to be Wrong

6 Things We Thought We Knew about the Killing of Osama bin Laden That Turned out to be Wrong

The story of how the United States took down Osama bin Laden has already taken on mythical details, forcing the White House and other administration officials to publicly correct some of the oft-repeated inaccuracies.

A misleading version of how Navy SEALs got the world’s most-wanted terrorist goes like this:

1) Aided by intelligence gathered from tortured detainees,
2) American commandoes found an armed bin Laden
3) using one of his wives as a human shield.
4) Because the al-Qaeda leader fired at the Americans, they shot back
5) and bin Laden and his spouse were killed,
6) all while President Barack Obama watched the raid unfold in real time from thousands of miles away.

Pretty much everything in the previous two sentences is either false or an exaggeration, except for the part about bin Laden being dead.

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/6_Things_We_Thought_We_Knew_about_the_Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden_That_Turned_out_to_be_Wrong_110504

The expression sold a pup comes to mind.

familiar (yet not in the know) who insists on being anonymous, says woman used as shield and killed. no one has the info. media does not check for validity but sends out to masses. story is just breaking

glad you can reduce to lie in your cutsey way

Look - I support the death of OBL as much as the next guy. And even if the fucker was shot in his sleep - I don't care. I'm glad it was done.

However, just because the death of OBL was necessary, doesn't mean we shouldn't apply our critical thinking filters. Turning those off every time a guy with a 'D' next to his name enters office is just as bad as the Birthers who will claim until their dead that Obama wasn't born here.

evolving story. how many people are acknowledging info came from anonymous official not privy to info. how many are recognizing this was said before anyone had the info.

how many acknowledge obama has immediately (24 hours) corrected the info and not pretend first statemnt was reality. where is the taling point that repugs use to keep a lie going

LETS do some critical thinking. please

Thinking critically is a two way street

But I would be remiss if I were not not question the corrections

P.S. I'm not just nit picking here, but I have kind of a 'fetish' if you will for thinking critically

which is beyond so many others that just accuse.

My Republican friends are crowing that it was because we tortured people that we got to put the hit on OBL. Obama had nothing to do with it in their eyes.

Then on the other side I have a lot of leftist friends who are saying they should have taken him into custody, read him the miranda, etc.

As much as I would have wished to see a trial, it could just have easily turned into Al Queda Porn, with millions of wanna be jihadis pointing their finger in the air and quoting from the trial. And from what it sounded like OBL wasn't going to go out like that anyway.

So in the interest of fairness and accuracy, I want to hear the whole story, and not be citing some story that had been debunked 10 minutes earlier.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/the-republican-spin.html

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

To repeat: in the one instance we now clearly know about, the CIA is telling us that torture gave them lies. Which they were. Only when traditional interrogation was used did we get the actual names of the couriers. Marcy Wheeler looks at the current data set:

We can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

___________________________

bush closed hunting obl group in 2006. he dropped the ball. was not only not a priority, but he didnt do it. obama stepped in and did. the majority wanted obama to do a bombing. least risky. obama choose the riskiest yet effective way. he did it.

Thinking especially that you would be a martyr if you died. Compare that to sitting in a cell, barely any contact with the outside world, with only your psyche as your friend

But that's lost on the Republicans. They think everyone is as weak and cowardly as them.

i absolutely see your point.

poor guy everyone making things up!! :nopity:

Personally, I am more of the opinion that initial reporting is unreliable and I expect that corrections will be made.

No I don't. But I think the rush to propel the desired narrative may have taken priority of getting the story straight.

No. It was another administration that did that.

Jeez. Why the need to overstate what I say?

I do not believe our government has the complete and accurate story even at this moment but what would be happening right now if they had not made any announcement? Right now, there would be all manner of crazy things being said and everyone screaming for an official announcement. Really, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. so I really don't have that big of a problem with them getting out the best information the have and updating it as it gets better.

I'm really not seeing this as distortions and/or lies from our government as per the bush MO. They are not claiming things known to be false for years. It's been a few days and they have made admissions of what they got wrong and not tried to hide it.

I don't know... I am just not really having a problem with it.

It just foments confusion and distrust.

Look, I hope is remains that the misstatements get corrected quickly and that they aren't intentional. But, honestly, I believe this is the tip of the iceberg. The official story will likely change quite a bit over the coming months. Yet, it will be the first official story that most remember. I learned long ago that you can't trust government stories. The have a vested interest in presenting things a certain way. When facts suggest they were not accurate, they are forced to retract and adapt the story.

This is why we must keep digging and asking questions, to get closer to the truth.

On Sunday night should they have just said "We conducted a raid in Pakistan and killed some people" and waited till Monday (when DNA was done) to say it was bin laden? Or not said anything until Monday? I don't know... I think word would have gotten out anyway and then people would be saying "Why were they trying to keep it secret?"

I have no issue at all with digging and asking questions, getting to the truth of things is always ok in my book. The way you are stating this though really comes across as though you feel they are intentionally mis-stating things and I am just not getting that vibe at all. They seem to be very forth coming about making corrections... and not in a sly way but with what appears to me to be a genuine effort to say it loudly and clearly that they were wrong on something and here is what we were wrong about/what did happen.

Keep in mind... I am not denying governments lie... heh, every last one of them does. I just do not have that feeling on this one though. Time will tell us if I am wrong.

conceive that LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Same sorts of baloney was thrown around back then ("fog of war," "corrections will be made," ad infinitum).

Sorry, bub, even Democratic Presidents lie. Hate to burst that bubble of yours.

:eyes:

HOw can they claim this is the fog of war? All very odd.

What was he looking at? Did his camera see everything? Etc...

That I have no idea what really happen. I'm not sure if I care much if the outcome is accurate.

it is less than $250,000.

do we or media have ANY responsibility in this?

Administration even knew about. All the early facts came from the WH.

within 24 hours.

damn, we give our leaders grace here, right....

I am saying the Administration has a vested interest in presenting the story one way. Each chip in that story raises the question, why? Why not present the truth, or say you don't know yet?

a man that is so controlled, liked these missteps? he immediately corrected himself monday night and then sent his dude out yesterday to correct.

that is pretty damn fast correcting the misinformation. but instead of feeling assured our president was so fast on this

we accuse and create conspiracies.

(again, i knwo not you. but everytime i answer your post, i may not make that clarification)

he should be fuckin patted on the back. instead we are outraged.

think back to bushco. numerous lies. all the same talking point and lies never acknowledged or corrected.

and 1 has been corrected by some if rw and media would get off the lie

people were saying what happened and they hadnt seen and had very little info because seals were not back, had not reported. people rushed it. media rushed it. all to get it out there

that is what happens with these stories. i thought we knew that as a people and as story evolves we gain more info

not automatically LIED to.

1) Waterboarding works

2) Bush deserves credit


The reporting on this is quite anal. Instead of working to present an accurate and detailed account of events, they're nit-picking about the top inaccuracies (in list form no less) reported by anonymous sources.

There is also a good chance that the list in the OP will become invalid in a few days or weeks.

Cronkite etc. could not get on the air until a certain time had passed, in which the facts could be collected. They only had limited air time.

Now people can twitter things immediately. News is on 24 hours per day. Naturally rumors and specs will get through at first.