Is Kerry telling an issue that the Post is writing serious front page articles about to "shut up?"

The people who are concerned about the rule of law and upset that Duke and American University polisci professors and legal experts are proclaiming that this sets a precedent that any enemy combatant or enemy leader can be executed in similar fashion instead of captured, the people like me who are upset over the lack of closure and the unwillingness to rebuild the towers and the fact that we started three wars in the Middle East using Bin Laden as a pretext only to execute him Mafia-style when we finally captured him, or people who are upset that we had the opportunity for a tribunal,

LIKE WITH THE HUTU INTERAHAMWE ??

(not that many ignorant buffoons who are able to vote even know what the Hutu Interahamwe are or what they did)

It's a question of closure. It seems that most Americans want to forget things as fast as possible and move on.

This is no different from the way many Americans on the center-right reacted to the end of WWII -- they wanted to rebuild Germany as fast as possible, exonerate all the junior Nazis, proclaim Hitler dead was the end of all their problems and get on with it. They didn't want a Nuremberg trial.

Kill the bad guy, move on to the next video game level (as one Post op-ed put it, reflecting the exact same concerns I have, as did the front page article in the Post Express recently). Oh wait! Panetta says we need to interrogate his wife and kid - why? Because they might have knowledge of what bin Laden was up to! Ummmm waitaminute......

See, this is how the famous "Overton Window" works. You drag the discourse so far to the right that what was once acceptable moral discourse about how we conduct and respond to terror becomes unacceptable and treasonous, tantamount to sympathy for the enemy (bin Laden). Watch them manage the discourse so that it becomes unacceptable again to question the involvement of high-level Pakistanis with bin Laden, despite the fact that (as the newspapers rather indelicately stated this past week) Al Qaeda was founded and has always been headquartered in -- you guessed it -- PAKISTAN! But it will soon be arranged thru cable TV that such nuttery will be dismissed and relegated to the dungeon of unacceptable political discourse, since Pakistan is a lucrative military ally and we need them to continue our pointless and counterproductive occupation of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the US tacitly supports friendly dictators in Syria and Bahrain in the very midst of the Arab Spring because we don't want Shi'ites (who assisted the US in the hunt for the anti-Shi'ite bin Laden) to have more influence on US oil... But the Libyan revolt is portrayed as an absolutely, positively, unique event, which is totally unlike, say, Bahrain or Yemen or the Congo! Notice how European military is taken the lead in Libya? That is because Europeans have sole access to Libyan oil contracts, so it is their colonial military jurisdiction, so to speak, and the US is not wanted. The rebels will be hung on the bedpost and their dreams of freedom forgotten once a new colonial "elected official" is found. That is why we're not arming the rebels and assisting them more directly.

Solution for dealing with bin Laden. Hence Brian Williams asking why we didn't do the same for Saddam, or for that matter Ghaddafi (he called it the "one bullet strategy" to warfare). Apparently this entire war was a pretext for a Butch Cassidy-style manhunt of the self-styled mastermind of the 9-11 attacks and when we finally get the man, it's two in the back of the head and that's it!? Note that we already have the operational leaders of the 9-11 attacks in custody, and are putting them on military tribunal of some sort (no civilian trial although at some point Obama insisted on one) so apparently they pleaded out, so to speak, in order for us to pin the top man as the sole person primarily responsible. This leaves any possible leads as to who assisted bin Laden in US allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia conveniently unexplored.

BTW, Natives are upset that the military used the code "Geronimo" for bin Laden, a code freighted with meaning in military circles as Geronimo was the subject of a 10-year military manhunt. Interestingly, though Geronimo & co. were known for Apache stunts like torturing people to death and burying soldiers in anthills; and the Apaches as a whole were basically enemy combatants with no civilian protections, yet he was captured alive.

Apparently newspapermen feel free to gloat about how anyone who resists US force (not just indiscriminate mass murderers like bin Laden) should get the same treatment. I guess we could take the military approach of ancient Rome, which served them well; if people surrender without a fight they will not be harmed, but once the "ram has hit the gate" all bets are off for the people inside.

Kerry :)

we are today - ankle-deep in the preliminary battles of World War 4, a twilight forever war where everyone, everywhere is suspect and subject to constant surveillance. Rendition of suspects, torture, and extrajudicial execution are now the new normal. In each war, the fascists assume ever-greater powers over American government and society until it becomes something that would be barely recognizable to an earlier generation.

If one were to tell an educated American in 1951 that sixty years later the government intercepts and stores for analysis all phone calls and electronic communications, and that there is a vast computerized infrastructure created to profile U.S. citizens as terrorists, and that "enemy combatants", foreigners and U.S. citizens alike, are now assassinated without trial by robot missile platforms and kill teams in undeclared wars, he would say you've been reading too much Orwell and Heinlein. This is America, they would say with horror and confusion, this can't happen here. But, it did - and, it's not going back to the way it was - too much money and power created by such a system, those who run it won't give it up voluntarily. Good luck to anyone who seriously threatens to do so.

This has been the result of decisions taken at the beginning of the Cold War to appoint people who were known to have been Nazi and Fascist sympathizers -- the Dulles brothers, the Angletons, the Walkers and Bush families -- to the highest levels of American intelligence. They were selected for those posts because they had impeccable anti-communist credentials and had pre-existing personal contacts with many ranking Nazi and fascist figures, not because they were otherwise proven particularly trustworthy or patriotic. Many of them, such as Richard Nixon, were known scoundrels who wanted desperately to be political policemen but were unacceptable as candidates for the FBI. But, they were acceptable to military intelligence and, if from wealthy families, were welcome in the OSS. They were then effectively free to conduct business and politics in secret without any sort of public accountability, and once embedded in politics and government, the GOP used the same psychological warfare and dirty-tricks for partisan political purposes until today, flawed elections are almost taken for granted.

The national security state, the Cold War, and 9/11 were the direct result of that decision made by ranking military officers and some FDR and Truman appointees to embrace and elevate the American Fascists, a trend that only intensified during the Eisenhower-Nixon years, the policies and preferences for authoritarian, Right-wing policies have carried over to the present day.

And the question about why we didn't do "the same" to Saddam Hussein is pretty easy to answer. The location in which he was hiding was a spider hole. A small, hole in the ground. He had 2 choices, come out quietly, or they drop in some tear gas. Or just post a man outside the hole. He has to come out sooner or later.

OBL was not in a hole. He was in a building. A building with high walls. Armed guards. And weapons in the room. Al Qaeda is know to use IEDs, set boby traps, etc. And the location was in walking distance to the Pakistani version of West Point. This creates a very dangerous situation for the SEAL team. And if we have to send a SEAL team via helicopter to find you, you better not blink funny.

Look, you know and I know that if SEAL Team 6 had been ordered to capture OBL for interrogation, they could have and would have done so without any undue risk to themselves.

But, interrogating bin Laden might have been inconvenient to a number of very powerful people around the world. So, the order was to shoot him dead. Dead. Simple as that. I have no problem with that outcome - just the preliminary steps and information-gathering that were skipped.

Second, detaining bin Laden would mean someone would take hostages to demand his release. Obama didn't want another Iranian hostage crisis-style incident.

Then, they changed the story.

But, if there's an overriding danger of hostage-taking, we should have shot dead KSM, Abu Zubaydeh, and al-Shehhi, and the other "high-value" detainees, instead of wasting all that time and effort on them.

Think about what you're saying.

reaching here jeffy. Being the bright guy you aspire to you certainly see the lost opportunity to get to the bottom of the terra issue dont' you?

Giving ample time for his friends to take hostages to get him released.

More to the point, the information you are concerned about was probably located on the computers seized in the raid. And they give up their secrets far more reliably than a human fanatic.

SEAL Team 6 was dropped out of helicopters, blocks from Pakistan's West point. That's dangerous. And those are facts.

We've lost special forces teams in missions just like this. That's another fact.

The premise that this SEAL team was somehow under less danger is false. That's another fact.

As for information gathering, it sounds like we netted more intel from those computers then in any effort in history. Another fact.

I suspect that the SEAL team was given broad discretion but also told that if OBL even blinked funny, they could take him out. That's speculation on my part.

You suspect that "very powerful people" some how got Obama to tell the SEALs to just kill OBL no matter what. Huge speculation on your part.

#
U.S. team's mission was to kill bin Laden, not capture | Reuters
May 2, 2011... Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters.This.
www.reuters.com/.../us-binladen-kill-idUSTRE7413H220110502 - Cached
#

Also, see related (read the quotes form others, like Steve Coll): http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/post/osama-bin-laden-killed/2011/05/02/AFxfAJYF_blog.html

As for whether UBL's current laptop contains his complete pre-9/11 contact list, I doubt that. Strongly. He might have had a few things further to say of some relevance, don't you think? But, not now. Or, doesn't anyone care, anymore. That was so "pre-9/11" of me to think that responsibility for 9/11 still matters.

Moving forward.

Reuters makes a claim, with no named "official", and Coll says nothing at all ... and again, no named source.

And then you say "laptop"? You might want to read up on how much data we collected.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20060493-10391695.html

No laptop in the world holds 2.7 terabytes of data.

As for the data recovered from the compound - 2.7 tera. That's not so extraordinary for a household these days. A relative who runs an indy recording studio has like 7 or 8 Tera stacked up.

2.7 T - That's like one good laptop with two 750 Gig harddrives and a handful of flash drives. No Big Deal. About what you would expect from a semi-retired propagandist - certainly not the amount of data one might expect to recover from the hub of an active global network enterprise, terrorist or otherwise.

2.7 Tera is COMMON for a "household"??????

My house has 8 computers. My kids each have one, my wife and I have one, and we have a server. My kids collect songs and videos like crazy. My wife has scanned more old photos than I can image.

We are nowhere close to 2.7 Tera ... so for you to suggest that 2.7 is not "extraordinary" is silly.

As for the "kill order", I'm pretty sure that they SEALs were told that if OBL blinked funny, they could kill him. That is different then claiming that they were told to kill him no matter what.

Lots and lots of data.

Why did the SEALs just shoot the wife in the leg, when she came running at them, but double-tapped Osama? Why?

FFS...

/facepalm

Once past the guards outside, there was no resistance. None. If there were, we would have heard about it in great detail. If making a quick getaway was the concern, it would have been quicker to walk him outside and into the chopper than having to carry the body.

Whatever, lol.

How is it insane to ask why they killed someone with that level of potentially valuable information about terrorist support networks when they could have, obviously, just grabbed him and walked him to a waiting helicopter for transfer to a naval vessel where they could interrogate him at their leisure? Why didn't they, given a chance?

I posit that it's insane not to have done so, unless there was there was a very good reason not to want anyone to hear what he had to say about others around the world.

That's it in a nutshell right there.

But then I'm sure that those wringing their hands and claiming injustice had a much better view of the situation on the ground from their computers. :eyes:

Seriously. You'll probably never know why. But my posit is that "given a chance" just didn't happen. And I have no reason to believe you have the knowledge or clearance to know otherwise.

It really is evident that some folks are just going to be outraged about anything and everything this President does good or bad. So have at it. :shrug:

to not take him alive for interrogation. The SEALs clearly had that opportunity - I don't criticize them or their decisions, I question their orders.

Do you have photos and/or video that the rest of us haven't had access to?

Pure speculation on your part. That's all it is.

I doubt we're going to get any further in this conversation, so have at it.

If it were impossible to have captured him, that would be very apparent, and would have been explained in the minutest detail in the corporate media. But, the subject of capture of UBL for interrogation, and why he wasn't, hasn't even been discussed.

I haven't seen anyone begin to explain that, a question that I think is an obvious one that should be asked, over and over, until it is answered.

Nothing speaks louder than that silence - just like the unasked questions about why Bush didn't order the al-Qaeda network rolled-up when presented with that option in August, 2001. I suspect the answer to both questions are related.

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I'd feel a lot better than I do. I hope Obama uses this on the Republicans until their ears bleed. That's fine.

But in the context of him relying so much on JSOC, both for targeted assassination and for the drone programs, when JSOC in its present form was McChrystal's baby with Cheney, that's different. He has doubled down on BushCo tactics and none of those are good for us, for ending these conflicts, for the Middle East or for bringing Bush era criminals to account.

Central Intelligence is an entirely decent, conscientious, and trustworthy individual, and a really good liberal.

He is also a pragmatist who reminded me at one time that the elected officials who head this Party are from states that are controlled by powerful multinational corporate interests and resource extraction firms that are notoriously self-interested. I will never forget his asking me, when I approached him about public funding to back a breakthrough in solar-electric technology, who was then the Majority Leader? "Jim Wright", I responded. What State did he come from? "Texas." Doesn't that tell you what you need to know, he inquired, looking through those thick, round, professorial glasses. That was an honest response, and appreciated his candor. I'm sure that Obama also appreciates that quality in him, which I'm sure is surprisingly useful in a CIA Director.

Obama doesn't just rely upon JSOC for these things. There's a good reason for civilian control of the military.

Sam Farr, Leon Panetta, George Miller, Alan Cranston. I remember them all very well from events I worked or attended and from conversations during office visits.

:rofl: :rofl:

I gotta keep this: "You don't have the clearance to use your own common sense!"

I'd like to see Maher use it!!

by little angels. I'm pretty sure he rolled out a red carpet for those Navy Seals too. :eyes:

Really?

Link please.

when he's surrounded by all those strapping American heroes? Do the math.

I suppose he came out with his arms raised or waving a white flag willing to surrender indicating he was unarmed?



Nice insult you dished out there to the troops by the way. :eyes:


*edit to add another snip

did not have physical control of him? It doesn't matter if he was in a room stacked to the ceiling with automatic weapons. They had him. And unlike your random cop, these people do have the skill to shoot someone in a limb to disable them, as they did to bin Laden's wife.

So, please, of the two of us, you are the one insulting the training and the skill of this SEAL team, not me.

And so they shot him?

The reports I read said he was on the move and that he posed some sort of threat. But somehow some anonymous folks on the internet have determined that poor bin Laden was just standing around and "they had him".

Sorry, just not buying it.

Now I'll agree these guys do have the skill to shoot someone in the limb to disable them. But that's probably not the action they'd take if they felt there was some sort of threat as has been suggested by all official accounts of the story.

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I'm pretty sure he's had over ten years to consider giving himself up if that was ever his intention.

Stop trying to shoot from the hip. You're not hitting the target OT often enough.

It's absurd to think that the head of the organization whose trade mark was suicide bombings would ever consider just calmly giving himself up.

Were there weapons in that room? Did he flee to that room? Why do you suppose he would run to that room in particular? Why do you suppose there was an additional team there, including attorneys, if it was just going to be more convenient to off him no matter what?

Do you realize how many people you are suggesting were either conned or are conning someone here? That's usually the first sign of a pretty crappy conspiracy theory. :shrug:

before you accuse anyone of being conspiratorial? If people remain willfully ignorant, there's really no need to con them, is there?

Aside from the direct statements to the contrary from the CIA spokesperson, there were also 2 teams on the ship waiting for him - one if he were dead and one if he were captured. Why would they have both teams if the orders were to kill him?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1074819

that get you, it's the cover up. (My tip of the hat to Watergate buffs.)

First, you bemoan that the bin Laden raid means we will execute people without trial.

Then you claim it's just like after WWII when people wanted to let the Nazis go free.

So....shooting everyone we have a beef with is just like letting them go free and spending billions in aid to benefit them.

So the problem is that we aren't shooting the rest?

Or is the problem that we should "rehabilitate" the top guys too?

He was riding in a transport plane.

It's not like we couldn't have just grabbed the Admiral out of the plane and transferred him to a waiting helicopter. It's very unlikely the Japanese pilots were going to just give up and try to land the plane on a desert island.

However, I can guarantee you, if US commandos had somehow managed to capture Yamamoto alive, they would have been delighted to make him a long-time guest of Naval Intelligence with lots of time for cigarettes and long chats about the challenges of commanding forces in the Pacific theater.

You don't kill a commander of enemy forces if you can capture him - unless, of course, there is a reason not to interrogate him.

As if that seems to matter.

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and somehow think it is clever.

But I agree with your point completely.

trying to say:

Is (Senator John) Kerry telling people to 'shut up' for an issue about which the Post is writing serious front-page articles?

I thought Wernicke's area had conked out on me.

I figured folks who saw the original thread on the subject would get the gist, but I forgot to provide a courtesy link.

Just reminded me of some days in college...

Can you imagine a trial with OBL's history--links to Bushies and the US Intelligence Community going viral!
Kerry is either an idiot or in on it.

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want to hear. What he actually said:

"And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined." - President Obama on 60 minutes 5/8/2011

Barack Obama said that those who question the ethics of killing UBL, a mass murderer, need "to have their head examined." That's very different from saying those who question the wisdom of killing him as and when we did, foregoing forever the opportunity to interrogate him and compare his statements with other sources, should have their heads examined. So, I don't take any labeling personally.

Besides, it's quite possible that the IC has had UBL at close range for many, many years, and there is very little that we already don't know about him.

As for whether the refusal to publicly prosecute the Bush Administration for crimes of state and against humanity actually carries over into conspiracy after the fact, or is the benign exercise of discretion to avoid a civil war with and within the intelligence community, I think we may never know. Was the execution of bin Laden indeed part of a continuing cover-up? I think that history will be the Judge of that, and Obama's legacy will be mixed.

In the end, we'll most likely see that the U.S. has acted like every other empire throughout history, and will meet the same fate because we -- apparently -- are incapable of learning and transcending many of the lessons of failure of accountability for those at the top that doomed empires past. The point of the American Republic was to avoid such accretions of power that have no check and balance, and I believe we have already failed in that respect as a republic.

the rule of law and an accountable government, have been massively eroded. We don't own our elections and the government has fallen into crony capitalism that is actively destructive to our society. Our government actively obstructs law enforcement and judicial review as we have seen in the Spanish cases against Bush torture and Rumsfeld's murder of journalists at the Palestine hotel, and it punishes whistle blowers.

That is the state coming apart at the seams, right there.

All I can say is that if the state refuses accountability from abroad for sovereignty reasons, which is understandable, it had better maintain some mechanism to fairly judge and effectively impose it from within.

If you must know, one can argue from events that Bush and Cheney were both placed under a limited form of what I will loosely call "modified, suspension" of their jointly-assumed powers as CIC. "House arrest" with AF-1 privileges, if you will. The Joint Chiefs did rebel, and the Administration struck back when Chairman Pace's appointment as Chair wasn't renewed, as is traditional. I think Bush, Sr. and Scowcroft and some of the other eminence greys agreed to limiting Dubya's powers, and we did not bomb Iranian nuclear sites and invade the off-shore Iranian oil facilities in 2005, as was called for in some planning.

None of this is surprising given the extent of obvious Dubya's mental incapacitation after 9/11 (he had a massive, visible breakdown), and Cheney's murderous psychopathology.

There is other evidence, such as the comfortable corralling into Blackwater of the CIA/CTC crew most directly involved in managing the al-Qaeda program and the post-9/11 capture and torture programs. While it made some of them millionaires, they would be easier to watch if they all worked in one place, I would guess. Just a hunch. On the other hand, I may still be way too much of an optimist and too trusting to assume that the system still has self-preserving mechanisms the public isn't told about.

So, maybe there is an informal Star Chamber (of a sort), and we did survive. Obama was elected, which we hoped to be transformative, but the Powers That Be intended to be preservative of the old regime. More the latter, it seems. Nevertheless, the poor, old republic ain't what it used to be and will never be the same.

questions:

OBL was the 'accused perpretrator'. We have an adversarial justice system rather than use Star Chamber so that people accused of crimes can confront their accusers BEFORE a verdict is rendered, sentence passed and executed.

Many of us question the appropriateness of capital punishment in general as a punishment for anything; among that set there is an intersecting set who question the morality and\or appropriateness of extra-judicial executions as a tool of the state.

And we need to have our heads examined???

Between Obama saying I need to have my head examined and Kerry telling me to shut up, I'm beginning to wonder what I ever saw in the Democratic Party to begin with.

The meaning I come way with is that those who question the ethics of killing Obama -- regardless of, and as a separate issue from the exact circumstances of how he is killed -- need to have their heads examined.

Not many of us would be questioning this action at all if it was apparent that UBL was armed, firing at US soldiers trying to capture him, and there was no other choice than to shoot him. Those were not the circumstances, however, so some of us are questioning the rules of engagement, and the apparent order to kill rather than to capture.

As to the ethics of capital punishment after trial, on that reasonable people can differ. As for Kerry's statement, I haven't had a chance to look closely at it.

choice of words was decidedly un-statesmanlike. However, upon reading the transcript of his appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, it seems as if his command to those quesitoning the killing to 'shut up' was more of a throw-away line and not JK channeling his inner Ari "People Better Watch What They Say" Fleischer.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/FTN_050811.pdf

Relevant interchange below:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think this means that’s the end of al Qaeda?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: Well, I--I don’t want to speculate. What I do know is that this is an
unbelievable treasure of--of information, number one. Number two--and I think this is really4
important, Bob, for people to factor in. You know, some people in some parts of the world have
been questioning the shooting of Osama bin Laden. Let me tell you. Those SEALs had no idea
what they were going to meet in there. And they had no idea whether Osama bin Laden was
lunging for a button that would blow up the entire building. They had no--there were weapons in
the room. He was reaching for them. What we do know is he was not surrendering. It was the
dead of night. And that is as--as--as tense and as hairy an operation as you can have. I think
those SEALs did exactly what they should have done. And we need to shut up and move on
about you know, the realities of what happened in that building.

like he is insulting me and many others like me on this forum and suggesting that because we have questions about what went down, we are somehow mentally unsound.

For example, I question whether OBL "deserved what he got" (Obama's words in the statement on "60 Minutes"). What OBL deserved was a trial in front of a duly constituted and competent legal authority. What OBL got was a summary execution.

Does that mean Obama thinks I should have my head examined? Funny, I don't recall him or his campaign saying anything like that during the 2008 campaign. This idea that, simply because someone questions the official narrative, he or she is somehow mentally unsound is very dangerous to the functioning of a democratic republic. And that is what makes both Obama's and Kerry's statements two peas in a pod and unbefitting any political party to which I would wish to give my support.

BTW, in your post you say "the ethics of killing Obama." I'm certain that was a slip of the tongue\pen and easy enough to do. Not sure if you can correct it or maybe ask one of the mods to edit it for you if the editing window has closed. Wouldn't want you getting a visit from the Secret Service :)

that even knowing Iraq had no WMDs, he still would have voted to invade Iraq!

I vote for 'in on it.'

into a disgrace. But, without the WMD deceptions, and the hysteria that followed 9/11 (based in large part in more lies), it's not entirely clear the political support would have been there to invade Iraq.

The mere fact 9/11 occurred under Bush's watch -- at best because of incompetence -- argued that he should never have been allowed to lead the country into war.

prohibits said action.

That said, as soon as those words left Kerry's lips, I knew he was doomed in the General Election. Even though events proved me right, Kerry almost pulled it out.

Bush should be on trial right now for crimes against the peace (the supreme international crime according to the standards laid out at Nuremburg) and crimes against humanity. But our brave leader has insisted we 'look forward' and just do a grand 'whatever' on the past.

but the Third Geneva Convention, the War Crimes Act, and the Torture Act are binding and enforceable either inside the US or universally (the Convention Against Torture and violations of the Geneva Conventions).

The prohibition against foreign assassinations are a matter of convenience to the Executive, and guidance to the agencies, but not law. There is actually no penalty associated with violation of EOs, except that it can get you fired from a cushy government job -- and potentially indicted if there is a corresponding criminal statute -- if the White House doesn't back you up.

Of course bin Laden is a special case since he was also a mass murderer. But we have renditioned active genocide participants before for military or international tribunal. So the issue is process, intention and precedent, not whether bin Laden deserved to live somehow. "Many that live deserve death..."

"heads of state" and not to "enemy commanders." See upthread for leveymg's point that EO's have no binding force of law and can be retroactively nullified at the President's whim.

principal substance. Was not aware that they had no force of law.

Thank you for clarifying that for me.

BTW, have you ever read Charles McCary's 'The Tears of Autumn'? In addition to being a very interesting and unique take on who might have killed JFK, it illustrates why governments as a general rule should not go around executing people without first giving them due process, if only for the practical reason that the blowback can be a motherfucker. "The Tears of Autumn" is right up there with DeLiloo's "Libra," imho.

thinking is good :thumbsup:

even though it may well have been a directed execution or a conspiracy to kill bin Laden regardless of circumstances by person or persons unknown.

As a democrat there is not much incentive of obsess about it.

The problem with taking bin Laden out, Wolfenstein-style (or as CNN host Candy Crowley (?) put it, "just like an episode of 24") is that it was the lowest common denominator solution. The time to take him out by assassination was BEFORE 9-11 when he had a force around him and it was justified, and the administration botched that. (Then the Bush administration, as Kerry noted, allowed Al Quaeda in Iraq to flee into Baghdad after they were surrounded by US troops, because we were hoping to tie them to Saddam).

A bomb or two bullets... the plan was always the same.

I have no idea what you meant - not trying to bash, just comprehend

The "deathers" on the right or the "rule of law" folks on the left:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1067003

That's all the clarification provided by the article itself... part of an interview apparently.

If we just keep our mouths shut, don't ask questions and get out there and vote when they tell us to, nothing else is required.

"Is (Senator John) Kerry telling people to 'shut up' for an issue about which the Post is writing serious front-page articles?"

(as someone else put it, above)

the first thread I saw Kerry's comments, someone kindly posted the full transcript of his appearance on CBS' Face the Nation:

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/FTN_050811.pdf

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think this means that’s the end of al Qaeda?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: Well, I--I don’t want to speculate. What I do know is that this is an
unbelievable treasure of--of information, number one. Number two--and I think this is really4
important, Bob, for people to factor in. You know, some people in some parts of the world have
been questioning the shooting of Osama bin Laden. Let me tell you. Those SEALs had no idea
what they were going to meet in there. And they had no idea whether Osama bin Laden was
lunging for a button that would blow up the entire building. They had no--there were weapons in
the room. He was reaching for them. What we do know is he was not surrendering. It was the
dead of night. And that is as--as--as tense and as hairy an operation as you can have. I think
those SEALs did exactly what they should have done. And we need to shut up and move on
about you know, the realities of what happened in that building.

Where I at first thought Kerry came across as an authoritarian shithead, I now think he simply tossed the remark off in an 'unseemly' fashion.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1067003

(Thanks to DUer emulatorloo for locating and publishing the link and transcript)

:rofl:

Regardless of one's opinion on the subject, you have to admit that sentence is a signature quote in the making.