TorilMUD Forums

I'm disappointed with some of the reaction to the killing of OBL. You can criticize anything... but I think criticizing how this went down is mind bogglingly political and I've lost a little respect for folks on the right who are making hay out of some of these criticisms.

==Beck ran at least a couple shows on why didn't we just follow him and gather more intel. Its a valid consideration, but its really just plain crap.

First we didn't know 100% he was there. #2, we ran the risk of losing him. #3 They found the courier 2 months ago? You don't think they have been watching his coming and going very closely and know everyone who he interacted with during the past 2 months? #4 the mother lode of intelligence they got by raiding. #5, he escaped justice for 10 years, he needed to be brought in.

==Quite a few have questioned whether it was an assassination squad or whether we should've emphasized alive instead of dead in dead or alive.

If its true that it was kill not kill or capture, then Obama looks bad to the American people for lieing over something stupid and regardless America looks bad to the internatinoal community for engaging in assassination whether it was kill or capture or just kill.

== Osama was unarmed we should've caputred him.

um, the op lasted over 40 minutes. I believe it said there was a 30 minute firefight before they even got to the upper levels of the compound. That was plenty of time for Usama to prepare whatever... a grenade, hidden hand gun anyhting. Failure to kill or capture Osama was unacceptable. Letting Osama go out in a blaze of glory also unacceptable due to its hero/martyr implications. Worst case scenario wouldve been Osama getting on the remaining helicopter and detonating a grenade killing dozens of people, a 2nd crashed helicopter (not properly destroyed) and no body. Maybe the team shouldn't have killed him... but these are highly trained professionals who practiced the raid extensively (and undoubtedly every scneario they could think of). Its stupid to couch quarterback this.

== A few are starting to say Obama gave a kill order because capturing Usama would be politically untenable.

Again this is highly dependent on whether it was a kill order. I find the idea of making this decision on the political ramifications odious... but killing/capturing Osama was of the utmost priority and the op ended in a kill... This level of criticism is truly ridiculous.

== Criticism over losing a helicopter

are you kidding me. crap happens. Where is the focus on the great job the military did having backup helicopters for just such a contingency... For gods sake they flew damn helicopters within 40 miles of the CAPITOL of a foreign nation, conducted a 40+ minute operation, and got out... with the loss of one helicopter due to mechanical failure? For reals what are people bitching about. The potential loss of military secret technology? They blew up whatever they felt they needed too... Are you developing this technology so you can fly missions only in the US? Negligence is cyber spying, not a helicopter crash on a valid sensitive mission.

== Criticism over releasing / not releasing the photos...

Well it would be nice if they would pull their head out and quit going back and forth feeding a media frenzy... but Obama did stand for transparency so these kinds of decisions are not obvious and Obama taking some time to think it through is fine and sharing with the press where he is on any given day is fine... if the press reports it that waay. Sharing or not sharing the photo is fine, but if the decision is don't share it, then don't share it, just say its classified and be done with it.

Seriously though. release the stupid photos. Maybe it would be equivalent to "spiking the football" (why is he lecturing us again), but he's mistaken if he thinks A) America can't handle the graphic photos (have you watched TV lately?) or B) that it would debase us to celebrate and we care (we're not the dignified America of 50 years ago) or C) that it would somehow inflame tensions.

I agree It would undoubtedly flame tensions for some.. but not releasing it inflames tensions in others. but not releasing it certainly gives conspiracy theorists / birther type people rope to hang themselves. releasing the photos would help the world recognize the crazy terroritsts (they would be the ones marching in the streets with the pictures). Releasing the photos may cause sympathetic muslims to turn further away (but they werent with us to begin with and werent coming our way anyhow).

The parallels between this and the birth certificate thing are interesting. Does Obama like this particular tactic? Let a obviously wrong position circulate so that when the truth becomes evident they look stupid? Why not release something if you have it. Why manufacture this controversy instead of publishing it and moving on to more serious business.

Regardless of all these somewhat valid criticisms and as much as I would love to criticize Obama more... none of the decisions he made were obviously wrong or obviously political in a way that was detrimental to our interests... I'd give him a solid A on handling this because the point is we've been chasing this a$$hat for 10 years and Obama got him with no loss of American soldeirs. Limited political fall out domestically or internationally and it even puts the spotlight on Pakistan which needed to happen. We don't look incompetent (we can kill anyone we want anywhere in the world) and we don't look as arrogant as we might've. I might've preferred certain outcomes, but its a solid A performance maybe even an A+.

kiryan wrote:I'm disappointed with some of the reaction to the killing of OBL. You can criticize anything... but I think criticizing how this went down is mind bogglingly political and I've lost a little respect for folks on the right who are making hay out of some of these criticisms.

Now you know how us liberals feel all the time.

Yes, lots of armchair presidenting this week. To be expected really, and I'm not particularly bothered by it. People who tune into Hannity or Beck do so because they want to hear the President blasted for everything he says and everything he does. These guys are just giving their viewers/listeners what they tune in to hear, because their job is ratings, not news. It's their job to bitch about stupid shit, and that's what they're doing.

All in all it was a pretty successful outcome. It probably would have behooved the administration to control the information a little better from all the various officials who spoke about the matter afterwards. All sorts of conflicting info was released and then corrections issued. But that's basically a very small point. The good things more than outweight the criticisms. Gutsy and correct call by Obama to order a raid rather than obliterate the place. I personally would have preferred that they captured him - and then waterboarded him for info. I don't mind the idea of seeing OBL stuck in a US prison undergoing harsh interrogation techniques until ultimately being executed. But killing him and taking his computers isn't such a bad deal.

the bulk of the criticism now seems to be surrounding whether he should've been captured and whether the US forces just went in and butchered everyone.

First, I think given hindsight, it was certainly possible to capture bin laden. The administrations line on this is weak from Holder saying they acted in self defense to military saying the terrorists aggressively... They really are screwing up the messaging on this.

They should've stuck with we had no idea what to expect, but we planned and trained for heavy resistance. I read one comment that they trained assuming that if OBL was clothed that he had a suicide vest on underneath. The comment was made he would've had to be naked to surrender which does pretty much make this a de facto kill mission.

The principles of the mission I assume in no specific order were
#1 no escape
#2 kill or capture
#3 no loss of US soldiers.

Furthermore the US has been very clear, we will kill or capture OBL. Anyone harboring or aiding OBL would be fully expected to know they could be collateral damage. If they had flattened the building, they would've died as well.

Another thing somewhat unrelated is the whole flatten building vs strike team decision takes on new considerations given the # of people in the compound. Some of the reports puts the # of people at 12+ including at least 3 women and at least 5 young children. Imagine how this would've been portrayed in the media with a pakastani bin laden cover up. US missile kills 3 women and 5 kids. No terrorists or military extremists blah blah blah. All the US could've done is said our intelligence said X. Very wise decision to send in a strike team.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05 ... storyline/

an article on the communication missteps. Really, the mistakes are significant when you consider the roles of the players, but its like focusing on the mole hill and ignoring the mountain. Still, something is seriously wrong when things go from a 40 minute fire fight with women being used as sheilds to a single firefight upon entry into the compound and a woman shot dead running through cross fire and no other enemy fire for the rest of the op.

still its the mole hill instead of the mountain. They got some of the facts wrong, shared too much too soon, but none of it appears to be insidious self serving lies.

I find it wierd that americans assume that they can place assassinate squads in any foreign country and that they then are considered: "the good guys", but when e.g. russia does the same to their enemies then it is a crime.

I don't understand that americans can't even see the problematic aspects when they operate in other countries without telling the governement anything. A good example here is the airfield in Thule airforce base, where americans assume they can fly any illigal competants, without asking the greenland government.

There are some rumors that wiki leak already had Osamas whereabout, and that CIA have known his location for years. The reason they didn't kill him was because it is easier to access inteligence when they know where he lives.

I don't think dropping 2000lbs bombs on an affluent neighborhood of retired generals would have been very well received, even if there weren't any children present.

What really peeks my curiosity though is the timing of this operation in conjunction with the gitmo leaks. There is quite a bit within the leaks suggesting that the US was likely aware of the compound back in 2005. We know the ISI raided it during construction looking for al-Libi, who was later apprehended by the ISI in a cooperative effort with the US before being taken to Gitmo. al-Libi's file even mentions his presence in Abbottabad as far back as 2004, and his position as official messenger to UBL. Much of this was redacted by the Guardian and the NY Times, but the full version was eventually made available on WL.

diso... I really not sure how holder figures it was a legal raid. maybe, we have a secret agreement with Pakistan... but ... whatever. I don't think the rest of us care if it was legal or not... I personally don't care. The rest of the world can hate on us if they want, but we weren't going to let OBL continue to be free.

However, I do think its a bad precedent a slippery slope. I think we'll be hippocritical if another nation did that in our territory or in anyone else's territory. But OBL is not your average person and I think that your average rational person honestly weighing the situation will agree the actions were justified.

as far as whether we should've known OBL was there in that compound... I dunno. I'm sure more incriminating data/statements will come out as time goes on on why we should've known. Perhaps we had an intelligence failure... but I hope we weren't the only people in the world looking for him. Pakistan is said to have informed the US about this specific residence years ago... as a possible place OBL was... on a list that was a million locations long. Some college students predicted he would be found in that city too and some analyst giving an interview said it on a comedy show...

point is even after focusing on the location, and setting up apparently a 10+ million dollar surveillance operation for over 2 months, they still couldn't figure out who the hell lived there. So I'm not sure why it matters that some unshowered guy standing on a soap box at the corner of main and crazy claimed OBL was there... there was probably no good way to have figured it out earlier.

I'm sure the thought crossed their minds to capture OBL, but it's hard to judge the guy making the decision when it's really his life that hangs in the balance.

I wasn't trying to imply we knew or should have know he was there...More speculating that the timing of the raid was in part out of fear UBL would catch wind of what was in the gitmo leaks and leave town.

Nod.. hard to say whether it was related to the wikileaks thing or not... I haven't followed the wikileaks stuff, but it probably could've been a factor.

I also read an article about how Pakistan captured a important militant a several months ago in the same city, but kept it low profile until sometime within the past 4 weeks...

Personally, I think OBL thought he was safe. Maybe something like wikileaks revealing they were aware of the compound could've spooked him, but they think he's been there for 3-4-5+ years?

My personal opinion is that when you take into account all that's said above, plus the complexity of the extremist religious standpoints of the terrorists and their followers, certain tenets of the Muslim faith that are used as foundations to support these extremist views, the whole Jihadi outlook, the suicide/martyrdom aspect, the risks to our own people wherever detainment would be suspected, his "trophy" status as a detainee, etc, etc, etc, a clean kill and a fast burial at sea were the best options. That one bullet and burial kicked about a hundred different podiums out from under the feet of the people who would be willing to sacrifice themselves to recover him alive, or to recover his body.

Not to mention the slavering, foaming crowds of maddened Americans who would all be picketing, protesting and demanding OBL's head in a much uglier scene than what we have right now, if we had taken him into custody. Having him anywhere in the US was too much of a risk.

I'd rather almost say bring it on and get those extremists out in the open when they are unstable foaming at the mouth to avenge OBL's death.

Ooh good point on the bad press of American's behaving badly. I still think we should've made my OBL toilet. Just need to make it bomb proof.

There is a tremendous amount of data being evaluated in the intelligence community. You would have to expect that going backwards in time you could find clues that you might have missed or misinterpreted concerning OBL's location. It would be strange if there wasn't such data. I think Botef's conspiracy tinged theory is basically a case of armchair quarterbacking. They went after him when they figured out where he is. What reason would they have not to?

fug, blowback on this could spiral out of control in a bad way...

basically one fringe line of thinking is USA will someday come and steal the Pakistani nukes as part of an Israeli / US plot... Given the muslim population in Pakistan, this could easily be developed by anti-west forces into a battle cry...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive ... hhdHVzY28-

Too dangerous - otherwise it would be a no brainer. Can't really decide what is worse.. a Muslim nuke or a North Korean one.

Forget about the fear politics. Al Qaeda has been struggling to be relevant for years. If they had the capability to pull off a massive, spectacular attack, they would have done so. We're at about the same threat/risk level as we were before we took out OBL. We're arguably slightly safer in the long run.

its not al qaeda you have to be worried about, its the pakistani CIA and sypathetic officers... We just walked into their house and bitch slapped them in front of the whole world. To make it worse, our politicians are rubbing it in and doing some political grandstanding. In their mind, we should be kissing their ass for allowing the US to get OBL (even if it was without permission).

Remember, this is a country that had 2 politicians assassinated for suggesting blasphemy laws needed to be reworked... I believe one of them was muslim too.

We were already doing that for a very long time.

ok... heres a question.

lets assume the administration knew that there would be fallout over a unilateral raid into Pakistan. and that it could seriously damage our relations with Pakistan... and push Pakistan closer into a relationship with China. (China gives Pakistan 50 fighter jets "immediately" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world ... istan.html).

Why not lie about the OBL raid.

Conduct the raid exactly as they did, but instead of calling Pakistan and notifying them. Call pakistan and say, hey we did this, but we know you're going to take shit for it from your side, and we're going to take shit for it especially from a distrust of pakistan angle, so why don't we give you X and cover it up. We'll announce we killed OBL over here in X (tribal regions, afghanistan whatever) or we can give you credit for it whatever.

Impossibly stupid? Perhaps because the truth would probably get out there anyway. However I'm getting more and more concerned about the blow back on this. course lieing about it might be worse.

I'd of course be up in arms about the president lieing to us, but fact is we expect our presidents and government to lie to us in the interets of national security... or am I crazy? It takes courage to tell the truth, but sometimes it takes more to tell the lie. Anyhow just a thought I had when I was reading the china + pakistan sitting in a tree article. Pushing Pakistan into China's arms is not a good idea.

and certainly all the leaks about the actual raid have not been good. Gates demanded an end to all leaking before it further damaged our "operational" ability.

Did we really need to make it a media spectacle? I'm unwilling to say no, but it might've served our interests better if they hadn't.