http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/...48554.html

My basic idea on the situation

Another really good write-up with similar sentiments/thoughts to Mr. Fisk
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opi...12377.html

as for talk before about burying in the sea.
http://i.imgur.com/Co6ap.png

He was living without the Internet. Wasn't that punishment enough? Otherwise I'm glad he's dead, I was sick of hearing about how he hadn't been caught. Now I get to hear about how irrelevant he was.

Hadn't he died of old age yet?

"An unnamed US official says Osama Bin Laden has been buried at sea" sounds a little too convenient :/

Wasn't the American military awfully keen on taking pictures when they found Saddam?

dizmox Wrote:Wasn't the American military awfully keen on taking pictures when they found Saddam?

I mean, this is a huge public relations/propaganda thing in a way that Saddam wasn't. Bin Laden was a seriously important symbol to the anti-American movement in the Middle East, while Saddam was relatively disliked and not a major symbol to terror groups fighting against the US.

I imagine the US doesn't want to let terror groups use images of Bin Laden as propaganda by saying that they are pictures of noble martyrdom. Of course, by doing this the US is playing the propaganda game as well--but that's the way the game of war is played.

dizmox Wrote:"An unnamed US official says Osama Bin Laden has been buried at sea" sounds a little too convenient :/

Wasn't the American military awfully keen on taking pictures when they found Saddam?

Thats why I believe they killed him in some random bombing etc. some time ago and recently just gained evidence it was really him or some kind of proof he was dead.

Which press conference is better?

A. "We killed Osama thanks to our fantastic Intelligence and superb military (generally we're awesome)".
B. "You know what, remember bombing of some caves in Afganistan a year ago? Well turns out we killed Osama there..."

Its a redemption for CIA, for knowing about 9.11 and not doing anything about it, about their WMDs or not being able to catch a single guy for 10+ years etc. Its also a great PR stunt for America and provides some closure for the masses.
Funeral at sea is just ridiculous excuse and the notion that no country would like him to get buried on their soil is just idiotic. Even if Osama is responsible for every death that is attributed to him (heck even personally) its still a pale number compared to "greats" like Hitler, Stalin or Che Guevara (list could go on and on). In some countries he'd still be considered a hero.

why all the conspiracy theories? Obama specifically told them not to bomb it so they did have concrete proof it was him. they have DNA evidence and photographic evidence. What more do you want? His body encased and on show somewhere public so you could verify for yourself...?

anyway, yeah, it's all pretty irrelevent...

IceCream Wrote:why all the conspiracy theories? Obama specifically told them not to bomb it so they did have concrete proof it was him. they have DNA evidence and photographic evidence. What more do you want? His body encased and on show somewhere public so you could verify for yourself...?

anyway, yeah, it's all pretty irrelevent...

The media is a double edged sword.

ta12121 Wrote:The media is a double edged sword.

You got that right. They're reporting that "Usama being killed in a firefight using his wife as a human shield" can be scratched.

Actually what happened was Usama resisted arrest, his wife rushed forward to stop the Americans, she got shot in the leg, then "unarmed" Usama resisted?? and got shot, once he was on ground they shot him in the head.

Please wait, for further revision of the story. Apparently he was worthless as alive(I mean his information value).

On a more lighthearted note, I bet that anyone who uses Facebook or Twitter has come across a certain quote attributed to MLK in the past couple of days. Turns out that it is fake, and it was inadvertently created by an ALT in Kobe.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arch...on/238257/

The whole thing is carefully orchestrated. No one stopped to consider 'why did they shoot osama in the head instead of capturing him' - no its not because he was about to escape in his batmobile and flee to Kazakhstan.

I think it's pretty obvious that:

1) The CIA didn't want Osama to come back to America for trial and recount all the history of how america set him up in the first place
2) The CIA didn't want Al Qaeda to get grumpy(er) and start doing more crazy stuff
3) The CIA wants to look like heroes

It all worked perfectly cause now you have hysterical liberals and conservatives alike dancing around like savages on the streets of New York.

zachandhobbes Wrote:america set him up in the first place

If he did not orchestrate 9/11, it was Bush/Cheney that set him up, not America. That eight years was one of the darkest in American history. It was an extremely embarrassing time to be an American.
The dipshit Republicans are all over the news now praising Bush for defeating Bin Laden.

OK, but I wasn't talking about Bush/Cheney, I was talking about how America set up Al Queda to fight against Soviet Russian invaders in Pakistan, which recruited and gave rise to Bin Laden (a former resistance rebel from Saudi Arabia). When the Soviets left Pakistan, Al Qaeda targetted the USA for not being islamic, etc -> things went bad from there.

I agree bush/cheney were embarrassing screw ups who did a lot of idiotic things in our country, but setting up Al Qaeda was not one of them. I don't really know if Bush purposely orchestrated 9/11 but that's one conspiracy theory I have a very hard time believing.

I am not much into conspiracy theories, but when it comes to a career politician with business and military connections like Cheney, I would not be shocked if there was some inside help that allowed it to happen.

Some believe that the military had advance knowledge Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked, but allowed it to happen because it was the only way to gather support from Americans to enter WWII. I can imagine how the military would strategize in a similar way a chess player sacrifices pawns for quicker victory.

I totally believe the Pearl Harbor thing. America was messing around with Japanese ships long before Pearl Harbor.

I just find it suspicious to believe that a president would purposely put american innocents in harms way and destroy a huge trade hub like that. I mean it's true, Bush family had a history with Saddam and he probably had some vengeance he wanted to settle, I just find it -very- hard to believe. If there was more concrete evidence, maybe.

About the Pearl Harbor thing--there's a book by Leonard Mlodinow called "The Drunkard's Walk" that talks about it, and I'd definitely recommend it. Leonard Mlodinow is the guy that recently has been co-authoring Stephen Hawking's books. Anyway, the book is about how randomness is very important in our lives, but people have a tendency to ignore it.

He argues that although American intelligence had a lot of small hints that Pearl Harbor would occur, it's only in hindsight that Pearl Harbor seems like a painfully obvious explanation for all those hints. At the time American intelligence was getting a huge amount of hints and information, and often pieces of information that seemed alarming never became anything of notice. There were a number of hints that the US government knew about: the Japanese changing their call sign more frequently than usual; Japan telling its diplomats to destroy documents and their codes and ciphers; Japan telling one of it's agents to report on ships in the harbors of different areas of Pearl Harbor.

But if you look at the time, you find that there was no way of knowing that those three pieces of information were particularly significant. For example, the Japanese changed their call signs all the time, and when they did it particularly swiftly the reason was often never found out. Japan was also trying to get a lot of military information about America, and in that context the request for information about Pearl Harbor wasn't necessarily meaningful. There was a lot of alternative intelligence that suggested Japan might attack Americans in Guam, the Thai Peninsula, or the Philippines. And, in general, there was a huge amount of intelligence that was not understood and meaningful hints were hard to place together.

The US government simply didn't know that Pearl Harbor would happen. A bunch of hints were there, but it's only hindsight that makes them seem obvious and meaningful.

If you go by what is most likely, America was caught off-guard both in Pearl Harbor and on 9/11.

If it weren't for the fact I have such a distrust of Cheney, I would never consider it plausible 9/11 was anything but a total shock to the administration. I do think the guy is an extremely dark figure and would feel no shame in sacrificing thousands of innocent lives knowing the American people would be scared shitless, allowing him to push whatever agenda he wanted.

zachandhobbes Wrote:I just find it suspicious to believe that a president would purposely put american innocents in harms way and destroy a huge trade hub like that.

You should wake up and look around you my friend. Here is only one of the many examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

IceCream Wrote:why all the conspiracy theories?

Because most intelligible people know better than to blindly buy into war propaganda. History repeats again and again, but few accept to acknowledge it. Look at the media following bin Laden's death. "'Terrorists' are going to try to kill Americans. We've made progress, but be afraid. This war is necessary, noble and just." Like all propaganda, it's just state-manufactured nationalism.

IceCream Wrote:they have DNA evidence and photographic evidence

So they say. The burden of truth is on the government. Not the people questioning their blatant lies. The U.S. has constantly pulled this garbage throughout history. We've been constantly lied to over the past 9.5 years. Does no one learn, or is it just easier to disregard 'conspiracy theories' as ridiculous? Think for yourself. Questioning authority =\= hating America.

I agree that questioning things is important. No one talks about the USA Military coup in Iran that toppled the democratic government they finally struggled to set up and how we reinstated the shah so they couldn't nationalize their oil. Now look at our problems with Iran - of course they hate us, we ruined their country and efforts...

My dad is an Iranian immigrant. He is "Muslim" in the sense that he was born muslim and his parents were, but I never see him really practice and he doesn't really strongly identify as such although he does take the label. So he was talking to me about this war the other day. He was discussing about how he remembers 15 years ago he thought to himself that Muslims were moving forward pretty well in America, kind of like how Indians are now today, like they were getting jobs and studying and were never the center of criminal acts and weren't known to be gangsters despite their minority status (unlike many minorities like italians, blacks, latinos, etc, they had much less struggles in America - no direct attack on the aforementioned groups of course, its just muslims had an easier time integrating). In Stanford, he told me that Iranians had the highest GPA of any minority group at that time. It all changed when one guy, in the name of "allah" decided to drive a plane into a tower and now all muslims are known as turbanhead terrorists.

I'll never forget how one year I was flying around the world a lot. I flew 10 times. I'm only half iranian, so I do have some featuers but I'm also half Japanese so I have particular asian accents. When I fly alone I never get stopped in security. 6/6 times I was never stopped. Every time my dad came along though, 4/4 times I was stopped for 'extra random checking' with my dad as well. I never for a second believed it was coincidence... my dad doesn't even have an accent (he has perfect fluency) and he dresses like an American, yet they still stopped us for extra checking every time...

So I think that, if Bush/Cheney really did orchestrate 9/11 it would be an extremely important thing to look into. If someone could present reasonable proof that it was them, and that it wasn't Bin Laden's idea (or that they worked together) then it would be very good to know.

Unfortunately it would never become something that the public could accept even if it was true... too many people wouldn't believe it. I mean I personally think it was a true terrorist act and that it was all Bin Laden - I've seen the video of Bush on the day of 9/11 giving a speech and I don't know, he seemed extremely genuine. He has this look in his face that is just... indescribable. Go watch it yourself if you don't believe me. But obviously that is not fact the prove that it wasn't him.

zachandhobbes Wrote:Unfortunately it would never become something that the public could accept even if it was true... too many people wouldn't believe it. I mean I personally think it was a true terrorist act and that it was all Bin Laden - I've seen the video of Bush on the day of 9/11 giving a speech and I don't know, he seemed extremely genuine. He has this look in his face that is just... indescribable. Go watch it yourself if you don't believe me. But obviously that is not fact the prove that it wasn't him.

I applaud you for coming to your own conclusion rather than blindly following others, whether it be the government or not.

Was it this look on his face?

^_^

@prink:

well, it's not that i blindly beleive any government (i definately don't!). It's just that the randomness, plus the way it happened, plus the evidence they should have is enough to believe it, i think...

however... now they're saying they're not releasing the pictures of his body, i've had to change my opinion for now. That's just weird...

zachandhobbes Wrote:I've seen the video of Bush on the day of 9/11 giving a speech and I don't know, he seemed extremely genuine. He has this look in his face that is just... indescribable. Go watch it yourself if you don't believe me. But obviously that is not fact the prove that it wasn't him.

I think it is improbable that the administration knew it was going to happen that day, or that they played an active role in it. Though, if they did participate, Bush would have almost certainly been kept out of the loop. He was too prone to slips of the tongue and, honestly, is not that bright. Cheney was the puppeteer for eight years.

I can't ever really tell when you're serious or when you're being lighthearted/joking, nest0r, but if you were seriously trying to rebuke what I was saying with that video then just read the top rated comment on it. The political scientist says that presidents are trained to act in such ways in emergencies. That is how he was trained and he acted properly.