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If this is an accurate summary of what he's claiming, this seems a bit more ridiculous than that: > The truth, Hersh says, is that Pakistani intelligence servi

If this is an accurate summary of what he's claiming, this seems a bit more ridiculous than that: > The truth, Hersh says, is that Pakistani intelligence services captured bin Laden in 2006 and kept him locked up with support from Saudi Arabia, using him as leverage against al-Qaeda. In 2010, Pakistan agreed to sell bin Laden to the US for increased military aid and a "freer hand in Afghanistan." Rather than kill him or hand him over discreetly, Hersh says the Pakistanis insisted on staging an elaborate American "raid" with Pakistani support. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...

TheBlight 4y ago
I'm not sure it is more ridiculous. ISI holding him in quasi-house arrest in Abbottabad (home of the Pakistani Military Academy) seems more plausible to me vs. them having no idea he was there and the US finding him as depicted in the propaganda film "Zero Dark Thirty."
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Either way, Hersh's story is more than simply 'an ISI officer walked in and received cash for the information', and veers directly into the definition of conspiracy theory territory. Which isn't to say it isn't possible, but many parts just don't make sense: > And there are more contradictions. Why, for example, would the Pakistanis insist on a fake raid that would humiliate their country and the very military and intelligence leaders who supposedly instigated it? > A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this? > Why not just kill bin Laden, drive his body across the border into Afghanistan, and drop him off with the Americans? Or why not put him in a hut somewhere in Waziristan, blow it up with an F-16, pretend it was a US drone strike, and tell the Americans to go collect the body?

TheBlight 4y ago

I'm not sure it is more ridiculous. ISI holding him in quasi-house arrest in Abbottabad (home of the Pakistani Military Academy) seems more plausible to me vs. them having no idea he was there and the US finding him as depicted in the propaganda film "Zero Dark Thirty."

mannerheim 4y ago
Either way, Hersh's story is more than simply 'an ISI officer walked in and received cash for the information', and veers directly into the definition of conspiracy theory territory. Which isn't to say it isn't possible, but many parts just don't make sense: > And there are more contradictions. Why, for example, would the Pakistanis insist on a fake raid that would humiliate their country and the very military and intelligence leaders who supposedly instigated it? > A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this? > Why not just kill bin Laden, drive his body across the border into Afghanistan, and drop him off with the Americans? Or why not put him in a hut somewhere in Waziristan, blow it up with an F-16, pretend it was a US drone strike, and tell the Americans to go collect the body?