11 ms·

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

228 points by clarkm 11y ago

trop 11y ago
> By then, the military had constructed a mock-up of the compound in Abbottabad at a secret former nuclear test site in Utah, and an elite Seal team had begun rehearsing for the attack. Question: What former nuclear test site in Utah? Am not familiar with tests in Utah. The model seems to have been in North Carolina? See http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-capture-cias-secret-bin-laden-training-facility/57771/ http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-captu...
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- moe 11y ago
  "As humans"? As americans perhaps, though I doubt even that. Personally I have no memory of when exactly I heard about it.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Barely registered to me. It had high symbolic value, but the practical impact of Osama bin Laden's death was next to none.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Same here. I couldn't even tell you what year it was without looking it up. As another poster said, it was anticipated for so long that it didn't seem significant when it finally happened.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    It did make the fight against polio harder.
- rev_bird 11y ago
  I was at a bus stop, in my college town. I was watching Twitter, because the press conference had been called but nobody knew for sure what it was. I started seeing tweets that the announcement was going to be about bin Laden being killed, then, all at once, I heard cheering coming from apartment windows all up and down the street. Totally surreal. I might've had a different experience than many folks older (or younger) than I, though -- I was 10 when the attacks happened, and for a lot of the kids my age, OBL was the first real-life boogieman we knew. Then, just as we became old enough to really get immersed in current events, he was killed.
- remarkEon 11y ago
  I was in Darby phase of Ranger School, and when the instructors told us, because it didn't have to do with getting a few more minutes sleep or calories, I really didn't care. However, when I graduated it was one of the first things I looked up.
  - ryanmarsh 11y ago
    I'll trade you some beverage base for that peanut butter of yours.
kens 11y ago
I don't want to be nitpicking conspiracy dude, but one thing seems wrong. The article mentions several times that the electricity to the town was cut for the raid. But it was widely reported that someone live-tweeted the raid as it was happening (without knowing what was going on), which shows the power must have been on. http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-raid/ http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-raid/
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Sat phones are popular in that part of the world.
- asadlionpk 11y ago
  Umm people use GPRS/3G/4G all the time here. And we have power backups in most homes since grid is not so reliable here. Source: I am writing this on a highway in a rural part of Pakistan. Abbottabad is very urban.
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    Wait I thought Pakistan just got 4G licenses late last year? When I went a year ago even Mobilink didn't have 4G?
    - asadlionpk 11y ago
      Yes, you are right. Even then, GPRS still works better here than some areas of SF. Also, since each home has their own UPS backup. WIfi would still be working since phone lines were working (DSL via phone line is common here). In short: tweeting would definitely not have been that trivial.
- Luc 11y ago
  The person who live-tweeted the raid has confirmed the power was out at the time: https://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/597644559443697664 https://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/597644559443697664
comrade1 11y ago
I remember where I was when the towers fell (working at home that day in s.f.). I remember where I was when Reagan was shot (playing mini golf in junior high). I don't remember where I was when Osama bin laden was killed. It just felt like such an inevitability and correction to history that it should have happened already. Remembering what I was doing was pointless. Also, everything before was such a waste. We wasted so many lives in Iraq when the real enemies were the Pakistani intelligence service and Saudi Arabia. I just wanted to forget it all.
- angersock 11y ago
  There arguably weren't any real enemies to the Republic, other than the folks who saw an opportunity to use fear to repeal our rights.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    Defining an "enemy of the Republic" really is just a rhetorical technique to assert what the goals and values of the Republic are. Sometimes it is one that the residents of the republic broadly agree with because they share those values and goals either explicitly ("I want myself and my kin to avoid getting killed in a building collapse") or implicitly ("I'm totally fine with a credit-based economy, though I wish it worked out better for my group.") Occasionally it is a rhetorical technique with powder and steel behind it.
    - angersock 11y ago
      Perhaps I was a little too flowery. :) Anyways, the point intended was that, while there are transient enemies of The American Dream (however one may wish to define it within reason, but including the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and general zeitgeist of 20th century America), they tend to go up in flames with their victims. The true enemies, though, see that by either exploiting or altering the processes of government and manipulating popular opinion, and they tend to integrate themselves with the host and extract as much value as they can. They are also more likely to stay around, having become part of the system. It's unfortunate.
gkoberger 11y ago
I read this article, and it's a great read. But my reaction was "even if this is true... so what?" If they had used the lie to get support for "enhanced interrogations" (like people quoted in the article recommended), I'd be mad. If the US government had been holding bin Laden and waiting for the right time, I'd be mad, too. If Obama blatantly lied about the story for political points, I'd be mad. But, basically, it seems the story happened mostly like it was told to us, and the changes were mainly to not implicate Pakistan or the informants. I wish we had a more transparent government, but hey, we flew into another country and murdered an elderly man... The story we got could have been worse. The gist seems to be true. The claim is that Obama used it for political points, and he certainly did benefit. However the story he told was much closer to the truth than the story the CIA/people quoted wanted to tell. They wanted to say it happened via drone attacks. So, we're mad that Obama didn't lie enough? The only "lie" from Obama was that it was a courier (rather than a deflector who probably has family in Pakistan), and that they were met with resistance (which would have implicated Pakistan and upset the Saudis/etc if the truth came out). (Note that similar stories came out after we captured Saddam Hussein, saying that he wasn't found in a hole: http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-not-found-in-a-hole-as-claimed-by-us-report http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-no...)
- rogerhoward 11y ago
  1. The implication that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had him under their control since 2006 is important. We were still neck-deep in two wars that were sold to the public in large part based on Afghanistan's unwillingness to hand him over. If true, it also provides more explicit verification that SA and Pakistan are terrible allies at best. 2. Setting aside the morality of assassination, it suggests that the reason we killed him wasn't out of necessity or even expedience - but rather to prevent him from talking about these so-called allies. 3. Rather than implicating Pakistan and its corrupt ISI services, we implicated a humanitarian medical mission and its lead doctor. I fail to see that as the lesser of evils. There are a lot of reasons to be disturbed by this story if it turns out to be factual.
  - detcader 11y ago
tangled 11y ago
I am reminded that (i) there is, as far as I know, no independent corroboration of the purported killing of Osama Bin Laden, and (ii) it was politically a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.
- mikeash 11y ago
  If he was still alive then he or his allies wasted a wonderful opportunity to discredit the US. I don't think they're that dumb. It's like one of the arguments against faked moon landings. The Soviets would have been highly motivated to disprove the events, and had the skills and resources to do so if they had been fake, yet they didn't.
  - tangled 11y ago
    I think it's unlikely that he's still walking around :) However, it is possible that he died or was captured some time before he was allegedly killed. I think that we are unlikely to see any independent evidence either way. Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.
    - Permit 11y ago
      >Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration. So was the unemployment rate falling. What's your point? Something "good" happening during an administration is not evidence of conspiracy.
      - tlrobinson 11y ago
        Falling unemployment rates are at least somewhat independently verifiable.
      - tangled 11y ago
        "Trust me, this great thing happened which is going to increase my popularity. There's no to verify that this great thing actually happened, but you know that I wouldn't lie to you."
mst 11y ago
> The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance Well, duh. The ISI officers and generals needed to be able to claim that and if the US people wanted their co-operation they needed to provide plausible deniability. I am confused as to why this is presented as remotely surprising.
IBM 11y ago
I desperately want this to be true just because I'm a political junkie and a student of history and it'd be a great start to the week to see the White House, State department, Pakistan, and everyone else respond to it. Definitely rooting for a Charlie Rose interview of Hersh. But there does seem to be only one main source he relies on and the whole story and its details just seem so perfect. It will be interesting to see if his story is corroborated in the weeks and months to come.
- Estragon 11y ago
  What were his most interesting points? Trying to decide whether to read it. It's long.
  - deepsleep3r 11y ago
    - ISI bribed tribal folks in Hindu Kush region to turn over Bin Laden sometime during 2001-2006. - From 2006 onwards senior elements within the ISI kept Bin Laden hidden from the world. -ISI was essentially playing a double game, telling americans they knew nothing about Bin Laden's whereabouts and receiving boat loads of weapons and cash to deal with terrorism; while telling the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda they would keep Bin Laden safe from the Americans as long as they didn't cross any boundaries set by the ISI. Saudi's helped the ISI with Bin Laden's welfare and well being apparently. -Americans didn't sherlock holmes Bin Laden's hideout but a leaker from the ISI had come to the American's and asked for the 25 million dollar reward and safety of his family in exchange for Bin Laden. -Bin Laden living in Abbottabad was under constant monitoring by ISI living in a de facto prison. He was not running any command center but living out his last few years while health deteriorating. - Obama wanted proof before sending Seals a senior ISI medical officer was living in Abbottabad and got that proof.He was given a portion of the reward. - White House tells Pasha and Kayani( heads of Army and ISI) they are monitoring a high value target in Abbotabad. Pasha and Kayani freak out and cooperate because if Pakistani Public, Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda find that ISI and Pak Army gave Bin Laden away to the Americans all hell would break loose. So the narrative of the "All American" no help from anyone had to be constructed, because how would it look if the American people found out the Pakistan Army and ISI was hiding Bin Laden 2 miles from a major Pak Army training facility. - Pasha and Kayani make sure the two BlackHawks are not intercepted by Pakistani Airforce no radar goes off, and the ISI agents guarding the house are not present when the Seal team comes in. -Unarmed Bin Laden is executed, no firefight ensued as the compound was empty( only Bin Laden and his family) the Seals chill for 20 minutes waiting for some other helicopter to come because one of the helicopters really did crash . If this where real the Seals would have all gotten in 1 helicopter and gotten the hell out, but there was no threat. -Obama really wanted to brag so instead of planning a story, he immediately got a speech prepared(lots of discrepancies in his speech that night he thanks the pakistani's in their continued support to fighting terrorism). CIA and senior Army people freak out he wasn't even supposed to mention the pakistanis, lots of backtracking and revisions of the story come in the days that follow.
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danieltrembath 11y ago
'faced with an unarmed elderly civilian'. I know it's only a quote from 'an offical', but Osama was 54 when he was killed. Ill possible. But hardly 'elderly'.
- staunch 11y ago
  The author selected that quote, like all the rest, to make a point. It's little slip ups like that that let you judge someone's biases in an objective way. No fair reporter would imply Osama Bin Laden was ever 1. unarmed 2. elderly 3. a civilian. It's a deeply wrong and misleading quote, intended to bias the reader in favor of the author's narrative. If these guys would order a hit on a a little old innocent grandpa, what wouldn't they do? The article's theory is built on a house of cards, like a most conspiracy theories, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
  - bcoates 11y ago
    Is 'Osama was an unarmed civilian' even under dispute? I thought that was the official story.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Even 'civilian' in that context is misleading. Technically true, but misleading, as it's trying to play up the innocence of the person. A drug cartel kingpin is technically a "civilian", as is the head of a global terrorism network, as is the head of a human trafficking network. None of them are members of a recognized country's militia, but they still command significant force.
bjornsteffanson 11y ago
I spent an embarrassing amount of time scratching that asterisk wondering how my screen got so dirty.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
OBL's not dead. He mostly hangs out in the break room at Langley. HW Bush, prince Bandar, and some other guys from congress stop by and they all reminisce about the good old days.
slr555 11y ago
Reporting like this is so unconvincing because all the sources are anonymous and there is no way to corroborate the assertions of the reporter. It's as though he asking us to accept a story told by the Easter Bunny and confirmed by the Tooth Fairy. The explanation of why all the subterfuge is necessary is quite unconvincing. If you consider each of the reasons separately they make little sense. Given that the US SpecOps community is nearly completely Republican in its sympathies it makes no sense that this story would go unleaked by those elements. This version of the events also requires a vast conspiracy within the journalist community that has widely reported on the story from the perspective of numerous SEALs. Finally, what of all the injured SEALs on the crashed helo. No medevac, no casevac, no reportage. The US would definitely sacrifice a dozen lives to keep advanced stealth technology out of the hands of other governments. Fails Occam's Razor miserably.
- philwelch 11y ago
  It's not like the government produced any actual evidence of the official story, either. I don't think anyone knows for sure what happened.
  - ted5555 11y ago
    Yes but 60 minutes put on Mark Owen/Matt Bissonette and his story cleared their fact check in which is quite rigorous. He talks openly about others killed in the compound, chopper crash etc. He has been quite vocal in criticizing some accounts that differ from his in minute ways. He did not clear his first book with the military and is still being investigated. Yes, I know the CIA gets paid to lie but nothing in the mainstream (vetted) media supports the LRB story.
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DonGateley 11y ago
"High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy" Is there a person alive that doesn't know this? The same can be said of any powerful nation's policy throughout most if not all of history. Ending the story on such a truism as if it's an exposure is lame.
20kleagues 11y ago
The biggest glaring fallacy with the CIA story I see is that the Pakistani's did not know about the presence of OBL in the country. The article mentions that the house was 2 miles from the military academy. Abbotabad is a garrison city, which means that there is quite literally armed forces present everywhere. I have been to Abbotabad, and there is no way that the Pakistanis would not have known about it. It is akin to saying that OBL was found a couple of miles from West Point and the Americans did not know.
- qq66 11y ago
  I always chuckle at the "couple of miles from West Point" analogy, because West Point is in the middle of basically nowhere. One could easily live in the nearest town, a sleepy little town called Cornwall, without ever being noticed by the military if you didn't want to be.
  - remarkEon 11y ago
    ...because West Point is in the middle of basically nowhere. But it's just an hour's train ride away from somewhere, Manhattan.
- 77ko 11y ago
  I have been to Abbotabad too, and many other places right next to and within military bases in Pakistan, and it is pretty damn easy to live there undetected. No one is driving around checking houses. And even those who do, like meter checkers, are happy enough not to read your meter given say, 10 to 20 dollars worth of incentive. Also Abbotabad is a real life city, not just some garrison town. And even if it was just a garrison town, it would still befull of un-armed non-military people. How do you think military people live in a garrison city? They aren't faceless storm troopers, many have families living right there. And many, many civilians providing services, from food to dry cleaning to road maintenance to flower delivery etc etc.
  - asadlionpk 11y ago
    I agree to this, I have been there too and we weren't even checked once during my few days there. We literally didn't see any armed forces most of the times. No check posts or anything exist. It's a very peaceful city.
jonathanehrlich 11y ago
Mr Hersh is still stuck in Vietnam. This is foxnews quality reporting. Brutal.
mynameishere 11y ago
‘We thought the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate Islamic burial,’ Brennan said, ‘was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea.’ Islamic burials don't specify unceremoniously chucking people into the deep blue sea. Occam's Razor suggests that he was thrown into the ocean to prevent proper identification. Or, if it was really him, that he was killed and discarded to prevent interviews/investigations into his past associations. The fact that the government would pretend to worry about "appropriate Islamic burials" stinks to high heaven.
- ern 11y ago
  He was probably too badly disfigured by having a few clips unloaded into his face, and the US didn't want any pictures leaking out. The other justification for his at-sea burial, that I've read-that his grave would become a place of pilgrimage if his body were returned to Saudi Arabia is laughable on its face to anyone who knows the least bit about wahabbism.
ajays 11y ago
I'm not buying this story. There is a lot of fudging going on. Here's a gem, for example: "None of the Seals thought that Obama was going to get on national TV and announce the raid." What the hell. How do you explain a downed stealth helicopter in Abbottabad then? It just happened to come down by itself?
- paradox242 11y ago
  Because the agreed-upon cover story was that OBL was killed in a drone strike, not by a Navy Seals team.
selimthegrim 11y ago
This is the interview he refers to with Durrani in February (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM); I remain as unconvinced now as I was by Carlotta Gall's clearly one-source one-note story or the unconvincing psychological analysis of the Pakistan army from this 'retired source', (why couldn't he just go try to wangle an interview with the informant?) His contention that the Americans were running Jundullah in Balochistan was eventually made out to be unfounded. This is plausible but unfounded, it doesn't ring fully true just yet.
simonh 11y ago
Even if this article is completely true - so what? Even if he has found a 'smoking gun' to some double-switch operation by the CIA, and the public story isn't the whole truth, who cares? Job done. The details simply don't hold any water though. 1) You don't destroy military hardened electronics systems with concussion grenades. All you'd do is scorch the paintwork. 2) The 'killed by a drone, confirmed by DNA evidence' supposed cover story is ludicrous. If he was killed by a drone high in the sky over the mountains, how on earth is the US supposed to have got a sample of his DNA? 3) The Saudi government would never fund Bin laden, as he was utterly opposed to the ruling family. Yes he was funded by Saudis, but not by the government. Outsiders frequently make this mistake, assuming that Saudi funding for Bin laden, and his family connections there, mean Saudi official support. That's a complete missunderstanding though and implies the author only has a pretty superficial grasp of the relationship. 4) The story that the SEALS were shooting in self defence is entirely necessary, otherwise they would be open to accusations of murder. They would know that and the idea that they would complain about it is ridiculous. 5) If only Bin Laden was killed, who did all the corpses locals found and photographed in the building belong to? Did the SEALs plant the AK-47s and Makarov pistol found at the compound? But if the SEALs were against the administration's re-packaging of the details of the raid and are as above-board as described in the article, why would they collude by planting fake evidence? The whole thing is completely incoherent.

228 points by clarkm 11y ago

trop 11y ago

> By then, the military had constructed a mock-up of the compound in Abbottabad at a secret former nuclear test site in Utah, and an elite Seal team had begun rehearsing for the attack. Question: What former nuclear test site in Utah? Am not familiar with tests in Utah. The model seems to have been in North Carolina? See http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-capture-cias-secret-bin-laden-training-facility/57771/ http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-captu...

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moe 11y ago
"As humans"? As americans perhaps, though I doubt even that. Personally I have no memory of when exactly I heard about it.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Barely registered to me. It had high symbolic value, but the practical impact of Osama bin Laden's death was next to none.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Same here. I couldn't even tell you what year it was without looking it up. As another poster said, it was anticipated for so long that it didn't seem significant when it finally happened.
- afarrell 11y ago
  It did make the fight against polio harder.
rev_bird 11y ago
I was at a bus stop, in my college town. I was watching Twitter, because the press conference had been called but nobody knew for sure what it was. I started seeing tweets that the announcement was going to be about bin Laden being killed, then, all at once, I heard cheering coming from apartment windows all up and down the street. Totally surreal. I might've had a different experience than many folks older (or younger) than I, though -- I was 10 when the attacks happened, and for a lot of the kids my age, OBL was the first real-life boogieman we knew. Then, just as we became old enough to really get immersed in current events, he was killed.
remarkEon 11y ago
I was in Darby phase of Ranger School, and when the instructors told us, because it didn't have to do with getting a few more minutes sleep or calories, I really didn't care. However, when I graduated it was one of the first things I looked up.
- ryanmarsh 11y ago
  I'll trade you some beverage base for that peanut butter of yours.

kens 11y ago

I don't want to be nitpicking conspiracy dude, but one thing seems wrong. The article mentions several times that the electricity to the town was cut for the raid. But it was widely reported that someone live-tweeted the raid as it was happening (without knowing what was going on), which shows the power must have been on. http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-raid/ http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-raid/

CamperBob2 11y ago
Sat phones are popular in that part of the world.
asadlionpk 11y ago
Umm people use GPRS/3G/4G all the time here. And we have power backups in most homes since grid is not so reliable here. Source: I am writing this on a highway in a rural part of Pakistan. Abbottabad is very urban.
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  Wait I thought Pakistan just got 4G licenses late last year? When I went a year ago even Mobilink didn't have 4G?
  - asadlionpk 11y ago
    Yes, you are right. Even then, GPRS still works better here than some areas of SF. Also, since each home has their own UPS backup. WIfi would still be working since phone lines were working (DSL via phone line is common here). In short: tweeting would definitely not have been that trivial.
Luc 11y ago
The person who live-tweeted the raid has confirmed the power was out at the time: https://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/597644559443697664 https://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/597644559443697664

comrade1 11y ago

I remember where I was when the towers fell (working at home that day in s.f.). I remember where I was when Reagan was shot (playing mini golf in junior high). I don't remember where I was when Osama bin laden was killed. It just felt like such an inevitability and correction to history that it should have happened already. Remembering what I was doing was pointless. Also, everything before was such a waste. We wasted so many lives in Iraq when the real enemies were the Pakistani intelligence service and Saudi Arabia. I just wanted to forget it all.

angersock 11y ago
There arguably weren't any real enemies to the Republic, other than the folks who saw an opportunity to use fear to repeal our rights.
- afarrell 11y ago
  Defining an "enemy of the Republic" really is just a rhetorical technique to assert what the goals and values of the Republic are. Sometimes it is one that the residents of the republic broadly agree with because they share those values and goals either explicitly ("I want myself and my kin to avoid getting killed in a building collapse") or implicitly ("I'm totally fine with a credit-based economy, though I wish it worked out better for my group.") Occasionally it is a rhetorical technique with powder and steel behind it.
  - angersock 11y ago
    Perhaps I was a little too flowery. :) Anyways, the point intended was that, while there are transient enemies of The American Dream (however one may wish to define it within reason, but including the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and general zeitgeist of 20th century America), they tend to go up in flames with their victims. The true enemies, though, see that by either exploiting or altering the processes of government and manipulating popular opinion, and they tend to integrate themselves with the host and extract as much value as they can. They are also more likely to stay around, having become part of the system. It's unfortunate.

gkoberger 11y ago

I read this article, and it's a great read. But my reaction was "even if this is true... so what?" If they had used the lie to get support for "enhanced interrogations" (like people quoted in the article recommended), I'd be mad. If the US government had been holding bin Laden and waiting for the right time, I'd be mad, too. If Obama blatantly lied about the story for political points, I'd be mad. But, basically, it seems the story happened mostly like it was told to us, and the changes were mainly to not implicate Pakistan or the informants. I wish we had a more transparent government, but hey, we flew into another country and murdered an elderly man... The story we got could have been worse. The gist seems to be true. The claim is that Obama used it for political points, and he certainly did benefit. However the story he told was much closer to the truth than the story the CIA/people quoted wanted to tell. They wanted to say it happened via drone attacks. So, we're mad that Obama didn't lie enough? The only "lie" from Obama was that it was a courier (rather than a deflector who probably has family in Pakistan), and that they were met with resistance (which would have implicated Pakistan and upset the Saudis/etc if the truth came out). (Note that similar stories came out after we captured Saddam Hussein, saying that he wasn't found in a hole: http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-not-found-in-a-hole-as-claimed-by-us-report http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-no...)

rogerhoward 11y ago
1. The implication that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had him under their control since 2006 is important. We were still neck-deep in two wars that were sold to the public in large part based on Afghanistan's unwillingness to hand him over. If true, it also provides more explicit verification that SA and Pakistan are terrible allies at best. 2. Setting aside the morality of assassination, it suggests that the reason we killed him wasn't out of necessity or even expedience - but rather to prevent him from talking about these so-called allies. 3. Rather than implicating Pakistan and its corrupt ISI services, we implicated a humanitarian medical mission and its lead doctor. I fail to see that as the lesser of evils. There are a lot of reasons to be disturbed by this story if it turns out to be factual.
- detcader 11y ago

tangled 11y ago

I am reminded that (i) there is, as far as I know, no independent corroboration of the purported killing of Osama Bin Laden, and (ii) it was politically a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.

mikeash 11y ago
If he was still alive then he or his allies wasted a wonderful opportunity to discredit the US. I don't think they're that dumb. It's like one of the arguments against faked moon landings. The Soviets would have been highly motivated to disprove the events, and had the skills and resources to do so if they had been fake, yet they didn't.
- tangled 11y ago
  I think it's unlikely that he's still walking around :) However, it is possible that he died or was captured some time before he was allegedly killed. I think that we are unlikely to see any independent evidence either way. Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.
  - Permit 11y ago
    >Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration. So was the unemployment rate falling. What's your point? Something "good" happening during an administration is not evidence of conspiracy.
    - tlrobinson 11y ago
      Falling unemployment rates are at least somewhat independently verifiable.
    - tangled 11y ago
      "Trust me, this great thing happened which is going to increase my popularity. There's no to verify that this great thing actually happened, but you know that I wouldn't lie to you."

mst 11y ago

> The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance Well, duh. The ISI officers and generals needed to be able to claim that and if the US people wanted their co-operation they needed to provide plausible deniability. I am confused as to why this is presented as remotely surprising.

IBM 11y ago

I desperately want this to be true just because I'm a political junkie and a student of history and it'd be a great start to the week to see the White House, State department, Pakistan, and everyone else respond to it. Definitely rooting for a Charlie Rose interview of Hersh. But there does seem to be only one main source he relies on and the whole story and its details just seem so perfect. It will be interesting to see if his story is corroborated in the weeks and months to come.

Estragon 11y ago
What were his most interesting points? Trying to decide whether to read it. It's long.
- deepsleep3r 11y ago
  - ISI bribed tribal folks in Hindu Kush region to turn over Bin Laden sometime during 2001-2006. - From 2006 onwards senior elements within the ISI kept Bin Laden hidden from the world. -ISI was essentially playing a double game, telling americans they knew nothing about Bin Laden's whereabouts and receiving boat loads of weapons and cash to deal with terrorism; while telling the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda they would keep Bin Laden safe from the Americans as long as they didn't cross any boundaries set by the ISI. Saudi's helped the ISI with Bin Laden's welfare and well being apparently. -Americans didn't sherlock holmes Bin Laden's hideout but a leaker from the ISI had come to the American's and asked for the 25 million dollar reward and safety of his family in exchange for Bin Laden. -Bin Laden living in Abbottabad was under constant monitoring by ISI living in a de facto prison. He was not running any command center but living out his last few years while health deteriorating. - Obama wanted proof before sending Seals a senior ISI medical officer was living in Abbottabad and got that proof.He was given a portion of the reward. - White House tells Pasha and Kayani( heads of Army and ISI) they are monitoring a high value target in Abbotabad. Pasha and Kayani freak out and cooperate because if Pakistani Public, Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda find that ISI and Pak Army gave Bin Laden away to the Americans all hell would break loose. So the narrative of the "All American" no help from anyone had to be constructed, because how would it look if the American people found out the Pakistan Army and ISI was hiding Bin Laden 2 miles from a major Pak Army training facility. - Pasha and Kayani make sure the two BlackHawks are not intercepted by Pakistani Airforce no radar goes off, and the ISI agents guarding the house are not present when the Seal team comes in. -Unarmed Bin Laden is executed, no firefight ensued as the compound was empty( only Bin Laden and his family) the Seals chill for 20 minutes waiting for some other helicopter to come because one of the helicopters really did crash . If this where real the Seals would have all gotten in 1 helicopter and gotten the hell out, but there was no threat. -Obama really wanted to brag so instead of planning a story, he immediately got a speech prepared(lots of discrepancies in his speech that night he thanks the pakistani's in their continued support to fighting terrorism). CIA and senior Army people freak out he wasn't even supposed to mention the pakistanis, lots of backtracking and revisions of the story come in the days that follow.

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danieltrembath 11y ago

'faced with an unarmed elderly civilian'. I know it's only a quote from 'an offical', but Osama was 54 when he was killed. Ill possible. But hardly 'elderly'.

staunch 11y ago
The author selected that quote, like all the rest, to make a point. It's little slip ups like that that let you judge someone's biases in an objective way. No fair reporter would imply Osama Bin Laden was ever 1. unarmed 2. elderly 3. a civilian. It's a deeply wrong and misleading quote, intended to bias the reader in favor of the author's narrative. If these guys would order a hit on a a little old innocent grandpa, what wouldn't they do? The article's theory is built on a house of cards, like a most conspiracy theories, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
- bcoates 11y ago
  Is 'Osama was an unarmed civilian' even under dispute? I thought that was the official story.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Even 'civilian' in that context is misleading. Technically true, but misleading, as it's trying to play up the innocence of the person. A drug cartel kingpin is technically a "civilian", as is the head of a global terrorism network, as is the head of a human trafficking network. None of them are members of a recognized country's militia, but they still command significant force.

bjornsteffanson 11y ago

I spent an embarrassing amount of time scratching that asterisk wondering how my screen got so dirty.

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago

OBL's not dead. He mostly hangs out in the break room at Langley. HW Bush, prince Bandar, and some other guys from congress stop by and they all reminisce about the good old days.

slr555 11y ago

Reporting like this is so unconvincing because all the sources are anonymous and there is no way to corroborate the assertions of the reporter. It's as though he asking us to accept a story told by the Easter Bunny and confirmed by the Tooth Fairy. The explanation of why all the subterfuge is necessary is quite unconvincing. If you consider each of the reasons separately they make little sense. Given that the US SpecOps community is nearly completely Republican in its sympathies it makes no sense that this story would go unleaked by those elements. This version of the events also requires a vast conspiracy within the journalist community that has widely reported on the story from the perspective of numerous SEALs. Finally, what of all the injured SEALs on the crashed helo. No medevac, no casevac, no reportage. The US would definitely sacrifice a dozen lives to keep advanced stealth technology out of the hands of other governments. Fails Occam's Razor miserably.

philwelch 11y ago
It's not like the government produced any actual evidence of the official story, either. I don't think anyone knows for sure what happened.
- ted5555 11y ago
  Yes but 60 minutes put on Mark Owen/Matt Bissonette and his story cleared their fact check in which is quite rigorous. He talks openly about others killed in the compound, chopper crash etc. He has been quite vocal in criticizing some accounts that differ from his in minute ways. He did not clear his first book with the military and is still being investigated. Yes, I know the CIA gets paid to lie but nothing in the mainstream (vetted) media supports the LRB story.
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DonGateley 11y ago

"High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy" Is there a person alive that doesn't know this? The same can be said of any powerful nation's policy throughout most if not all of history. Ending the story on such a truism as if it's an exposure is lame.

20kleagues 11y ago

The biggest glaring fallacy with the CIA story I see is that the Pakistani's did not know about the presence of OBL in the country. The article mentions that the house was 2 miles from the military academy. Abbotabad is a garrison city, which means that there is quite literally armed forces present everywhere. I have been to Abbotabad, and there is no way that the Pakistanis would not have known about it. It is akin to saying that OBL was found a couple of miles from West Point and the Americans did not know.

qq66 11y ago
I always chuckle at the "couple of miles from West Point" analogy, because West Point is in the middle of basically nowhere. One could easily live in the nearest town, a sleepy little town called Cornwall, without ever being noticed by the military if you didn't want to be.
- remarkEon 11y ago
  ...because West Point is in the middle of basically nowhere. But it's just an hour's train ride away from somewhere, Manhattan.
77ko 11y ago
I have been to Abbotabad too, and many other places right next to and within military bases in Pakistan, and it is pretty damn easy to live there undetected. No one is driving around checking houses. And even those who do, like meter checkers, are happy enough not to read your meter given say, 10 to 20 dollars worth of incentive. Also Abbotabad is a real life city, not just some garrison town. And even if it was just a garrison town, it would still befull of un-armed non-military people. How do you think military people live in a garrison city? They aren't faceless storm troopers, many have families living right there. And many, many civilians providing services, from food to dry cleaning to road maintenance to flower delivery etc etc.
- asadlionpk 11y ago
  I agree to this, I have been there too and we weren't even checked once during my few days there. We literally didn't see any armed forces most of the times. No check posts or anything exist. It's a very peaceful city.

jonathanehrlich 11y ago

Mr Hersh is still stuck in Vietnam. This is foxnews quality reporting. Brutal.

mynameishere 11y ago

‘We thought the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate Islamic burial,’ Brennan said, ‘was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea.’ Islamic burials don't specify unceremoniously chucking people into the deep blue sea. Occam's Razor suggests that he was thrown into the ocean to prevent proper identification. Or, if it was really him, that he was killed and discarded to prevent interviews/investigations into his past associations. The fact that the government would pretend to worry about "appropriate Islamic burials" stinks to high heaven.

ern 11y ago
He was probably too badly disfigured by having a few clips unloaded into his face, and the US didn't want any pictures leaking out. The other justification for his at-sea burial, that I've read-that his grave would become a place of pilgrimage if his body were returned to Saudi Arabia is laughable on its face to anyone who knows the least bit about wahabbism.

ajays 11y ago

I'm not buying this story. There is a lot of fudging going on. Here's a gem, for example: "None of the Seals thought that Obama was going to get on national TV and announce the raid." What the hell. How do you explain a downed stealth helicopter in Abbottabad then? It just happened to come down by itself?

paradox242 11y ago
Because the agreed-upon cover story was that OBL was killed in a drone strike, not by a Navy Seals team.

selimthegrim 11y ago

This is the interview he refers to with Durrani in February (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM); I remain as unconvinced now as I was by Carlotta Gall's clearly one-source one-note story or the unconvincing psychological analysis of the Pakistan army from this 'retired source', (why couldn't he just go try to wangle an interview with the informant?) His contention that the Americans were running Jundullah in Balochistan was eventually made out to be unfounded. This is plausible but unfounded, it doesn't ring fully true just yet.

simonh 11y ago

Even if this article is completely true - so what? Even if he has found a 'smoking gun' to some double-switch operation by the CIA, and the public story isn't the whole truth, who cares? Job done. The details simply don't hold any water though. 1) You don't destroy military hardened electronics systems with concussion grenades. All you'd do is scorch the paintwork. 2) The 'killed by a drone, confirmed by DNA evidence' supposed cover story is ludicrous. If he was killed by a drone high in the sky over the mountains, how on earth is the US supposed to have got a sample of his DNA? 3) The Saudi government would never fund Bin laden, as he was utterly opposed to the ruling family. Yes he was funded by Saudis, but not by the government. Outsiders frequently make this mistake, assuming that Saudi funding for Bin laden, and his family connections there, mean Saudi official support. That's a complete missunderstanding though and implies the author only has a pretty superficial grasp of the relationship. 4) The story that the SEALS were shooting in self defence is entirely necessary, otherwise they would be open to accusations of murder. They would know that and the idea that they would complain about it is ridiculous. 5) If only Bin Laden was killed, who did all the corpses locals found and photographed in the building belong to? Did the SEALs plant the AK-47s and Makarov pistol found at the compound? But if the SEALs were against the administration's re-packaging of the details of the raid and are as above-board as described in the article, why would they collude by planting fake evidence? The whole thing is completely incoherent.