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Osama Bin Laden is dead

mac said:
I've been waterbaorded...as has nearly everyone that's been through S.E.R.E.
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That explains why you continually ramble without saying anything of real value....
 
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mac said:
I've been waterbaorded...as has nearly everyone that's been through S.E.R.E.
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upsideguy said:
That explains why you continually ramble without saying anything of real value....
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(editor's note: Sorry, that isn't intended to be a personal shot, I just could not resist hitting that softball)
 
StillBallin75 said:
omg this "Bush didn't try to catch OBL" BS is getting ridiculous. I will never be Bush's #1 fan (except maybe when it comes to comedic value), but let's drop this bull**** notion that he didn't try to get Osama. He did try, he either just didn't have enough intel to act, or he screwed up (like in Tora Bora). Bush cannot be faulted for lack of trying.
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Umm. Nah. He said he was not even really worried about him. Bush dropped the ball and those that think otherwise need to suck it the hell up, deal and drop it.. Unless they wish to have their ass handed to them. Just saying.
 
StillBallin75 said:
omg this "Bush didn't try to catch OBL" BS is getting ridiculous. I will never be Bush's #1 fan (except maybe when it comes to comedic value), but let's drop this bull**** notion that he didn't try to get Osama. He did try, he either just didn't have enough intel to act, or he screwed up (like in Tora Bora). Bush cannot be faulted for lack of trying.
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Yes he can. bush completely blew it on 9/11 when he ignored some 60 emails from FBI agents in Minneapolis tipping him off to the plot. . .

Agents in the Minneapolis FBI Office immediately confirm the information and seek permission to search by warning FBI Headquarters in over 60 emails and frantic telephone calls that "this is a guy who could fly into the World Trade Center." Although the 'Director of Central Intelligence' is briefed within days with a presentation titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly", neither the FBI or CIA staff does anything until after 9/11.

Coleen Rowley: Government Whistleblower Protection: the Long Ignored Way to Better Connect the Dots
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And now the latest evidence coming in from Wikileaks states very clearly that bush failed to take aggressive action in Afghanistan when the whereabouts of bin Laden was known w/certainty. . .

It said: 'Reportedly a high-level meeting was held where six suicide bombers were given orders for an operation in northern Afghanistan. These meetings take place once every month.'

According to the Guardian, which has received the documents, the report went on: 'The top four people in these meetings are Mullah Omar [the Taliban leader], Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Dadullah and Mullah [Baradar].'

If true, it could mean forces came close to having the opportunity to wipe out the senior leadership of the Afghan insurgency that has so far claimed the lives of 320 British soldiers.

Wikileaks reveals Osama Bin Laden was seen at village meetings | Mail Online
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FYI, I am not taking sides, claiming that Democrats are better than Republicans at fighting terrorism. Clearly, Obama has is share of blunders.

But the evidence to date is that Bush did not try to fight al Queda; he was merely obsessed w/his own agenda of invading Iraq and supposedly re-making the ME.
 
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Ding dong the bastard's dead, Navy SEALs shot him in the head. Ding gong the sorry bastard's dead
 
solletica said:
The facts are not disputed: the Wikileaks docs state that the CIA obtained the information leading to bin Laden from interrogating one of his couriers caught in 2005 and traced his network of couriers. . .
That document is dated 2008. So there it is, and if it's true, then bush could've killed bin Laden in 2008. Why didn't he do so?
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Even when the facts are not in dispute, the conclusion drawn from the facts may not all agree and be correct.

If all the Bush Admin had to do was to Google the guy's nom de guerre to get the guy's home address and then use Facebook to find out where the guy was at that moment, I would say that you may have had a point.

However, I think that having someone's nickname isn't quite the same as finding then secretly tracking someone who is trying to be sneaky.
I am willing to believe our IC when they tell us that it took them a while to find the guy even after they acquired his name.

solletica said:
Either he was lazy, stupid, or sufficient intelligence was not available, i. e. the trace of the network by the CIA was inadequate.
Bottom line: if anyone wants to show that waterboarding is effective, then there must be evidence demonstrating its efficiency in capturing and killing dangerous criminals and terrorists.
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Now you're changing the goalposts from "effective" to "efficient."

solletica said:
But it's difficult to make a case for torture by stating that the information obtained from it turned out to be actionable 10 years later.
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I am not making a case "for torture." You said that torture didn't work for acquiring information and you offered up a false dilemma.

solletica said:
If the latter is the case, then, in fact, the torture only extracted a tiny piece of the whole puzzle--a seemingly small benefit in exchange for cruelty.
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Showing that torture produces some information is insufficient to show that torture is a best practice.
To be a best practice, it needs to be compared to other methods based on multiple criteria. Criteria which would include things the amount of time to acquire valid verifiable info as opposed to say volume of info. Otherwise it's sort of an incomplete comparison.
We don't know how much BS torture generates. That never makes the news. There's never a headline about how people wasted their time and effort tracking down leads from info acquired through EIT to find out that they were bogus. But, that's a valid consideration when evaluating and comparing one method of educing info to another. It's also something that isn't addressed by the "arguments" that people make when they point to an incident and say, "See? Torture works."
 
mac said:
22 years in the military, working with, in and around, intelligence...you tell me.
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Then you shouldn't have much trouble articulating your case as an expert rather than merely pointing to the laurels on your seat.
 
ric27 said:
Just a reminder to all Bin Laden was not a shooter or even a planner. His demise is important only symbolically. Only
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Iirc, upon joining aQ one does not swear an oath to uphold their ideals, but rather swear an oath of fealty to ObL himself. So, "merely symbolic" can have practical impacts.
 
ecofarm said:
I believe the saying is:

"If you're 20 and conservative, you have no heart; if you're 40 and liberal, you have no brain."
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Yes that's the Churchill quote I had in mind. Personally I think it's bull****. There are plenty on both sides that have no hearts, there are more that have no brains.
 
gekaap said:
And yet, Bush made no attempt to pursue the matter and to get bin Laden. Which is why Bush deserves no credit for the kill. He gets credit for not caring, for failing to deliver, and that's about it.
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This might qualify as the most retarded post of the year. Perhaps the most retarded ever posted on DP.
It is 100% pure unadulterated drivel, and even open minded Libs will have to agree it's 100% wrong.

And you claim to be a "Centrist"!!! ???
Next time try "Progressive", "Moderate" or "Independent". ROTFLOL.

TILT/

.
 
gekaap said:
I do not believe that is you.
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Well, it is, that's where I work. The guy you're looking at on the page is the boss, not me. Beleive what you want though.
 
upsideguy said:
That explains why you continually ramble without saying anything of real value....
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And this was of value? Why is it that I ramble, because I have been waterboarded...been through SERE, or am military?
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Iirc, upon joining aQ one does not swear an oath to uphold their ideals, but rather swear an oath of fealty to ObL himself. So, "merely symbolic" can have practical impacts.
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You got it wrong....

1 AQ does not recruit and

2 They turn people that want to join away.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Then you shouldn't have much trouble articulating your case as an expert rather than merely pointing to the laurels on your seat.
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I wasn't pointing out the "laurels on my seat" I was answering a personal question. If you have a direct question I'll answer it as honestly as I can. Do you have one?

My only input to this particular "Bush did nothing" argument is that the intelligence that lead to his capture has been building for years.
 
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ecofarm said:
I believe the saying is:

"If you're 20 and conservative, you have no heart; if you're 40 and liberal, you have no brain."
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What is really sad is the dumbing of America where many conservatives placed tv reality star Pain on the same level as Ronald Reagan. To many conservatives she was Einstein.

As H.L. Menken said " Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intellingence of the American public."
 
Crosscheck said:
What is really sad is the dumbing of America where many conservatives placed tv reality star Pain on the same level as Ronald Reagan. To many conservatives she was Einstein.

As H.L. Menken said " Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intellingence of the American public."
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Palin, Bauchman, Pelosi, Trump, Frank, Sharpton, Boxer, Obama, Ventura, Franken, Paul........

It's amazing how little basic leadership skill, tact, experience, statesmanship, class, and integrity is required to be an elected leader in this country today.

This is the result of our loss of basic family structure and the resulting lack of moral fiber, which in turn has led to widespread institutionalized government dependence.

Compare our current "statemen" with those who signed the declaration and the level of debate that occurred in Independence Hall in those days.
 
Erod said:
Palin, Bauchman, Pelosi, Trump, Frank, Sharpton, Boxer, Obama, Ventura, Franken, Paul........

It's amazing how little basic leadership skill, tact, experience, statesmanship, class, and integrity is required to be an elected leader in this country today.

This is the result of our loss of basic family structure and the resulting lack of moral fiber, which in turn has led to widespread institutionalized government dependence.

Compare our current "statemen" with those who signed the declaration and the level of debate that occurred in Independence Hall in those days.
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Yeah. You can take Pelosi, Obama and Frank off of that list.
 
OBLsFacebookPost1.jpg
 
Leon Panetta, the CIA director, has confirmed that controversial "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding yielded some of the intelligence information that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden.

"In the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here," he told NBC News. "It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got. I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees."

The White House and its Capitol Hill allies had earlier been at pains to state that such techniques, used under the Bush administration but banned by Mr Obama as amounting to torture, had not played a part in yielding significant information.

Mr Panetta's admission lays Mr Obama open to politically explosive claims that bin Laden would not have been killed had it not been for the use of those techniques by the Bush administration.

In his 2009 Senate confirmation hearings, Mr Panetta, a moderate Democrat and former California congressman, argued that "waterboarding is torture and it's wrong".

But he stated candidly last night that discussion about its use will continue. "Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question," he said.
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Osama bin Laden killed: CIA admits waterboarding yielded vital information
 
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