Bin Laden is dead.

Equality 7-2521 wrote: I posted a link before. That report was inaccurate.

Typical quality of journalism from the United States I suppose (unless it was a report from another source outside the U.S.)

^ Yikes

manofmystery wrote: It's been over 24 hours and oh, how the world has changed.  It's glorious.  We are no longer fighting three seperate wars, the Patriot Act is gone, we can take shampoo on a plane again, the TSA is not longer feeling up our junk and our kid's junk......oh wait....hang on a sec.  Killing one b*****d doesn't change anything.  We let Osama win already, what's his being dead going to change?

Cheer up, here is a picture of a baby seal to temporarily distract you from the real world:



Wasn't that cute?  How could you say no to that fuzzy face? 


Now, back to our regularly scheduled bouts of pointless whining and bitter complaining.

The T wrote: manofmystery wrote: It's been over 24 hours and oh, how the world has changed.  It's glorious.  We are no longer fighting three seperate wars, the Patriot Act is gone, we can take shampoo on a plane again, the TSA is not longer feeling up our junk and our kid's junk......oh wait....hang on a sec.  Killing one b*****d doesn't change anything.  We let Osama win already, what's his being dead going to change? Well the Miami Heat has won two in a row... Who knows this year the Dolphins make it to the playoffs...

Teo, Obama's second term + the second coming of christ won't make that happen!

Obama is the first coming. Jesus was an impostor. 

Jim Garten wrote: Personally I'm surprised it happened last weekend - usually, no Bins are taken out on a bank holiday. Maybe that only translates to Brits...

the whole action is very questionable for several reasons:
a) just reverse the situation - a Pakistan elite squad invades USA territory and kills a person who is alleged to be a terrorist, without informing the USA government. what would you think of that? would you all applaud it to? I seriously doubt it, and the USA would probably take it as an act of war, and rightly so.
b) there has never been any trial against Bin Laden, not even an in effigie trial. you may say that Bin Laden himself confessed to have been behind  the 9/11 terrorist acts. that, however, is no evidence at all; anyone could confess to that; he may just have been bragging about it (interestingly in Talmudic law the accused can't even bear witness against himself, by the way). all we have as proof that he is behind the 9/11 attacks are the allegations of the Bush administration (which were made just a few hours after the 9/11 attacks, by the way - quite miraculous crime solving).
get me right: I am not trying to defend a terrorist, I am just questioning the legality of the American actions. what if Bin Laden had hid in your country? would you have wanted an USA elite squad eliminating him, without even telling your government about it? I seriously doubt it


Edited by BaldJean - May 04 2011 at 10:59

I'm with Jean on this, state-sanctioned assassinations do not equate to "justice" in my book.

Here's an excellent article by the superb (but enormously and unapologetically biased) documentary maker Adam Curtis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-soviet-union-baddie

What it comes down to is that certain aspects of the Pakistan government couldn't be trusted with the information that the US knew where bin Laden was and that they were going to take him out.  The compound is in the middle of an area where numerous retired military leaders live and two miles from the Pakistan equivalent of West Point.  Odds are good that there were sympathizers who knew that bin Laden was living there and would have tipped him off to the mission.  It basically comes down to we removed this scourge from the earth and if you are with us you will accept it, and if you aren't, then f**k you, your next. 

Henry Plainview wrote: Well yes, the attack technically did violate Pakistani sovereignty, and I'm not a big fan of the Team America World Police approach. But the evidence is mounting that Pakistan was outright harboring him, so asking them first would not exactly be good for actually capturing him.    rushfan4 wrote: I suspect it would have been better to capture him, waterboard him, and get us much information from him as possible before putting a bullet in his head, but maybe that is just me. I can almost guarantee you that waterboarding Bin Laden would have produced no useful information.

Because he wouldn't divulge it, or because he didn't have any useful information?