Bin Laden shooting offers some vindication for Gitmo.
It appears that the initial intelligence that enabled the US forces to raid and shoot bin Laden was gained from detainees in Guantanamo Bay. While there is no news of the methods used to gain the information, it seems that details of two couriers who were trusted by the arch terrorist was discovered years ago.
Since then there has been an ongoing intelligence effort, firstly to find these people, then track them down and observe their movements. Last year it paid off when they were tracked to the compound where he was dealt with.
Gitmo is something of a difficult issue for libertarians, in finding a balance between individual rights, and how to deal with people who want to kill you. It is reasonably clear-cut though. In a ‘civilized’ war when it is over the combatants go home and get on with their lives. In an Islamic-fascist campaign for world domination, the enemy do not accept your basic right to exist and are forever hostile.
First up there is no end in sight to this campaign, therefore no reason to release enemy combatants, and secondly, those that have been released have a record of going back to fight.
The thing that was most disturbing about the Obama speech was that everything that occurred before he came to office was “WE,” but “I,” did everything afterward. It is clear from the details emerging that by the time he came to power and ordered ….etc, the security services under Bush had already laid the groundwork for what was to become the operation.
I'm not normally into the wearing of tinfoil headgear but doesn't this worry you a little? Within the last few days we've had first the long awaited birth certificate (though not by me - I've always thought that if the Hillary Clinton's mob couldn't prove he was born outside the US then there's probably nothing to prove) and now the capture and killing of Bin Laden, conveniently with no body so as to keep the conspiracy theorists revved up and even more conveniently on intel supposedly gained from waterboarding people who've been locked up without anything as troublesome as a trial to determine their guilt. And which of course has come with an official warning that the Islamaloons will be planning reprisals so we must all be willing to put up with more security theatre. Sorry, I mean even more.
ReplyDeleteThe timing of all this bothers me a bit. The Prez has not be polling well lately and really hasn't lived up to the Obamessiah hype of a couple of years ago when he was being praised and awarded a Nobel not for what he'd done but for what he'd said he'd like to do. Having followed through on very little of it and pissed off large sections of the US with other policies he was facing the prospect of a re-election campaign with not much to point at proudly from his first term. More to the point he doesn't want to have to deliver on the change that he was spruiking three years ago. He's found too many difficulties in shutting Gitmo or stopping what's been going on there, and conveniently he now has a justification for no longer even trying - because it caught Bin Laden. He's never shown any interest in reversing Bush's egregiously illiberal policies, and conveniently he now has a justification for leaving them alone too - there may be more attacks because they got Bin Laden.
So next year I expect the campaign in essence to be similar to Bush's second. Vote for more controls, more scans and intrusive searches, more distrust from the government, continued use of detention without trial and so on, because all that allowed Bazza almost personally to capture and kill Bin Laden. Cue flag waving, singing and wild adulation for the Obamessiah, and with a bit of luck more wealth redistribution etc from November next year.
I can see what you are getting at Angry, but if this were the case it would appear that they have allowed too much information to get out. The admission that the initial information was gained while Bush was in power indicates that the intelligence thing was going on long before Obama was in power.
ReplyDeleteI am not in favour of torture, or 'enhanced interrogation techniques' as they like to call it. Rather than keep the bastards in Gitmo it might be better to send them back to where they picked them up from and make sure they shoot them next time.
I doubt that this thing could be faked, with the number of people required to stage it, it would have to leak somewhere.
I notice some quite unfavourable posts coming out, like this one which suggests that the Oby one dithered for months.
The admission that the initial information was gained while Bush was in power indicates that the intelligence thing was going on long before Obama was in power.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the intended implication being The One was able to act on it where as the other one wasn't? In any case it hardly matters. It happens on Obarmy's watch so he gets the credit with the MSM and many of the citizens.
Rather than keep the bastards in Gitmo it might be better to send them back to where they picked them up from and make sure they shoot them next time.
I'm anti-capital punishment but I don't shed a tear if a criminal is shot dead resisting arrest. Similarly I'd have less of a problem with that idea than taking someone halfway round the world for a sophisticated version of bog washing.
I doubt that this thing could be faked, with the number of people required to stage it, it would have to leak somewhere.
Me neither. As with the moon landings having been faked in a studio on Mars and JFK's shooting been masterminded by the owners of an airport who wanted a snappier name, and for that matter 9/11 being a CIA plot to blow up the WTC with explosives, the conspiracy requires the continued long term silence of too many people to be plausible. I'm not saying that the lack of a body, the warp speed DNA test, the use of a special ops team whose existence isn't officially acknowledged, the conflicting early news releases and the refusal to release photos or video indicate a conspiracy, but they sure as hell suggest that nobody has thought much about not feeding all the conspiracy theories. This will keep the tinfoil hat brigade going as long as 9/11 itself, and it didn't need to.
...suggests that the Oby one dithered for months.
He's a manipulative and opportunistic bastard - both virtually prerequisites for his chosen career. I'm certainly prepared to believe he'd want it done at an electorally favourable time.
Personally I wouldn't have bothered. I've always doubted that Bin Laden was this Blofelt character directing and pulling strings from his mystery base and suspected he was more a figurehead whose blessing was sometimes sought for whatever act of violence was going to be carried out anyway. He wasn't even the 9/11 mastermind - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed came to him with that plan, though of course that bastard has claimed responsibility for almost everything short of the Titanic sinking. Anyway, Bin Laden is no loss but it will change nothing and benefit nobody, with the possible exception of a hitherto unpopular president.
I had reservations about putting this out so soon, and these has been justified over the last couple of days with the continual flow of corrections and contradictions to the original story.
ReplyDeleteThe Australian is speculating today, that the Patek arrest in January in the same town may be the lead, which is plausible. It may yet come out that it was his new Iphone.
If these idiots wanted to fuel conspiracy theories they couldn't have done a better job of it. I had thoughts of doing updates to the post, I'm glad I didn't. I would be out of uploads by now.
I am not surprised that he was in a town with a heavy military presence. I recall my father, a WW2 vet saying that one of the favourite places for deserters to hide, was in military camps where nobody would be looking for them. (I once speculated that he would be hiding at a ranch in Montana, but that was before I realised that Bawb lives there, thus making it unsafe.)
I feel that the Pakistani government understand that their intelligence services are compromised, otherwise they would have made a much bigger issue of this.
It may yet come out that it was his new Iphone.
ReplyDeleteCue for another round of 'Apple is watching us all' hysteria. :-D