Is the death of Osama Bin Laden a spoon-fed propaganda story?

No.

Sure. First we train him, then later on use him as a poster child for a war on terror, then we kill him and Dog and Pony show his death.

Sure, isn’t everything.

Some interesting questions I heard on NPR driving to work were about Pakistan’s involvement and knowledge. bin Laden was apparently living in a secure compound in a suburb outside Islamabad. There is a Pakistani military compound nearby, and one reporter likened it to their “West Point.”

So, who built this compound, was it built for bin Laden, did this Pakistan gov’t know he was there, and for how long? Note there were armed men at this compound. Also, the US spokesman said that the Pakistan gov’t did not know about the operation. How do some US helicopters land near a military base without them knowing about it?

One might guess that the Pakistan gov’t knew bin Laden was there for some time, but for whatever reason they turned him over to the US finally. Who knows what was known by whom when, and what deals were made. I hope someone writes a good book about it one day.

Well for sure how and when they announced it was planned with many factors in mind.

My main concern at this point is that this will be used as a pretext to actually go to war with Pakistan or something. But fortunately Republicans aren’t in control of the White House.

@JLeslie, I don’t think this was politically choreographed at all (I mean, beyond the typical choreography of presidential speeches). The raid happened right before Obama’s announcement. Though Obama did delay an hour, that wasn’t to political advantage (it was freakin’ annoying, actually).

@Qingu I thought Osama had been dead a day or so already?

You mean Osama….I guess they got him a few days ago. They just wanted to verify it was him.

@Dutchess_III I was able to change it, thanks. What are the chances the American President would have a one letter difference in his name from the most wanted man in the world? Makes for good facebook posts. Obama killed Osama.

Time zone difference, @JLeslie. NYT says the assault happened in the early hours of Monday local time.

@Qingu Oh. So the media screwed that up in the reporting? I mean tv media, because that is all I have seen, haven’t read any papers. That is a pretty big mistake.

@JLeslie

What are the chances his name would be one letter away from Osama AND have Hussein as a middle name. Really?

@qingu
If the raid was right before the President spoke at 11 something last night, shouldn’t we still have the body?
Also, he signed for the raid on Friday. Did they make sure to wait that the royal wedding was over for press reasons? Wouldn’t that have been something if he got away in those two days.

@chris6137 I don’t know if you are agreeing it is unlikely, or if you think I am ridiculous for saying it?

What are the chances his name would be one letter away from Osama AND have Hussein as a middle name. Really?

That’s always been all the proof I ever needed~

One unusual thing is the fact that they’ve apparently already discarded his body at sea. Really? Why did they throw it away so quickly? Didn’t they realize such an activity would get the conspiracy theory nuts going?

My druthers would have been to cremate him and flush his ashes down a toilet, placed atopr a large stew.

My knee-jerk reaction is to say no. But maybe.

But there’s no reason to let our politics interfere in our reaction to this event, because, make no mistake, it does not ini itself demand political interpretation. All else aside, Osama bin Laden was a mass murderer. He was a Bundy or a Manson or a McVeigh like any other, and he’s dead now.

I bet Obama has had this in his back pocket for a while now….really. I don’t buy that he died recently. I bet the guy has been dead for some time…and Obama (whom I like) pulled it out when he needed it, strategically….

@JonnyCeltics read something positive for once. Master’s school has you reading too many negative things. I wondered the same thing at first, but checking the news sources, it’s hard to deny much of it.

America’s “imperialism” in the middle east is the by-product of disjointed and poor foreign policy decisions-some with good intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell….

No.

@JonnyCeltics, it’s reasonable to make that assumption, but without overtly acknowledging it you’re implying a vast conspiracy. What that idea entails is that at some point in the recent or distant past, U.S. Navy SEALs (or whoever)—that is, patriots who probably joined up for this express purpose—went out on a mission to find and kill bin Laden, did so, and then kept quiet when the government didn’t release the information. Not to mention the hundreds of support personnel who would have been involved. That’s really hard to press. These are not all people who are all ever complicit in political maneuvering.

Clinton couldn’t even keep a blow job in the White House a secret. This fact alone makes me highly doubtful of claims that the government is good at keeping secrets—especially something this juicy.

@chris6137, they dumped his body at sea ASAP (1) in accordance with Islamic ritual (sort of) and (2) so that it wouldn’t be buried anywhere and attract followers.

The raid happened yesterday morning. It was Monday morning local Pakistan time, and Sunday afternoon in the US. Obama’s announcement came like 5 or so hours after they killed him.

He did sign up for it on Friday, but there was bad weather in the city all weekend, apparently.

If Bush said it I would agree that it is propaganda. It could still be a mistake but I think better of Obama.

I was wondering how long it would be before the first of the conspiracy theories would surface.

As usual, not very long at all :)

OMG. Osama and Hussian are common names, like Mike Jones and Joe Smith. Get over it.

It was in the early hours on Monday, May 2nd IN PACKISTAN. It happened in US time a day earlier.

@cockswain They buried him according to Islamic law, within 24 hours. None of the nations would accept the body, so they had to bury him at sea.

@Dutchess_III Are you talking to me about the names? I wouldn’t care if it was Kelly and Kelli. Shelton and Sheldon. Just saying I screw up the one letter because they are so similar. Nothing to do with religion or race or nationality if that is what people are implying.

AH!!

@Dutchess_III Ok, thanks.

@Dutchess_III I think @cockswain was being sarcastic about the name.

All better!

I’m still not sure what @chris6137 meant?

I’m thinking @chris6137 is one a dem ‘Publican conspri’cy thererist there.

@Dutchess_III I got the feeling he thought I was saying Obama is a Muslim and I must be a right wing, Obama hater. It was the “really?” On the end. But, totally not sure. I am confused.

Well if it is JUST propaganda then Bin Laden can just bust out one of his videos on youtube and put our government on ridicule.. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I am too. Because then he goes on to say @qingu If the raid was right before the President spoke at 11 something last night, shouldn’t we still have the body?
Also, he signed for the raid on Friday. Did they make sure to wait that the royal wedding was over for press reasons? Wouldn’t that have been something if he got away in those two days. so…I’m confused as to his thoughts too.

The people who say “if it was Bush I wouldn’t trust it, but because it’s Obama I do” are part of the problem that’s keeping the crappy two party system in America alive. I was raised Republican but grew up libertarian so I don’t really trust either that much, but the newspaper stories about it seem to verify what the President is saying, so I go with that.

@jlelandg I was one of the people that said that I would trust Obama over Bush, maybe I should have said that “I have a tendency to trust what Obama said over anything Bush would say”. Of course, I also said that I won’t believe any of it until I see the pictures of his dead body and DNA evidence to prove it. I think he should have been bought back to the U.S. tested and cremated. That would be undeniable proof.

@Ron_C, do you really think the president, his chiefs of staff, the reporters who talked to them, and that Pakistani guy in Abottabad on Twitter are lying?

I mean, this isn’t like claiming that “Saddam has WMD’s, so let’s go invade them.” Claiming that special forces killed a terrorist mastermind they’ve been hunting for 10 years isn’t exactly hard to believe and doesn’t have any sort of “so let’s…” attached to it. And if he’s not dead then it would just be idiotic to claim he is, since OBL would just release another video and make us look like dumbasses.

@Qingu “do you really think the president, his chiefs of staff, the reporters who talked to them, and that Pakistani guy in Abottabad on Twitter are lying?” No I don’t but the government has lied since I have been paying attention to them. I remember that Eisenhower warned us about letting the military-industrial complex getting too much power and their ability to lead us into war. That is the last completely true statement that I remember coming from a high government official.

A good lie contains 99% truth.

A good lie also generally contains a motive and some protection from being easily verifiable.

A healthy skepticism of the government is one thing. A knee-jerk disbelief of everything the government tells you is, I think, another species of gullibility.

@Qingu I have always believed in “Trust but Verify” That’s all I’m saying now. I don’t have a “knee-jerk” response to government statements, as least since Bush and Rumsfeld left.

There are many things that Bush and Rumsfeld said that I would not hesitate to believe, largely because of Occam’s Razor.

@Qingu I might believe them if they told me the time and day of the week but would still check my watch. Other than that, you could tell they were lying (or at least obfuscating) if their lips were moving.

I guess I don’t think their dishonesty works remotely the same way you do. I’m not even sure if Bush and his administration knew they were being dishonest, because I think they had basically bought their own bullshit, that there probably were WMD’s in Iraq, that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, etc. I think a large part of Bush’s brain actually believed those things were true and simply ignored all the contrary evidence.

Much like televangelists. The most successful cultists are the ones who have convinced themselves.

My main problem with the Bush administration wasn’t their deceptiveness. It was their shocking incompetence.

As a point of comparison (far afield from war/terrorism) look at how Republicans talk about cutting taxes. The Ryan plan claims that massive tax cuts for the rich are revenue neutral.

Any thinking person knows this is bullshit. But Republicans buy it. Maybe some Republicans know they’re lying and are actually being outright dishonest. But I think a lot of these people genuinely believe what they say: that low taxes will stimulate the economy, that wealthy people create jobs. It’s their religion; it works just like a religion. You say it enough times, you close your eyes to all the facts in contrary, and then it just feels true.

I feel comfortable calling such people “intellectually dishonest,” and certainly they are incompetent and fools. But I’m not sure they know they’re lying. I think the same thing was at work during the lead-up to the Iraq War. Well, okay, Cheney probably knew he was lying.

@Qingu I have no choice but to agree with your assessment of the Bush “brain” and the intellectual dishonesty of the neocons. I also believe that there are many republicans that know in their heart that some taxes need to be raised and that it is morally wrong to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class and the poor. The groups have one thing in common, power is much more important than the effects on our country.

@Ron_C you said, “I won’t believe any of it until I see the pictures of his dead body and DNA evidence to prove it. I think he should have been bought back to the U.S. tested and cremated.” .... They have the DNA evidence to prove it…are you complaining about the fact that you can’t get your hands on some of it to verify for yourself?

Do you think you would have had a chance to personally view the body and verify that you believe it was him before they cremated it?

I don’t see how either of your desires could constitute any kind of “proof,” moreso than what we have from the media now.

@Dutchess_III I actually wrote about that this morning here’s the link: http://www.fluther.com/119166/should-the-media-publish-photos-of-bin-ladens-body/

I am concerned with proof and the chain of evidence. Only then will I believe what is printed. In fact the conditions I stated are the only way to quell conspiracy claims and Islamic Fascist claims that the mass murder is alive.

But @Ron_C…I’m saying that even if the photo’s were published, the immediate outcry from the conspirc’y thereist would be that they’re photoshopped. There is always a way to verbally disclaim evidence. Obama provided his birth certificate…it’s a fake. And on and on and on.

@Dutchess_III I was reading about the psychology of the conspiracy theorists. There is no boundary to what they are willing to believe. You are absolutely correct. I don’t think that they would believe that OBL was dead if they shot him themselves. They’d say that they shot a double. After all many of them are likely to think they were abducted by aliens (not Mexicans( and the moon landing was a fake. There is nothing that will change their minds.

What makes them that way @Ron_C? I mean, in your reading, what does it say?

I have a hypothesis that the same abstract thing is wrong with conspiracy theorists as with religious people.

Both groups need to believe that “someone” is in charge, that reality (nature or political events) are guided through a top-down process. Religious people believe the someone is a good guy (usually) while conspiracy theorists generally believe it’s a powerful government force out to get them.

Whereas normal people see the bin Laden operation as chaotic and tense, successful because of hard work and luck, performed by ordinary, flawed humans—conspiracy theorists see it as simply an orchestration conducted by a godlike entity. The extent to which the media reports are true doesn’t even matter to a conspiracy theorist so much as the fundamental idea that “they” are in total control; everything proceeds from that assumption.

@Ron_C, perhaps you can clue us in—what, precisely, would settle your skepticism on this particular matter?

@Qingu Well, that is quite interesting! Really…

@quarkquarkquark I have been thinking about what it would take for me to believe that he is actually dead. I think that I have enough proof now. When I see Republicans trying to take credit for his death and listen to the stories from the news people I trust like Rachael Maddow I become less skeptical. I also go to the AL Jazeera news site and they agree that it happened. Then I hear that Pakistan denies knowing and cooperating with bin Laden. All this adds up that the story is probably true.

There are too many lies from people trying to take credit or deny responsibility for this to be fake. Besides, in the long run, bin Laden has become irrelevant. Stupidity, murder, tribal thinking, religious fundamentalism, does not require the existence of this murderous opportunist to exist nor does it need his presence to continue. Frankly, I have had enough and think this story is distracting us from the fact that international corporations and the ultra rich are almost finished taking over the world.

The real story is that these terrorist organizations are just a misguided attempt to express a cultures resistance to being run over by foreigners and empire seeking governments. OBL was attempting to form a Muslim Empire, essentially a return of a form of the Ottoman empire, except that he would be in charge. Most Muslim rejected rule by his group as much as they reject rule from the West.

@Ron_C, al-Qaeda has confirmed (and is swearing revenge) for his death.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/al-qaeda-confirms-osama-bin-ladens-death-vows-retaliation/2011/05/06/AFFEtn7F_story.html

@Ron_C oh geez

@Ron_C, I can’t tell you how surprised and happy I am to hear you say that you now accept his death. I would probably have labeled you a conspiracy theorist, and I don’t have to tell you that most conspiracy theorists would have gone to great and irrational lengths so as not to be proven wrong.

I do want to urge you against that particularly simplistic view of “Islamic” terrorism. There’s definitely some truth in there—the West’s confrontation with Islam has been devastating for both parties, although conceivably now more devastating for the Muslims of the Middle East. That’s a group, incidentally, that makes up less than 20% of the world’s total Muslims, and it’s clear that Muslim terrorism also crops up in places where the U.S. has much less involvement.

The phrase “misguided attempt to express a cultures resistance to being run over by foreigners and empire seeking governments” is what I’m referring to. I think that’s simplistic. There are some “terrorists” out there who it’s definitely hard to paint as plain old criminals. Many Palestinian resistance movements, as well, perhaps (and it’s hard for me to say this) as parts of the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies have legitimate grievances, if not completely legitimate ways of addressing those grievances.

But Osama bin Laden and his crowd are not freedom fighters. They are not heroes, they are not soldiers, and they are not Muslims.

They are criminals.

Criminals who just so happen to be Muslim have been using Islam as an excuse for more than a millennium. The U.S.‘s first overseas engagement, the First Barbary War, was waged against bloodthirsty pirates who had been hijacking American merchant ships. There was no U.S. military presence in the Middle East at this point. The leaders of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers were criminals who wanted to make a quick buck. When Jefferson and Adams confronted the Tripolitan envoy in London, he told them that the Quran justified the actions of the pirates, because American merchants were infidels.

That’s bullshit.

These are just bad people. Their violence has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, nor with their collision with modernity.

You’re probably not a huge Christopher Hitchens fan, but I think he does a pretty good job of making this view I’m arguing against seem ridiculous.

Eh. I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that Islam or the Quran has nothing to do with bin Laden’s ideology or that he “just happens” to be a Muslim.

The same applies to the Crusades. You can say the Crusaders were really just a bunch of warlike savages who wanted something to kill and booty to loot. But they were motivated because of Christian doctrine. And the Bible says to commit genocide against occupiers of the holy land who aren’t true believers. The Crusades would not have happened if these people weren’t religious Christians, just like 9/11 wouldn’t have happened if those people weren’t religious Muslims.

Pirates on the Barbary Coast probably would have happened regardless of religious ideology, however, because piracy needs no religious motivation.

@Qingu, that last part is sort of what I was getting at. I suppose there are plenty of people out there who do use the Quran as a justification to kill, but I find it hard to believe that these aren’t the kinds of people who might kill anyway.

That’s not to say that there’s not a lot of scary stuff in the Quran, just like there is in the Bible.

I think the ideology does more than merely provide a scaffolding for pre-existing psychopaths… but that’s probably a debate for another time.

@quarkquarkquark actually I am a big Christopher Hitchens fan. ” Religion ruins everything” as he said. Most of the really big crimes were at least supported if not inspired by religion, everything from the IRA in Ireland, World Trade disaster and the Crusades were supported by religion. There are murders and terrorist all over the world that explain their crimes as the expression of their religion.

That doesn’t excuse the things we did in the middle east. Jefferson and Adams also signed a treaty that stated that this country has no hostility to “Moslemmen” but it also objects to the theft of property and enslaving sailors. The objection to slavery is ironic considering that both parties freely bought and sold Africans.

By the way, I have read most of Hitchens and Dawkins books and consider myself and atheist. That I have a morality system that doesn’t need the support of some religion to keep me on the righteous path.

Incidentally, I’m not a big fan of Hitchens’ anti-theist streak and I think Dawkins is a pompous ass, but I do want to address a couple things.

The first is that nobody is trying to excuse the things we’ve done in the Middle East—although, as Hitchens will tell you, things are not as one-sided as the Left wants them to be. Rather, I’m trying to defend against those who attempt to excuse the ”response” to what we did in the Middle East.

In addition, ad hominem arguments like the one you made (justifiably) about U.S. hypocrisy are logical fallacies. Pointing out hypocrisy does not prove a point; it simply doesn’t. Someone can be a hypocrite, acting against all of their statements, and still be right.

@quarkquarkquark “I’m trying to defend against those who attempt to excuse the ”response” to what we did in the Middle East.” Far be it for me to excuse the response, I was only explaining a response coming from a region whose traditions and religion has held a great many of the in the 14th century. It is proven fact if you take those people out of the tribal environmental their social and religious views moderate and become indistinguishable from any modern person.

Frankly I think it is a real shame because the people in the middle east, Arabs, Jews, Persians also have a long history of technical advancement, liberal thinking, and fine hospitality. The main thing holding them back is the primitive interpretation of another off-shoot of a desert religion.

In my opinion, they are just as primitive and deluded as the remaining head hunters in New Guinea.

The definite problem (among others far more indefinite) in this type of conversation is the blurriness of what we’re talking about. To somebody like me—perhaps unfairly—the position you’ve taken makes it seem as if you’re excusing, while you say you’re explaining. Clearly there is no objective truth here. What distinguishes an excuse from an explanation is the context in which it’s been offered, and now that that I’m clear on what you meant the distinction is largely irrelevant. It is worth pointing out, though, that it is precisely the collision of these ideologies and cultures with modernity that has caused such a violent backlash—it’s been going on for well over two hundred years.

@quarkquarkquark You are correct about the collision of modern culture versus new. Religions have always fought against new ideas. Look at the way the Catholic church treated its own scholars during the Renaissance. The only way to overcome such conservatism is through education. If I had my way I would establish a scholarship for girls in the middle east. Bring them to a western country and teach them that they are not chattel, their bodies are their own, teach them science, math and world history. Then send them back to their own country expecting to be treated like real people and let them teach the males how to build a society instead of a tribe. I bet that we could civilize the middle east or any tribal region in a generation of two.

As long as women are ignorant and men treat them like property, tribal traditions and ultra-conservatism will continue. By the way that is why I support public schools. Voucher systems give my tax money so that conservatives can brain wash children into their narrow definition of justice and truth.

It’s real

@sea_zen Really Real??? Do I know you???

@sea_zen Fair weather friend!! :(