Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Sgt PSN]

word is now osama was not armed when the seals came into his room

yet they still say the operative was to take him alive if they could

hmmmm

99 times out of 100, I'd be in favor of doing things "the right way" and not shooting an unarmed man.  But farg him.  He killed 3000 innocent people, tore families apart and most importantly, farged up airport security for everyone.  He got off easy. 

[MDS]

i would have liked to take him alive and just do some disgusting inhumane diabolical shtein to him

then make him go to baseball games, walmart, fairs, wait in line at the dmv, eat at chilis--i.e. do all this quintessential american stuff and make him a miserable human being. and oh yea, everywhere he goes people get to kick him in the balls.

[Diomedes]

I could care less that he wasn't armed.  What are they going to do, read him his rights?  Warn him to watch his head as they put him on the helicopter?

He was a threat by definition.  Eliminate him, gather his corpse and other evidence, gtfo. 

[Drunkmasterflex]

I just spoke to a local reporter (you all care!) he is doing a piece on the reaction of local veterans and their take on Bin Laden's death.   Basically I said its good he is dead but I'm not nearly as excited as some when it comes to him getting killed.

Let's face it some other icehole is going to take his place. 

[ice grillin you]

thing is there are lots of people with his ideology not so many with his money...i dont think hes as easy to replace as some think

that said alive or dead he was little threat to the us anymore and i too could really care less...and im someone who rides public transportation to a job in the heart of wash dc everyday

the best thing that came of his death was the awesome atmosphere at last nights flyer game

[Drunkmasterflex]

Its not like his money died with him and all the backroom dealings that those dudes do I am sure there is plenty left to fund some more bullshtein. 

[Diomedes]

yeah, they basically don't have trouble with funding, and won't after bin Laden's demise

but no one has the star cache he did..the guy had a special flair that really worked

[Drunkmasterflex]

Maybe I am just cynical I just can't seeing him getting killed as making a huge difference.  More than anything I think it just provided closure for a lot of people.

[ice grillin you]

it will make no difference...obl basically died after 9/11...that was his shining moment and he knew before it happened that if successful it would be the last terrorist attack of his career

and no his replacement if there is one will not be a billionaire

[PhillyPhreak54]

Al Qaeda has been losing steam over the years. Piece by piece they've been dismantled and losing relevance and organization. Whether it be because of their operatives being locked up, killed or whatever - their organization has fizzled from what it was.

Now that OBL is dead it will only create more disorganization. The money is there but like igy said, his charisma as their leader was a major part in their organization and willingness to fight. Killing him cut the head off the snake.

Will another jackoff wingnut emerge and try to take his place? Yeah, more than likely. But I doubt they will have any cohesion as a full blown terrorist organization like we saw in the past.

Fareed Zakaria wrote about this;

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/al-qaeda-is-dead/?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

But the truth is this is a huge, devastating blow to al Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.

Al Qaeda is not an organization that commands massive resources. It doesn't have a big army. It doesn't have vast reservoirs of funds that it can direct easily across the world.

Al Qaeda was an idea and an ideology, symbolized by an extremely charismatic figure in Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was this Saudi prince-like figure who had gone into the mountains of Afghanistan forsaking the riches of a multibillion-dollar fortune, fought against the Soviets, demonstrated personal bravery and then crafted a seductive message about Islam and Islamic extremism as a path to destroy the corrupt regimes of the Middle East.

History teaches us that the loss of the charismatic leader - of the symbol - is extraordinarily damaging for the organization. It is very difficult to keep such an organization together, particularly in the absence of great power backers.

In the case of al Qaeda, this is a virtual organization held together by its message and the inspiration it provided. A large part of that inspiration was bin Laden. Ayman Zawahiri may have been the brains behind the outfit, but he did not excite people. When people volunteered for jihad, they were volunteering to be bin Laden's foot soldiers, not Ayman Zawahiri's or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's. The loss of bin Laden's personality is hugely important because it was so much part of al Qaeda's appeal.

[MDS]

and for a different take on bin ladens death, this guy

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/02-2

[SD]

CIA director says photo to be released

[rjs246]

and for a different take on bin ladens death, this guy

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/02-2

These quotes are great...

And it's about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can't make war on terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the Jugurthine Wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is to isolate themselves, isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of al-Qaida's operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawy, the head of al-Azhar – who died recently – who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud ... someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to "send a message" to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

Having said that, I'm still ecstatic that OBL is dead. You may not be able to declare war on a tactic, but you can absolutely benefit from taking out the mastermind and symbolic leader of that tactic.

[Tomahawk]

why do americans worry so much about a nuclear attack on the country....theres like a .00000000001 chance of it ever happening and there is nothing you can do to stop it if it does...why go thru life fretting about such things

I'm not worried about an attack; I'm worried about our response

[PhillyPhreak54]

A day after Osama bin Laden's death, Sarah Palin offered measured praise to President Obama for his role in approving the operation to kill the 9/11 mastermind, though she didn't once mention the Commander-in-Chief by name.

Speaking at a tribute to military veterans in Colorado, the former Alaska governor credited Obama's "decisive leadership" in the mission--referring to him as "the president."

But she notably praised former President George W. Bush by name, insisting he had laid the groundwork for the successful operation. "We thank President Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory," she said, per the Denver Post.

The speech was noticeably less combative than recent remarks by Palin, in which she seemed to go out of her way to aggressively attack Obama's foreign policy as weak.

Last night, Palin didn't back down from that critique, but she espoused a more pragmatic foreign policy view than she has been known to voice in the past. While she has previously argued for an aggressive use of American force, Palin seemed to reverse course, arguing that a president should offer "clarity" and "clearly defined objectives" before engaging U.S. troops abroad.

Military action, she said, should be the "last resort."

"We can't fight every war," the former governor said. "We can't undo every injustice in the world. We don't go looking for dragons to slay."

There's a reason Palin sounds different. As Politico's Ben Smith reports this morning, she recently parted ways with GOP strategists Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb, a pair of neoconservatives who began working for Palin during the 2008 campaign. They were credited were crafting Palin's foreign policy message, which often embraced an aggressive use of force.

As Smith notes, Palin's new strategist, Peter Schweitzer, has been more skeptical on the use of troops and promoting democracy abroad--a view that appears to be coming through in the ex-governor's latest speeches

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