Senior U.S. sources reveal details of the intelligence operation that led to the identification of the compound where the al-Qaida leader was hiding.
HAARETZ
The compound that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was hiding out in for the last few months raised the suspicions of American intelligence officials, according to two senior officials in the U.S. administration and the country’s intelligence agencies.
American analysts checked the information that piled up ‘from every possible angle’ and came to the conclusion that no possible candidate was as suited to the profile as bin Laden was. “We were confident there was a high value target hidden in the compound,” an official said.
osama bin laden – AP – October 1 2010
“We tried to establish whether the terrorist who lives there is Osama Bin Laden,” a senior administration official said in a briefing to reporters. “We tracked his personal couriers. One courier in particular got our attention, the protégé of Khaled sheikh Mohamad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.”
The official said that detainees also recognized this man as a courier of Bin Laden. “Four years ago we uncovered his identity. We identified the areas in Pakistan where they operated.”
The official said that the heavy security surrounding the compound that bin Laden was living in aroused the suspicion of intelligence officials as early as eight months ago. “In August 2010 we found the residence. It is an extraordinary, unique compound, eight times larger than the other homes in the town,” the senior U.S. official added.
“In the last six years some residential homes were built there. The security was extraordinary. Access to the compound was restricted by two security gates,” the official continued. There was no internet installed on the premises, the official said, and could not ascertain the source of the wealth of the compound’s owners.
“Our best assessment is that Bin Laden was living there with several wives, including his youngest wife,” the official said.
Thanks, but I think I’ll leave it based on your unsubstantiated comments even though you have no direct knowledge of what went down at the scene. No real Special Forces guy would go on like that.
OK, but that’s not what you wrote.
Unfortunately for you, the CIA Director’s version is corroborated by several other people. The unqualified and inexperienced C-in-C’s version is neither corroborated nor makes any sense. No one who is waterboarded would lie to his interrogators for fear that they may double the procedure once they find out he was lying.
Once again. The CIA Director’s version is substantiated. The Secy. of State’s version is clearly false. Thus there are no dots to connect.
If you don’t believe the information in the following link, then you and the Holocaust deniers and 9/11 “truthers” are in the same boat:
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/05/04/147782.html
I already told you: This was before my exchange with you. But you neglected to read it before spouting off. If you had read it first, you would have known that I was no longer pressing the issue.
I was referring to the exchange I’d had with Shy, in which I’d questioned the sufficiency of time for a reliable DNA test result [#12]. Shy cleared that up in the next post [#13]. Whereupon I ACKNOWLEDGED that in the following post [#14]. I then moved on. It’s a pity your vanity won’t allow you to do the same.
Yes, based on what I’ve writtten. Sorry if that offends you, but it’s not BS and it’s not fantasy. Take it or leave it; either way, it’s no skin off my nose (or anybody else’s except your own).
Fine, then let me help you out. Since it was I who was writing there, I can tell you with full authority that the ‘anybody’ I was referring to was indeed, and very definitely , the media. Sorry for the sloppy usage of language (everybody else seems to have gotten the point despite the momentary lapse in precision).
Granted. Nonetheless, it was the media that I referred to. Furthermore, it would’ve made no sense to conclude that I meant the Seals’ own commanders or the intelligence operatives’ control persons didn’t debrief them. (Even black-ops projects don’t go forward without controls & oversight.)
The CIA Director serves at the pleasure of the President, who is also C-I-C.
You’re a big boy; put it together.
Again, both the SecState and CIA Dir. are presidential appointees; the Mahatma giveth, the Mahatma taketh away, blessed be the Name of the Mahatma.
You’ve said that you can “connect the dots.”
So connect them.
Eagle, if there were as little hard evidence to confirm those things as there is to support the OBL death story given us by the Anointed One, then YoursVeryTruly would regard them, both, as open questions too.
Yamit and his friends in the Islamic terrorist fraternity are all correct. This so-called killing of Osama Bin Laden was a Hollywood movie shoot.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/05/04/147782.html
You would be correct only if you are referring to the Democrats.
What’s your point?
Then, why did you write, “I was talking about the interim period needed for a reliable test to come back.”???
Not based on what you’re writing here.
“Anybody” does not mean “media” in any version of English. The left wing media rarely gives us “facts”.
Not true. The C-in-C says that waterboarding doesn’t work. The CIA Director says it does.
The Secy. of State told us that Pakistan helped. The CIA Director said the Pakistanis were not told in advance.
Dweller, there are some who say the Holocaust is an “open question” and that 9/11 was an “inside job”.
A great summary of the Obama bungling situation this story has become (plus a hilarious pic) can be found here.
Yamit82
Do you know who Obadia Shoher is? I mean his real life identity, as I note you link to him a lot.
By the way, why are you complaining of Jihad and how Jihad lives on after Bin Laden when you advocate the mass slaughter of Muslims. Don’t blame people for emulating Joshua ben Nun.
Pot. Kettle. Black 🙂
Perhaps Osama did a Werner von Braun. 🙂
Do you believe that the cameras transmitting live feed were not also recording to disk?
No body , no forensics, no eyewitness accounts from Americans involved,no photos, no video?? Lots of contradictory statements by officials. Now it seems OBL has two bullets in the head? Oh well 🙂
We now pause for station identification. Please stand by. 🙂
Another diversion… yawn.
No point that you can see, evidently,
or will cop to seeing.
(Which may be more to the point.)
This is a flat-out diversion, to cover the fact that you were caught [#27] having neglected to read Shy’s much-earlier post — which had made that part of the discussion moot. The identification issue passed by some time ago. Get over your embarrassment & move on.
If your ego will let you.
If the cameras were running, yes.
I was being real.
If you weren’t, I can’t help that;
however, I do know how things are done among Special Forces personnel.
Of course, it was I who asked Shy that [#14] — and the “anybody” I was referring to was very obviously the media, because it was about the public getting the facts.
As I was, indeed, very slow (and deliberate) in pointing out, in this same thread [again, #27],
the commanding officer of “their commanding officers”
is the Commander-in-Chief.
Therefore, thoughtless hipshots like the one you offerred to my question, “How, for example, do we know that OBL died of a bullet wound?” (AE: “The Navy Seals said so”)
are the rankest silliness,
because it won’t BE the Seals giving us those answers; it will be the Commander-in-Chief doing that.
And we both know how trustworthy he is.
I continue to find the quick burial
in a place which is, by its very nature, inaccessible
to independent forensic examiners
extraordinarily suspicious.
As of this moment, it remains an open question what the proximal cause of death consisted of,
as well as whether OBL was even alive when the team reached the floor he was on,
and, for that matter, whether he was alive when they arrived in Pakistan.
I would push the truth – you should try it more often – which is that there are no reports of ground fire that could have brought the bird down. Mechanical failures are a fact of life for any machine. The good news is that the other bird was able to get the job done.
Fascinating technical article on what is known and speculated about the destroyed helicopter. That ain’t no Blackhawk! It’s either a discontinued Comanche or something more advanced not on the books yet.
You have no point. If you don’t think they took enough samples to cover any contingency you are less intelligent than you think you are.
Perhaps in your inverted universe. The Seals would have video evidence. They spent 40 minutes in the coupound, which is an eternity in such situations.
Yeah, right, and I almost married Grace Kelly:-)) Now let’s get real. It was YOU who asked whether “anybody” is interviewing the Navy Seals and CIA operative. Off course they will be thoroughly de-briefed. Since you are a tad slow this means they will be interviewed by their commanding officers. They do not need to be interviewed by the media.
I said Belman and Yamit are “looking” – I didn’t say they would find anything.
Quigly: Bammy has milked for everything it is worth……………..and will still be milking when he meets families at Ground Zero. The kill site Bammy supported the killers building their memorial on. Thank you President Bush for not making this a bigger fiasco than the Bam wants to make it. The enemy as well as US citizens get to see the height of hypocrisy when Bammy stands in front of Ground Zero congratulating himself. Who else could make both sides disgusted at the same time? The Bammy, that’s who.
Obama has milked this for everything it is worth. The people here are missing the real thing about Obama, and that is that he is really a pro Hamas person, he is in favour of Hamas taking power, and in the creation of a Jihadist state of Palestine
For real Jews nothing else matters really
The conspiracy theorists are hard at work every single moment on this. But this is only helping Obama.
Remember that Israel and the Jews have NO friends in the American Establishment, None.
As Pamela Geller said Bin Laden was “yesterdays man”
The new situation are the forces of Fascism which are sprouting in two areas, in the western countries around the crisis which is total, and in the Islamic countries where Fascism IS the Arab Spring so called
Because you are the only one here that is consistent.
And if you thought that was a compliment, that just strengthens your consistency.
🙂
Doesn’t take 24 hrs to gather them from a living person either.
It’s also beside the point, because I was talking about the interim period needed for a reliable test to come back. You need to read posts a little more carefully, Eagle, before going off half-cocked.
What’s more, it would appear from your “Earth-to-Dweller” alert that you didn’t notice that Shy Guy had already addressed my concern in re the DNA matter nearly a day and-a-half before you posted [#13, May 3, 7:14 am].
The Navy Seals take their orders from the C-I-C, or his designee — as do all members of the Armed Forces.
If he says OBL died of “looking cross-eyed at a bunny rabbit,” then as far as the Seals are concerned, OBL died of “looking cross-eyed at a bunny rabbit” — even if they were personally present at the event.
Yeah, I am for real.
But I can see that I was mistaken in assuming, as I did in #14, that Shy — and now apparently also AE in #24 — would “know better” than to think these Spec Ops guys will be permitted to be accessed by the media for as long as they remain in-service, or (very likely) even EVER.
So let me give you both an assist.
For what it’s worth, I almost became a Navy Seal, and I can tell you that, unless things have changed recently, and radically, Spec Ops guys are off-limits to media, as regards the details of specific operations.
If Jesus is the Messiah, he didn’t descend from heaven — and made no such claim, as recorded in the Gospels.
(He did descend, for a time, into hell — according to both the Gospels and the Apostles’ Creed.)
If he isn’t the Messiah, then whoever the Messiah is will not descend from heaven either.
From Honolulu, your guess is as good as mine.
Mazal tov! So do we all.
That’s why it’s most disturbing that almost the first words out of the Mahatma’s mouth
after informing us that Monstermamzer was dead
were that his body had been dumped somewhere
that could never be found
& examined by forensic experts.
Anybody who doesn’t smell a rat
needs to see an ENT specialist, and soon.
Mazal tov! So do we all.
That’s why it’s most disturbing that almost the first words out of the Mahatma’s mouth
after informing us that Monstermamzer was dead
were that his body had been dumped somewhere
that could never be found
& examined by forensic experts.
Anybody who doesn’t smell a rat
needs to see an ENT specialist, and soon.
These are bald faced lies. Bush did not do anything to bust Iraq into three factions – they have been there for eons. American servicemen volunteered to serve after knowing what they were getting into. Iraq has been anything but a losing process – it is the only Arab multi-ethnic, multi-party democracy in the middle-east.
Arnold, do you have any idea what the hell is going on in the world? Yes, Obama deserves credit for sending in the Navy Seals to grab his ass instead of a cruise missile that would have vaporized him and all the evidence they gathered. But it was the waterboarding that Obama banned and demonized as “torture” that generated the leads that eventually led to Osama. Without Bush II we may never have found Osama.
This is as idiotic as saying that Hitler was not particularly dangerous.
A little hyperbole from a normally sensible writer. Obama did have to choose between sending in the Navy Seals to grab his ass and other evidence, or vaporizing him everything a cruise missile, which was Clinton’s long-range weapon of choice which would have fueled conspiracy theories about whether he was really dead or not and deprived us of a lot of valuable evidence as well.
Bite your tongue. She’s one of the sane Israpundits and an American patriot.
You can count on Yamit for heaps of sh-t:-))
You’re right. He’s not toast. He’s fish food.
Earth to Dweller – it does not take 24 hours to gather DNA samples from a cadaver.
The Navy Seals said so. Besides, you don’t need to know anything other than he’s fish food.
How come you are suddenly talking sense and Dweller is spewing nonsense?
This is the Obama-style politically correct US Armed Forces. Did you know they now give out medals for “restraint” in firing at the enemy – obviously almost always posthumously.
What is weird is what you’re writing. No one could watch the killing. Their view was of the outside of the compound. You may have to wait for Wikileaks to see the actual photos.
Tiny boost. The Bamster’s still waaay under water: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Not true. They are in Honolulu disguised as Chiquita bananas looking for evidence that Obama was found under a rock, or in bullrushes like Moses, or descended from heaven as a Messiah:-))
Strange. I thought they were playing your song.
Shy guy:
PTL, document you BP family claim.
I want facts. If the facts are conspiracy, that’s just fine. But usually, the conspiracies are the concoctions of idiots with too much time on their hands.
Shy guy. Kill mission done. Yes, done. Bammy’s boost in the polls, done. Yes, done. You want conspiracy? Talk to the families of the BP oil incident. Someone stated they saw something weird right before the accident, it looked like a submarine. Familes now under gag order. Wouldn’t put anything past the demon in chief to boost his ratings, even murder.
Quoting from someone else: Newsflash: Osama bin Laden is dead; Elvis is dead; JFK is dead; Hitler is dead.”
You want conspiracy? This was a kill mission. Done. No autopsies or exhumations possible. Not very politically correct.
Agree with dweller. Who, put out the order to dump the body in the sea? Who, is so knowledgeable and respectful of honoring the killer’s “tradition”? If so, then why are the commonalities bellering and hollering about “disrepect” by burying in the sea. Could it be, Bin Ladin died from the kidney disease, I mean you do run out of shunt access after a while and the Pakistanis gave him up for the reward money? So many questions that need to be answered, but as usual Bammy leaves the victims (US citizens) in a quandry. The only focus he allows is of his greatness, how he did this, how he did that, etc. Can’t see a photo of the dead body, only a photo of him and Hillary “watching” the killing. How weird is that?
He didn’t choke on a bacon burger.
I already explained to you that there’s a pandering idiot at the helm. It’s that bad.
You’re missing the point.
How do we even know he died violently?
Why the rush to remove the body?
That’s easy. Obama pandered to assumed Muslim sensitivities.
From the news, it’s apparent that there are pics and clips available. The question is what, if anything, will be released. I’m sure they have a vile of something for forensics. You don’t need the entire body.
Because the Navy Seals were not equipped with Samurai swords.
Sure! Their very first debriefing is live with Geraldo Rivera!
This op is barely 24 hours old and you expect to have access to even a single member of a spec ops team? Are you for real?
You’re all becoming whackos!
Ok, fine. I guess OBL wasn’t actually Mick Fleetwood in paratrooper boots, a Bokharan yarmulke and a floor-length gown, after all. (Well, had you ever seen them together?)
But that still doesn’t explain why they couldn’t have brought the body to the US and displayed it for journalists & forensic experts.
Identifying the body does not confirm the manner of death.
You’ll excuse my asking — just for the sake of discussion — but:
How, for example, do we know that OBL died of a bullet wound?
— or that the bullet wound to the head was not inflicted AFTER he died, so that the Administration could claim “credit” for it, once they’d been tipped off, say, to the fact that he was dead?
If that sounds far-fetched, look at how they are falling all over themselves to cast themselves in the ‘diligent, dedicated guardian’ role?
The fit is as ridiculous as my Mick Fleetwood rif, above.
Is anybody interviewing the participating Navy Seals or CIA operatives? Do you suppose that’s likely to happen? You know better.
The dude was a long-time, kidney dialysis patient……. Think about it.
All I’m asking is, why was it necessary to get rid of the body so damned quick?
Sorry, but I just can’t get the “fishy” smell out of my nostrils,
and somehow I don’t think it’s because of the sea water in the North Indian Ocean.
There have been sub-24 hours DNA profiling kits around for at least 5 years. Such tests are often used for initial analysis by law enforcement, followed by much more rigorous tests, which hold up better in court.
I don’t think they needed anything else. They were monitoring their target for ages and everything else confirmed who it was they located. Their only major concern would have been a double. The rapid test would be sufficient to satisfy any doubting Thomas’s.
Put down the kool-aid pitcher, boychik, and step away from the table; that’s a good boy…….
C’mon, Dan, do you not find it curious that the body was “buried promptly at sea?” If a reliable DNA match requires at least a week, then a 24-hour burial won’t cut it.
And please, don’t be hocking me a tchynik about “respecting Islamic law,” and all the rest of that pap-&-crap.
They COULD’VE flown the remains to the States & held a press conference where the body could’ve been shown to reporters,
and forensic examiners.
After the DNA swabs were taken, tested and properly reported,
THEN the body could’ve been disposed of,
in the sea or anywhere else you please.
It’s hard to ignore the suspicion that this is less about “respecting Islamic law”
than about hiding the evidence.
Evidence of ‘what’?
Who knows? — I’ve got some ideas, but they’d only be guesses.
What I do know,
what we BOTH know,
what everybody damned-well knows,
is that this president is a man who,
for whatever the reason,
has made a systematic PRACTICE
of playing hide-the-ball.
His assiduously sequestered paper trail
didn’t begin
OR end,
you know,
with a silly-assed birth certificate.
Yamit, there are too many questions for me to believe that BL is toast. I don’t trust Obama or any of his operatives or spokespeople. I do not buy the reasoning given in this morning’s press conference that showing video, photos, etc. would compromise ongoing hunts for similar shitheads elsewhere in the moongod belt. Dan, the wool is over your eyes.
NMA rendition of how events went down yesterday
heh
Obama did absolutely nothing. He had no roll in the killing of bin laden. It was the skill and bravery of our armed forces who suceeded IN SPITE of Obama and his feckless leadership not because of him. So kindly crawl back under your rock.
Except for 1 desktop I bought from Dell back in 1999, everything else we purchased from them has had serious problems before their anticipate retirement dates.
We no longer buy Dell. Period.
Then again, why am I giving tech advice to a complete futz.
Yamit:
Fake photo of dead Osama bin LadenThe story of Osama bin Laden’s death is not without its oddities. The only photo confirming his death available to date is fake. The MSN published Osama’s earlier photo which is an exact copy of his postmortem image. Now, the death photo is unofficial – but why haven’t the US government publish a credible photo on its own? The official line has it that the commandos identified Osama by multiple means, including some hinted-at high-techies like facial recognition. Wait, facial recognition does not work reliably with such a heavy beard. Hasty ‘burial at sea’ is the worst way to do a PR. It made every sense to show the corpse to journalists instead of creating Osama-is-alive myth. The story of Osama’s pursuit, as told by the government, is incredible. Supposedly Obama procrastinated since February before giving the order to assassinate bin Laden. The CIA often acts in Pakistan on flimsy evidence targeting wrong people, so just to be on the safe side they would have acted against Osama’s likely hideout quickly. Sending two US helicopters in a Pakistani garrison town is a strange idea. Not only tens of thousands people there are armed, but there must be basic anti-aircraft weapons. Sending loud choppers in the middle of the night would be absurd, warning inhabitants and bin Ladens alike.
RESPONSE
I am now experiencing my own technical crises.Pure excrement is poring out of my DEll motherboard.We call that a sh-t overload
Laura:
Laura- As someone who has been s part of the Obama lynch mob-whereas Obama now has been vidicated-on his watch bin laden has finally been taken out, a feat not accompliished by any of his predecessors.—–
DO THE ONLY HONORABLE THING AVAILABLE TO YOU NOW.
KINDLY FALL ON YOUR SWORD.
Ron Ben-Yishai
Symbol dies, Jihad lives on
Commentary: Ron Ben-Yishai says murderous, fanatic Islam still there, with or without Bin Laden
Bin Laden’s assassination is more like the killing of a spiritual leader rather than a terror commander. The 2004 killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza had a similar effect and was a great blow to Hamas.
However, the groups officially affiliated with al-Qaeda are powerful and include dozens of activists, spiritual leaders, and experienced operational commanders boasting great prestige. They will continue to operate exactly as they did during Bin Laden’s era. We must also keep in mind that at this time of Arab world uprisings, the ability of Arab regimes to contend with these groups is declining.
And make no mistake, the enemy wasn’t just bin laden or al qaeda, but that of islam itself, as politically incorrect as this is to state. That is the ideology which inspires them.
Capture Bin Laden?
May 18, 2009
It is unbelievable that the CIA is seriously searching for Osama bin Laden. He cannot hide for thirteen years. The CIA closely works with Afghan mujahedeen, who are Osama’s close friends and would readily betray him to the Americans for a quick profit. Osama’s CFO defected to the Saudis, and his chief buyer, Abu Hajir, is in US custody. The US knows everything it might want to know about bin Laden. Osama is not a hermit, but actively communicates with many people in several countries. He should logically have been betrayed and hunted down long ago.
Clinton refused to pursue Osama’s extradition, fearing insufficient evidence to indict him in America. There is not even any hard evidence linking Osama to 9/11. America cannot afford to jail Osama because numerous terrorists will blackmail America into releasing him; they will target US interests abroad and kidnap Americans to exchange for Osama. Osama in an American prison would become too much a symbol for Muslims. It might not be so; Muslims might turn away from the humiliated leader, as they substantially abandoned the Blind Sheikh before him. But the risks for America are unwarrantedly high, and the Americans would never attempt a show trial of Osama, except perhaps as a pre-election stunt. The US Administration prefers to keep Osama as blame-for-everything national security threat. All the videos of Osama that have surfaced after 2001 are either forgeries or show signs of heavy editing, suggesting that Osama exists by now in virtual reality only. It is easy to deal with the Muslim mentality. Osama, if captured, should be castrated, packed into pigskins, and drowned in filth. That would preclude the accounts of his martyrdom. At any rate, his survival is much worse in PR terms than his mythologized death could ever be.
Osama, if alive and reasonably well, is not particularly dangerous. He can stage a mass attack or two, but is unable to lead a mass insurrection. Muslim crowds would join him if he were speaking in Cairo, but not hiding in Afghan mountains. Media have inflated Osama-the-strategic-nobody into Osama-the-legend, an image welcomed by Muslims and the West alike.
Osama’s dead?
Fake photo of dead Osama bin LadenThe story of Osama bin Laden’s death is not without its oddities. The only photo confirming his death available to date is fake. The MSN published Osama’s earlier photo which is an exact copy of his postmortem image. Now, the death photo is unofficial – but why haven’t the US government publish a credible photo on its own? The official line has it that the commandos identified Osama by multiple means, including some hinted-at high-techies like facial recognition. Wait, facial recognition does not work reliably with such a heavy beard. Hasty ‘burial at sea’ is the worst way to do a PR. It made every sense to show the corpse to journalists instead of creating Osama-is-alive myth. The story of Osama’s pursuit, as told by the government, is incredible. Supposedly Obama procrastinated since February before giving the order to assassinate bin Laden. The CIA often acts in Pakistan on flimsy evidence targeting wrong people, so just to be on the safe side they would have acted against Osama’s likely hideout quickly. Sending two US helicopters in a Pakistani garrison town is a strange idea. Not only tens of thousands people there are armed, but there must be basic anti-aircraft weapons. Sending loud choppers in the middle of the night would be absurd, warning inhabitants and bin Ladens alike. Such operations are done with ground teams or bombs/missiles. Osama supposedly lived for six years in a heavily populated area in a country where everyone knows his face. Should we believe that he had never left his villa? Or that the neighbors weren’t flabbergasted by such a secluded nuovo riche? Osama lived in the Pakistani garrison town through the years when he had pretty bad relations with Gen.Musharaff. The general well-controlled Pakistani intelligence service, and it is highly unlikely that the ISI protected the man who called and worked to oust Musharaff. Overall, the impression is that Osama’s death is Obama’s PR trick. And if we are to believe the story, then Osama’s assassination is of little significance: he lived extremely secluded life away from the centers of terrorist planning. Terrorist groups of Al Qaeda brand will continue operating without him.”>
It is really too damned bad that rat wasn’t cornered and put to death more than nine years ago. Maybe — just maybe — that would have saved us possibly a war and one-half. Bush II could have concentrated on busting up what would have remained of al-Qaida’s infrastructure in Afghanistan, letting Mullah Omar know exactly what we would do to him and his gang if he allowed any more Arab would-be terrorists to set up training camps in his country; then following through with serious air strikes if the need had arisen. To be followed by equally serious federal investigation and clean-out of whichever institutions or organizations in this country, religious or secular, got themselves and their members involved with terrorism. And if our government could get away with wiping out King David Koresh at Waco, Texas, there’s no reason we could not have done the same with any Moslem masjid harboring enemies of this country or their American supporters. I’m not talking about a religious war here; only a serious effort to identify and expel some very dangerous people.
With all that accomplished, Bush II never would have had any excuse, plausible or otherwise, for starting the USA down the long road to pulling down Saddam Hussein and effectively busting Iraq into three mutual hostile autonomous entities and getting a lot of American servicemen and much greater numbers of Iraqis killed in that lengthy and losing process.
But that’s not the way Bush II played it out. Which, I think, was really too bad. Maybe he thought our armed forces were doing the best they could, back in that struggle to find OBL in the Tora Bora caves. They ought to have killed every Arab they found in Afghanistan, or paid our Afghan allies to do the same. Most of the al-Qaida folks were and are Arabs. So I’m sure the locals would have known exactly whom the rich Americans wanted dead.
So the credit belongs to President Barack Hussein Obama II for arranging for our agents to finally trap and kill that bastard in Pakistan. I sure as hell do not like or respect him as a US president. But I will give him credit where and when it is due.
By the way. Now that OBL is dead, a lot of people in the Moslem world will be saying, more or less unanimously, that the job is done and its time for the Americans to get to hell out of their civilizational belt. If and when they do, I will say they are exactly right. I’m getting tired of America the bloated and bankrupt empire, and I want to see it revert to America the slim, trim, productive and independent republic that Thomas Jefferson and his glorious generation of Americans had in mind for their country and ours.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI