So I have questions. I don’t attend press briefings, so any of you who do can ask them:
1. What’s the genesis of the first version? The one that had four helicopters instead of the two they are now claiming. The one with the “human shield” that was or wasn’t “his wife” (lots of those, remember).
2. The Paks: I said earlier that I didn’t believe the Paks weren’t informed, and I rather suspect that they’re in cahoots. We may be covering for them, not for the first time. I asked a journalist friend “what happened to the other twenty-plus people in the villa?” He said “they are being interrogated by the Pakistanis.”
How can that be when the Paks didn’t know eff-all until the whole thing was finished? Did we tie them up and then call the ISI? And if the “relationship” is now in shambles, why are the Paks apparently cooperating with our desire for maximum info? Why would anyone believe what they tell us?
3. Intelligence: Osama’s greatest value to us was as a source of information. We now know he wasn’t armed, wasn’t shooting. OK, he was “resisting.” Don’t tell me the Navy SEALS don’t know how to handle that one. They could have knocked him out and taken him away. Why didn’t they? Followup questions: so was it a “kill” mission all along? If so, why?
More: Did the failed helicopter remove the space necessary for one more body? Seems unlikely. but I am not a logistics officer (note to self: ask the boys. they’re both logistics officers).
4. It’s a tangled web. Is there a desire to deceive? If so, why? If not, how did it get so screwed up?
Yes, I know that screwing up defines mankind. I’m fine with that explanation. I’m not suggesting a disinformation campaign. I’m just offering some useful lines of inquiry.
It’s a big story, after all. We need to get it right. Although how will we know the truth if we see it?
This one is the disinformation highway. For sure something’s not right about the story but what is it?
What if Bin Laden died naturally at the compound a couple of days before and was sold to us? That’d be a good one.
Little lenin couldn’t tell the truth even if he could figure it out. He is way way past the point where he can tell truth from fiction. He’s onto the third way. His own reality, totally disconnected from everybody else’s reality.
His entire life is a mountain of lies. Like lava, they harden and new ones erupt to cover the old ones.
He likes it that way. It’s the strategy.
And have a media circus over his trial in Manhattan?
No.
The Arab street can’t handle the truth. He was a transvestite.
The decision to kill, not capture, him was the right one. Whatever his intelligence value, the costs of capturing him would be sky high. Capturing him, I’m sure, would have been a net loss.
Besides, the message sent by choppering a kill team into the suburbs of the Paki capital, gunning him down, and choppering out is one that will weigh on the minds of all the right people.
Never put down to conspiracy what can be put down to incompetence. (or something like that)
Isn’t this the classic reason why attorneys emphasize the unreliability of eye witness testimony?
Here we have a couple dozen people watching (some kind of live video feed) the scene of the crime and then we hear from more than one eye witness more than one version of what happened. Granted watching a feed in the darkness from half way around the world isn’t anything like Patriot Games, but you’d think basic facts like whether or not he had a weapon would be pretty easy to establish.
I learned a long time ago as a young recon officer that you can’t rely on the accuracy of initial reports. 90% of the information is wrong. Maybe it would have been better if they had taken the time to get the story right first. I note that the President’s statement had enough detail to be accurate, but not so much detail as to be subject to change.
Right. And you’re talking from experience as a recon officer. The people issuing statements from the WH are bureaucrats and politicians who watched a few minutes of extremely intense live helmet-mounted shakey-cam video of a special forces raid, including men and women being shot – an experience utterly foreign to them and for which they could not have been prepared in any way. Even if they had been in the room with the SEALS, they still wouldn’t have understood what they were seeing, much less been able to remember and describe it accurately. They are not reliable witnesses.
What we’re hearing so far is not even the journalistic “first draft of history.” It’s the squawking of a flock of agitated suits. People need to be patient. The whole story will come out eventually, probably in bits and pieces.
that is a fair enough point
(notice how gates is the only one besides the uniformed officer [prob a gen] who doesnt look totally flabbergasted)
add to this the constant stream of lies and misdirections pouring from this regime’s megaphones one is left with the impression of incompetence, an excessive desire to appear “on top of things,” an inevitable dose of narcissism, possibly some truthful elements, and a bit of homage to appease our enemies…
the bottom line– the main failure of this administration stems from the inability to escape the need to politicize everything
If they had captured him, every non-muslim (and particularly Americans) in the world would be at risk for kidnap in exchange for OBL’s release. Killing him is much a cleaner outcome. I don’t care what the goal was, I don’t care what he circumstance was, he’s dead as it should be.
“Is there a desire to deceive? If so, why? ”
Oh Mr. Ledeen, you card you. You slay me.
I’m going to have to invite you to my next party. If things get dull, we’ll just navigate you to the center and the laff riot will begin.
You can’t fit 25 people into one Blackhawk.
Depends on how you puree them, doesn’t it?
What about the Chinook(s)?
Latest version of the story says there were only two helos, presumably both stealth Blackhawks.
I don’t believe it, but that’s what they are saying.
Para,
Nor should you believe that. A potentially hot LZ means N+1 helicopters where N=Number required to lift all personnel and equipment.
yes I think there were many helicopters. I do hope so.
After 14+ years AQ has essentially matured from its beginnings. The structure eventually became one not under any central command and control. That was the genius of UBL and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. I suspect that for at least the past six years UBL has been more akin to a corporate CEO/CFO with many socalled and wannabe COO’s around the world. I seriously doubt UBL had finite knowledge himself in any timely fashion of who was doing what and where according to any specific operations strategies issued by himself. Those days have long passed! I suspect that UBL had assigned himself the mission of keeping the operations structure financed and offering up some organization and leadership verification to other commands and their ‘troops’ around the world, via his occasional media messages.
I further suspect that of all the ‘intel’ reported as collected, it will turn out to be dated in terms of organizational command leadership and be more relevent to financial data. I suspect he was financing the Taliban but does not keep any detailed data on their organizational structure as that would not be necessary as a matter of records keeping. Given his intellect, training and skills I would be shocked to learn that his records keeping included names not coded….if he even kept names recorded.
No doubt, he had many contacts that he did business with but I suspect he used technology and old fashioned courier through a number of coded intermediary contacts who are probably underground for some time now just to feel out their situations.
Bottomline? He was a big fish for certain but…..not nearly so on the tactical operations side anymore. The tactical side will go forward just fine without him. The governments and financial networks financing AQ will find a new way of doing business with AQ and finances will flow as usual in short time. So, all the speculating of the irrelevent and creating wild conspiracy rhetoric is wasted effort. Until all the components that ‘feed’ this radical religious ideology are eradicated, we could be sucked into a war that is centuries old among the Muslims….though ‘generally’ not directed at nations outside their own region. But, because we’re in the business of nation building and ‘choose’ to use Arab oil, we’re hardly in the position…or willing to reposition, to cut the heads off the snakes in the Arab world that feeds such radical Muslim enemies of the U.S. and much of the free world. The U.S. has become very slow and costly learners post WWII!