Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jstan
climber
|
|
If the intention of that war on terror was
to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars
it was an unqualified success.
Got to look on the positive side.
|
|
Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
|
|
John Kerry...2004...way ahead of the curve and the Bush neocons!!
"Kerry told me he would stop terrorists by going after them ruthlessly with the military, and he faulted Bush, as he often does, for choosing to use Afghan militias, instead of American troops, to pursue Osama bin Laden into the mountains of Tora Bora, where he disappeared. ''I'm certainly, you know, not going to take second seat to anybody, to nobody, in my willingness to seek justice and set America on a course -- to make America safe,'' Kerry told me. ''And that requires destroying terrorists. And I'm committed to doing that. But I think I have a better way of doing it. I can do it more effectively.''
This was a word that Kerry came back to repeatedly in our discussions; he told me he would wage a more ''effective'' war on terror no less than 18 times in two hours of conversations. The question, of course, was how.
''I think we can do a better job,'' Kerry said, ''of cutting off financing, of exposing groups, of working cooperatively across the globe, of improving our intelligence capabilities nationally and internationally, of training our military and deploying them differently, of specializing in special forces and special ops, of working with allies, and most importantly -- and I mean most importantly -- of restoring America's reputation as a country that listens, is sensitive, brings people to our side, is the seeker of peace, not war, and that uses our high moral ground and high-level values to augment us in the war on terror, not to diminish us.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/10KERRY.html?pagewanted=all
|
|
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
Was there a real person named "Smedley" Butler? From the 1930s, yet?
Otherwise, once bin Laden was located, Obama had little choice but to do what he did. Negotiating with the Pakistanis would have been a fool's errand. No way to get at him but from the air, with highly trained military. They gathered all the intelligence they could, and planned accordingly. There was probably never much chance of taking him alive.
As the Allies successfully tried the Nazi leaders after the war, and the Israelis prosecuted Adolf Eichmann in 1961, a public trial would not have been a big problem. The biggest difference would have been that an international court would have jailed bin Laden for life, and a US court would execute him.
(The Israeli judge who presided over the Eichmann trial died yesterday - he was 99.)
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
Click on Klimmer's link. Get a bunch of links searching just on the name.
|
|
shut up and pull
climber
|
|
JUST IMAGINE IF WE HAD LISTENED TO THE IDIOT LIBERALS BACK THEN?
HEADLINE TODAY:
Harsh interrogation led to bin Laden...
OFFICIALS: Finding bin Laden aided by info from Gitmo detainees...
|
|
shut up and pull
climber
|
|
OF COURSE. A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER COMMIE SCUMBAG WOULDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Obama took 16 hours to make up mind about Bin Laden mission...
'Slept on it'...
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
I will say we probably do need to get democratic presidents better helicopter maintenance and flight training prior to clandestine raids.
|
|
Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
|
|
SUAP wrote: HEADLINE TODAY:
Harsh interrogation led to bin Laden...
OFFICIALS: Finding bin Laden aided by info from Gitmo detainees...
What a as#@&%e...
SUAP wrote: Obama took 16 hours to make up mind about Bin Laden mission...
'Slept on it'...
Took Bush eight years and still no results.
|
|
Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
|
|
It’s almost painful to have to listen to the cheap carnival calls from the right as they try to discredit Obama for what has emerged as the most successful counterterrorism operation in U.S. history. No surprise.
|
|
BrianH
Trad climber
santa fe
|
|
Brilliant and eloquent Karl, but in the echo chamber you're wasting your time.
Hatas gonna hate!
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
"Obama took 16 hours to make up mind about Bin Laden mission...
'Slept on it'..."
The implication being that SUAP would have just pulled the trigger, like W did.
Read some of the LA Times articles to which I posted links. Obama was given three scenarios including a bombing and a special ops. He chose the higher risk option so bin Laden might be physically recovered and doubts would have a chance to be extinguished. An overarching concern that had to be weighed was how the alliance with Pakistan might be affected.
I think if you also go to the link I posted on Obama's mother's biography you can see the personal characteristics he has that allowed him to predict and also allow for the conservative reactions he could expect for both cases. Success and also failure.
Taking executive action without thinking these things out beforehand will sooner or later, make you appear a fool. Surely you can see that? Just look to past events. Examples are there.
Once a person has done or said something foolish, recovery is next to impossible.
No one will take you seriously.
You slowly but surely become invisible.
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
Anders wrote
There was probably never much chance of taking him alive.
Why? Our government reported that NO ONE offered armed resistance during the operation?
They say they shot Bin Laden when he made an unarmed threatening move, but heck, they're Navy Seals in Body Armor and automatic weapons and he's an old sick guy. Sure, it's not a slam dunk and a very dangerous operation but there was certainly a chance to get him alive.
This article details why the US wasn't able to marshal forces to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora and also outlines the details of the repeated Taliban offers to hand over Bin Laden for trial to a moderate Islamic country or federation of moderate islamic countries.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/05/03-6
"...The last Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, offered at a secret meeting in Islamabad Oct. 15, 2001 to put bin Laden in the custody of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), to be tried for the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, Muttawakil told IPS in an interview in Kabul last year.
The OIC is a moderate, Saudi-based organisation representing all Islamic countries. A trial of bin Laden by judges from OIC member countries might have dealt a more serious blow to al Qaeda's Islamic credentials than anything the United States would have done with bin Laden.
Muttawakil also dropped a condition that the United States provide evidence of bin Laden's guilt in the 9/11 attacks, which had been raised in late September and reiterated by Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef on Oct. 5 - two days before the U.S. bombing of Taliban targets began.....
....The absence of any military planning to catch bin Laden was a function of Bush's national security team, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, which had firmly opposed any military operation in Afghanistan that would have had any possibility of catching bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Rumsfeld and the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, had dismissed CIA warnings of an al Qaeda terrorist attack against the United States in the summer of 2001, and even after 9/11 had continued to question the CIA's conclusion that bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the attacks.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were determined not to allow a focus on bin Laden to interfere with their plan for a U.S. invasion of Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime.
Even after Bush decided in favour of an Afghan campaign, CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, was not directed to have a plan for bin Laden’s capture or to block his escape to Pakistan.
When the CIA received intelligence on Nov. 12, 2001 that bin Laden had left Kandahar and was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border, Franks had no assets in place to do anything about it. He asked Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command (ARCENT), if he could provide a blocking force between al Qaeda and the Pakistani border, according to Col. David W. Lamm, who was then commander of ARCENT Kuwait.
But that was impossible, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place.
Franks then had to ask for Pakistani military help in blocking bin Laden's exit into Pakistan, as Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting, according to the meeting transcript in Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War".
But Rumsfeld and other key advisers knew it would a charade, because bin Laden was a long-time ally of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, and the Pakistani military was not about to help capture him...."
and the conservative want to be sure Bush gets proper credit for getting Bin Laden? No way
Peace
Karl
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
Karl:
I get the impression the safest place for bin Laden was Dallas?
|
|
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
Karl, bin Laden may have been sick - the jury's still out on that one - but he was only 53. Not old.
It will be interesting to learn more about what happened, and the timeline. They probably had very little time to move in, capture or kill bin Laden, and get out. Which meant that if a demand to surrender wasn't complied with immediately, it was game over. It's not Marquess of Queensbury rules.
|
|
cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
|
|
Karl,
Nice, thoughtful post 2 pages back. That echos my feeling pretty well, although I don't necessarily agree on other details with you.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
I get the impression the safest place for bin Laden was Dallas?
Had he simply shaved, donned a thong, and added a little suntan lotion and bling he could have lived to ripe old age on the Spanish Riviera with no one the wiser.
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
There's no way we can agree much on details, even with those we generally agree with.
There's so many lies and obfuscation in modern politics, that we don't know WTF really happens for real. By the time the truth comes out, everyone has moved on and the culprits are back to making million dollar bonuses or on the board of fat corporations.
We virtually wrecked the economy by DOUBLING defense spending since 9-11. Part of that was the illegal Iraq war which research increasingly shows was based on known lies. Nobody went to jail, There was no investigation.
Then the financial institutions virtually wrecked the economy worse with the housing, CDO security scam, which research now shows was much less accidental than claimed, and the government bailed those guys out, lowered their taxes, and now they are getting rich again as the economy continues to suck. Nobody went to jail,
And then the GOP wants to blame Medicare for the bad economy and take it out on seniors and the poor while retained what was advertised as temporary tax cuts.
but hey, we got Osama, so why rain on the parade? The outside bogyman is valuable to destract for the Osodomizing we get from our masters within the country.
Who's the next bogyman? Gaddafi?
Peace
karl
article regarding untrue initial statments about the operation. You wonder how they could put out the wrong info when they watched the operation on helmet cam and had time to have OB Laden's DNA tested.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/03/bin.laden.evolving.story/index.html?hpt=C2
|
|
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
Karl, a lot of what you (and others) are saying may be right, and certainly bears considering. The US got into a big mess from 2001 - 2009, and indeed from 1981 - 2009, and killing bin Laden doesn't necessarily help much to resolve it. But it was necessary, and maybe now - unlike in 2001 - there can be space for reflection and thought.
The administration seems to be addressing this professionally, without vainglory or false claims so far. That's promising.
As for the photo - well, is it real or is it photoshopped? And where did it come from? (Edit: The photo that has now disappeared.)
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!