[PassedOut]

This just in from CBS: George W. Bush responds to Osama bin Laden's death

[Winstonm]

PassedOut, on 2011-May-04, 15:51, said:

No. You offered the opinion that closing Guantanamo would have impeded the effort get bin Laden, and I thought it (barely) possible that you had some factual basis for that opinion. Evidently not.

However, I do agree with your condemnation of the Bush-Cheney torture policy.

And I agree with your condemnation of Obama furthering the Bush-Cheney torture policies.

[PassedOut]

Winstonm, on 2011-May-04, 18:10, said:

And I agree with your condemnation of Obama furthering the Bush-Cheney torture policies.

If Obama authorizes torture, it is just as bad as Bush-Cheney.

[hrothgar]

PassedOut, on 2011-May-04, 18:47, said:

If Obama authorizes torture, it is just as bad as Bush-Cheney.

I'd say that it's actually worse...

You don't expect any better from Bush, Cheney, and their ilk.

[barmar]

Am I the only one who's disturbed that we executed Bin Laden rather than capturing him? Aren't the "rule of law" and "due process" fundamental principles of our society? We're already having problems maintaining these standards in places like Gitmo, but wouldn't we make up for that somewhat if we followed our principles when dealing with Bin Laden? Instead, we went to the opposite extreme.

It's likely that there's no way we could have an impartial jury, which would make it difficult to convict him. But isn't that a risk you take when you make trial by jury the centerpiece of your justice system? When the system fails, you don't just go around it.

Maybe it was necessary, but it seems like we should at least feel bad about giving up a bit of our soul (or should I say "a bit more" -- we already lost some when we started torturing detainees).

[PassedOut]

barmar, on 2011-May-04, 21:54, said:

Am I the only one who's disturbed that we executed Bin Laden rather than capturing him?

My understanding is that bin Laden would have been taken alive if he had surrendered peacefully. Although he turned out to be unarmed, I think that the team had no choice when he resisted. For all anyone knew, he might have intended to trigger a bomb that would have destroyed the whole place, killing everyone inside.

The LA Times has a balanced piece on how the information was developed that led to bin Laden: Trail to Bin Laden began with CIA detainee, officials say

Quote

In the end, intelligence gleaned from interviews with numerous detainees, high-tech eavesdropping and surveillance, and other investigative spadework provided insights on people close to Bin Laden. No one source or bit of intelligence was so decisive or critical that it instantly solved the puzzle or ended the painstaking hunt for the world's most wanted terrorist, officials said. They stressed that none of the three most critical pieces of information — the courier's name, the area of Pakistan in which he operated and the location of the compound in which Bin Laden was living — came from detainees.

The nuances of that complex chain of events were often lost Wednesday amid a renewed public debate about the efficacy and morality of coercive interrogations that the CIA carried out under President George W. Bush.

"I think the issue has been mischaracterized on both sides," said a former CIA official who was involved in internal debate over the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques program at the time. "The people who say 'enhanced interrogation techniques' directly led to catching Bin Laden are wrong, and the people who say they had nothing to do with it are also wrong."

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said it was impossible to know whether the same information could have been obtained without using those techniques, which have been banned under President Obama.

[kenberg]

From the cited piece:

Quote

"The people who say 'enhanced interrogation techniques' directly led to catching Bin Laden are wrong, and the people who say they had nothing to do with it are also wrong."

This strikes me as extremely likely to be a correct assessment.

As to executing him instead of capturing him: I am not disturbed, not at all, but I do recognize the need for some thought here. We send an assault team into a country we are not at war with, take over an area and kill several of the people living there. The justification is that we were not just killing someone, we were killing Osama bin Laden and his close associates. Just who else and where else we claim the right to do this is a very good question. There are some things that strike me as so obvious that logic seems beside the point. Shooting OBL is one of those things. But yes, in later reflection it might give us pause.

We did not ask for all this trouble, it came to us. We have to cope with it, and it won't always be pretty. This observation is not a universal pass to do whatever we want, but we cannot just be sitting ducks either.

A man who caused the death of thousands is now dead. Hooray remains my view.

[ArtK78]

barmar, on 2011-May-04, 21:54, said:

Am I the only one who's disturbed that we executed Bin Laden rather than capturing him? Aren't the "rule of law" and "due process" fundamental principles of our society? We're already having problems maintaining these standards in places like Gitmo, but wouldn't we make up for that somewhat if we followed our principles when dealing with Bin Laden? Instead, we went to the opposite extreme.

I can understand that the idea of America deliberately murdering any person can be disturbing, but I have to ask:

Osama Bin Laden? Rule of law? Due process?

Given all of the facts and circumstances, I truly believe that we are WAY beyond any reasonable doubt when it comes to Bin Laden.

I applaud all involved in this operation, including the President, all who gathered the information and presented it, and the Navy Seals who carried it out. Well done!

And I agree wholeheartedly with Ken's assessment of the proper reaction to Bin Laden's death - hooray!

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2011-May-04, 21:54, said:

Am I the only one who's disturbed that we executed Bin Laden rather than capturing him? Aren't the "rule of law" and "due process" fundamental principles of our society? We're already having problems maintaining these standards in places like Gitmo, but wouldn't we make up for that somewhat if we followed our principles when dealing with Bin Laden? Instead, we went to the opposite extreme.

Here's how I view things:

The US made a decision to kill bin Laden
We make similar decisions all the time. (All those drone attacks aren't intended slap the target on the wrist)
We have a deliberate policy that we target and kill members of al Queda wthout a trial.
I'd all for "Rule of Law", however, I don't have any problem with this policy.

In this case, we made a deliberate decision to send in a strike team rather than using a drone.
I suspect that the primary motivation was certainty.

• We couldn't risk bin Laden escaping again.
  
• Blowing up the building and then inserting ground forces to make sure that we got him was problematic.

During the course of the operation, bin Laden was killed.
I don't see a problem with this assuming that this was an actual operational goal of the mission.

I also don't have a problem with "We want bin Laden: Dead or Alive. We prefer him alive, but if it's too dangeous to capture him: such is life"

I would have a problem with something like the following:

The US decided that we wanted to capture bin Laden
A member of the squad decided on his own that he wanted bin Laden dead
bin Laden was captured
Said member of the team shot bin Laden

[Gerben42]

My thoughts on the issue: Bin Laden has died as a happy man. His terror acts in the first few years of the millennium has caused the West to spend trillions on security, wars and cleaning up the mess after the wars. A simple video message from his side made us cringe in fear. Ten years after after 9/11, the freedom of European and American citizens has been greatly reduced by his acts and the government reactions to them, and the USA is well on its way to government bankruptcy.

The death of Bin Laden doesn't move me at all. It didn't make the world safer, not any more. It just distracts us from our biggest problems, and we shouldn't let that happen, or he wins yet again.

[hrothgar]

Gerben42, on 2011-May-05, 10:43, said:

The death of Bin Laden doesn't move me at all. It didn't make the world safer, not any more. It just distracts us from our biggest problems, and we shouldn't let that happen, or he wins yet again.

Is it better to be distracted by the death of bin Laden or the Royal Wedding?

[Gerben42]

hrothgar, on 2011-May-05, 11:19, said:

Is it better to be distracted by the death of bin Laden or the Royal Wedding?

Either distraction was welcome as it distracted from the biggest distraction of all - which was the completely wrong way the German media and the German government reacted to the catastrophe in Japan. You may know or not know that the goal of the German government is to take more damage from the reactor meltdown than Japan. But that is another story (new thread please).

[Winstonm]

ArtK78, on 2011-May-05, 08:22, said:

I can understand that the idea of America deliberately murdering any person can be disturbing, but I have to ask:

Osama Bin Laden? Rule of law? Due process?

Given all of the facts and circumstances, I truly believe that we are WAY beyond any reasonable doubt when it comes to Bin Laden.

I applaud all involved in this operation, including the President, all who gathered the information and presented it, and the Navy Seals who carried it out. Well done!

And I agree wholeheartedly with Ken's assessment of the proper reaction to Bin Laden's death - hooray!

Here are my views on these matters.

If this was retribution, I am displeased.
If this was justice, I am satisfied.

The rule of law does not extend to the battlefield, and I think there is a reasonable argument that a leader of a terrorist group outside the U.S. and not in custody is "on the battlefield".

The rule of law violations I object to are that the president has made it clear he has assumed authority to order the killing of an American citizen, that he has made it clear that he will detain anyone he wants, regardless of outcome of habeus corpus or verdicts, and that torturers are above the law if they tortured in "good faith" and had an attorney tell them it was O.K.

The rule of law is supposed to protect us from capricious judgments of a single individual and from inconsistencies in justice, and thereby cause all to be treated equally - whenever and wherever the rule of law is abandoned, in that situation we become a lawless nation, a nation of men, led by individual opinion and individual biases.

The benevolent monarch was voted down in 1776. But advocates of the idea are still around.

[barmar]

ArtK78, on 2011-May-05, 08:22, said:

Osama Bin Laden? Rule of law? Due process?

Given all of the facts and circumstances, I truly believe that we are WAY beyond any reasonable doubt when it comes to Bin Laden.

Yes, due process even for Bin Laden. That's how we show our moral superiority. Even if the outcome of the trial is a virtual certainty, we should still go through the motions, because it's the right thing to do.

The worse the perpetrator, the more we demonstrate our righteousness by not abandoning our principles.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2011-May-05, 16:54, said:

If this was retribution, I am displeased.
If this was justice, I am satisfied.

That's the thing. An execution feels like retribution, a trial would be justice.

[helene_t]

Winstonm, on 2011-May-05, 16:54, said:

If this was retribution, I am displeased.
If this was justice, I am satisfied.

What's in a name? Justice is of course a broader concept than retribution, for example it would be justice if Alice and Bob each get 50% of their wedding cake.

But whenever both terms could apply, such as in the OBL case, justice is just an eufemism for retribution.

FWIW, I don't care much for justice, at least not in cases like this. Getting rid of OBL was just a practical thing to do. When a surgeon removes a tumour he doesn't call it "justice" either.

[gwnn]

What about the guests at the wedding?

[Winstonm]

helene_t, on 2011-May-06, 03:37, said:

What's in a name? Justice is of course a broader concept than retribution, for example it would be justice if Alice and Bob each get 50% of their wedding cake.

But whenever both terms could apply, such as in the OBL case, justice is just an eufemism for retribution.

FWIW, I don't care much for justice, at least not in cases like this. Getting rid of OBL was just a practical thing to do. When a surgeon removes a tumour he doesn't call it "justice" either.

Having a tumor removed from one's own body in order to improve health would be justified; removing a tumor from someone else's body without anasthesia just to inflict pain would be retribution.

[blackshoe]

Today is Friday, May 6th, 2011, and Osama Bin Ladin is still dead.

[Free]

Personally I don't believe everything they say. There are too many loose ends and contradictions, not to mention the poor arguments for not proving he's actually dead.

First he was armed, later it got out that he wasn't armed. Why would they kill him if they can capture him alive? Everyone knows it's worse for Al-Qaida if he's dead, while it's better for the USA if they capture him alive to extract information and make him pay. So if they capture him alive while claiming that he's dead they get the best of both worlds.
Btw, did they actually try to decide wether to show the picture or not, or did they try to photoshop one and failed? They had several days time, but if a specialized team can always prove the pictures are fake, then they can't use that material. DNA tests don't prove that he's dead, it just proves they have him. It's also weird that they were prepared for a complete Islamitic burial, but they didn't know what they would do with his pictures. Come on, who believes this anyway?
And if they don't want to take any risks of his body being recovered, why didn't they just cremate him?

I'm sure they have removed Bin Laden from earth's surface, otherwise it would be ridiculous to claim they have him. The question is: is he being tortured in some super secret basement or is he fishfood?

I don't think his death (or capture) will improve the situation. I rather think many Al-Qaida members are now even more motivated to plan actions against the USA. It's a symbolic action which shows the USA can actually find everyone, and perhaps a consolation for family and friends of the many victims he made.