do u need to see a photo of bin laden to prove he is dead?

[mick e]

swampy - you look almost as foolish as Donald Trump.

Don't worry, though - you have a long way to go before you descend to the Dakota depths.

[OWC Jamie]

$tevie wrote:


I don't think some people are taking into consideration that they could have simply blown the place up with bombs and let us know bin Ladin was in there when they did so. .

Bombers any where near a country with nuclear weapons ?
I doubt any President would be that reckless..
Pakistan air defense would have to had totally ignored bombers.
No way pakistan government could deny their involvement.
The official claim will be concern for civilian casualties, but the current Pakistan Government was and is way too fragile to sustain that manner of denials.
Bombers would have triggered India Air Defenses as well.

Abbatabod isn't some hick town out in the boonies and Pakistan's Air defenses is sup[posedly capable of tracking our drones. There's only so much room for denial there.

[Mac1337]

$tevie wrote:
IHe did what a President should do and in this day and age that does take courage.

You have no record of advocating such an interventionist policy in your 13,000+ post. You are simply acting like a loyal hack would. Should we go in Yemen now?

[Black]

$tevie wrote:
If the mission had failed, Obama would be a laughingstock

Maybe. Or maybe we just wouldn't have heard a whole lot about it?

[michaelb]

Dakota wrote:
Should we go in Yemen now?

yes, if we have actionable intelligence that al-Zawahri or another high level al Qaeda operative was there. At this point, there really isn't much question that this what Obama would do. There could be some complicating factors about Yemen and diplomacy that I don't understand, but I trust that Obama and/or Clinton would work those out. But they would and should take that shot.

[rjmacs]

michaelb wrote:
[quote=Dakota]
Should we go in Yemen now?

yes, if we have actionable intelligence that al-Zawahri or another high level al Qaeda operative was there. At this point, there really isn't much question that this what Obama would do. There could be some complicating factors about Yemen and diplomacy that I don't understand, but I trust that Obama and/or Clinton would work those out. But they would and should take that shot.
I think this point is well-taken, Dakota. President Obama's decision was based on very carefully developed intelligence on a specific target. If he has similar intelligence and a comparable opportunity with al-Zawahiri in Yemen, i suspect he will order another assassination. But in the mission to kill OBL, we didn't really "go into Pakistan" in a military sense. We swooped in, killed him, grabbed material and his corpse, and swooped out.

[Mac1337]

rjmacs wrote:
But in the mission to kill OBL, we didn't really "go into Pakistan" in a military sense. We swooped in, killed him, grabbed material and his corpse, and swooped out.

As I said before, I signed on to this policy when Bush enunciated it a decade ago. Problem is when BUsh said it he was accused of being a cowboy. What right the US has to stage what are practically assassination raids around the world without asking anybody, they asked? We are better than them, it was said. If this episode helped bring them onboard then we indeed have a unified nation.

[Grace62]

Obama says he won't be releasing the OBL death photos

[Ted King]

Grace62 wrote:
Obama says he won't be releasing the OBL death photos

Good.

[Ted King]

Somebody probably already mentioned this in one of these OBL threads but I think that quite likely the most significant thing about the raid was not killing OBL, instead I think it is the data on computers and documents the Seals brought back with them. Getting that data was probably a significant part of Obama's decision to go with a raid rather than a massive drone strike.