austere wrote:
Skykid said he's awaiting falsified footage actually. I assume this is his expectation but if the evidence presented is strong enough, perhaps he will say it isn't necessary fake.
If he's awaiting "falsified footage", then why is he making such a big deal about getting more evidence? Sounds like his mind's made up to me. You say it yourself, the best that evidence could do is convince him that it "isn't necessarily fake", which reassures me that Obama's approach to conspiracy theorists like yourselves, exactly like the birther movement, is the correct one.
adversity1 wrote:1. American government can assassinate OBL in 2001 and keep his death hidden for 10 years while justifying an extremely complex war that involves millions of people, and has seen significant whistle-blowing.
They're saying he died of renal failure, see Udderdude's 3 links on the topic. If this narrative were true, no one can confirm whether he's dead or not (see justification for this later).
It's amazing that you guys are criticizing the American government for its lack of transparency in favor of a view that has nearly no backing whatsoever. Let's look at Udderdude's links:
This is merely a collation of theories by among others, noted liar David Ray Griffin, which pinions about one single article (the third one that Udderdude links to) quoting an unnamed "Taliban source":
The Taliban source who claims to have seen bin Laden's face before burial said "he looked pale ... but calm, relaxed and confident."
...
When asked where bin Laden was buried, the source said, "I am sure that like other places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished."
Unnamed source.
Unknown burial spot.
A burial spot that "must have vanished".
This is what you clowns are calling more reliable than the US government announcement of Osama's assassination.
I should also note that the source here is FOX News, certainly an organization you would be deriding in any other context!
December 13th as a death date is wrong on its face (but typical for David Ray Griffin). In the book "Kill Bin Laden" by Dalton Fury, which details the battle of Tora Bora, it is noted that Bin Laden was being picked up on radio giving directions to fighters all the way through December 15th (16th is when he was speculated to escape to Pakistan). Page 256, cross check it if you want.
The last link is Musharaff speculating that OBL probably died after Tora Bora because of his kidney problems. No facts, no evidence, things you demand from Obama but not Musharaff apparently.
There have been 35 audio or video messages from Osama Bin Laden since 2001, all detailed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_and ... _bin_Laden .
Are we supposed to just pretend that none of these were real? These recordings were being broadcast at a time when Al-Jazeera was being bombed by US forces in Baghdad, hardly a CIA front!
Let me take the Skykid approach on this: prove to me that every single one of these recordings is false before you go any further with your "dead in 2001" claims.
These are very much low-level cables and many of them seemed to target certain countries to create internal strife. It's funny you guys pretend that Wikileaks is somehow 100% transparent. I used to be a significant doner to that organisation, but it turned out Assange is a rotten white hat. Many in his organisation have left after asserting he is controlling the release of certain cables and siding with a certain country in the middle east region.
I didn't say anything about Wikileaks being 100% transparent. But I do think that Wikileaks as an organization has possibly done more to expose the inner workings of governments and further the cause of human rights than the UN has in 60 years. Exposure of US military massacres in Iraq, details on torture carried out at Guantanamo, 80,000 docs in the Afghan War Diary, 400,000 in the Iraq War Logs. Revelations that helped cause popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Cables from the ambassador level to the Secretary of State, down to day-to-day military operations.
Exactly at what level of secrecy, and in what department of the US government (you can speculate!) do you think the information that OBL was actually dead, has been held? And why would it not have been leaked?
adversity1 wrote:3. US government is fully capable of keeping his actual death 10 years ago a secret for a decade, but when they finally get around to "faking an operation" this week to claim they've killed him, are not capable of faking some photos of his death to give evidence.
#3 is not actually a point if you read the previous counter-points. There's no need to keep a death "secret", when it was actually all over the airwaves (see Udderdude's links yet again). Even if some public figure blurted it out, it can be denied later as a mistake --
Well, no public figure on the US government ever declared the death of OBL, you're talking about a poorly sourced FOX news report. The point is that internally, the knowledge of his death would have to repressed at a very high level of the military and government. You would also have to fake the raid into Pakistan that happened a few days ago, and you would certainly not have the Pakistani government
corroborating the death of Bin Laden on their own soil if they could avoid it.
Other contradictions: why would the Taliban not have been more adamant about the death of Osama Bin Laden if they were aware of it? Why wouldn't the death of OBL have been mourned around the middle east on the same tapes that carry video of attacks on American/Israeli personnel?
Instead what we do see throughout the decade are steady releases by Al-Queda of audio and video from Osama Bin Laden and Zawahiri, as I have cited above. 35.
adversity1 wrote:So...my question to you fine scholarly gentleman is the following: why would all of these extremist islamist groups be so upset about the killing of Bin Laden if he's not actually dead?
Heh, love it when people pull out this joker card. Like you said, these guys are religious extremists which usually (almost always) means they're retarded.* They probably get most of their news from the local sheikh who gets his news from the mainstream media, which agrees with you. Thus, by questioning their lack of skepticism you're assuming they are (or their sheikhs)
capable of any skepticism --
Actually it's the exact opposite. The Middle East is full of paranoiac conspiracy theories, which have a synergistic relationship with the Alex Jones, David Ray Griffin source material of the west. Usually these theories center around Israeli, American and British interference, and are, as you mention relayed from the mosque. What is remarkable in the wake of Bin Laden's death is that several organizations that are known to have extremist links, in particular Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed (who are also planning a protest in Pakistan), are documented collaborators with Al-Queda, and are mobilizing to protest the killing.
My point wasn't that the Islamists had weighed the information and decided objectively whether "the Sheikh" was dead, my point is that in the case of LeT and JeM,
they would know. That's the most authentic verification you could possibly have! They're collaborators! Hamas is a different matter, and frankly I was more surprised than anything at Haniyeh's vocal support for Bin Laden.
In fact, if you do have faith in the official story, one should ask you
which one of the stories release so far do you believe in, since it has been
changing everyday.
Yes, the recounting of the Bin Laden raid has changed subtly over the past couple of days. It seems that Bin Laden was most likely not armed, did not use his wife as a human shield, and was possibly captured before being killed. It doesn't change anything.
A mass murderer has met his end and it's a great thing.
A good question you asked later was: if Osama was already dead, why didn't the Bush administration use it to their advantage? Think through what use Osama had for the Bush administration and find the answer out on your own. Udderdude gave away the answer, but no peaking! Really, what purpose did all those home videos serve throughout his two terms and what short term advantage would this card have given his administration?
I like your mysterious allusions here but reality is much simpler:
1. You have a US president with an approval rating that reached as low as 22%
2. A republican party fueled by interests around the United States that faces significant challenges getting into office again because of the disaster of the Bush presidency
There is no reason that Bush would have held off on the trigger to take out Bin Laden to boost his sagging presidency and protect his domestic power base. Mullah Omar and other major Taliban figures are still at large, there is no question that the focus of the war could have been shifted once Bin Laden was killed. The US failure to find and kill Bin Laden until 2011 is exactly that, a failure, one compounded by reliance on the Pakistani military.
I'm actually not interested in the details by the way, it
doesn't actually
matter.
I'm sure you're not since you just linked to an idiotic Youtube video that claims in its title that Al-Queda never existed, whereas when you watch it you find out (in their narrative) that the organization adopted the name after 2001. Probably doesn't matter to you though, the title is enough.
Now let's get to your essay questions:
a) Given Pakistan is being blamed for shielding him in that military town, will this be used as a casus belli to start a formal war with them?
Yes, the US, which is currently engaged in war across 3 nations, wants to start a war with a nuclear-armed state full of fundamentalists.
Obviously the answer is no. Pakistan still offers intelligence and military assistance, as well as internal repression (to a certain degree) of its extremist groups. The alternative is an ugly chaos that would certainly not serve the US. What will happen is more accountability being demanded of the Pakistani government, and in turn more cooperation.
b) If not a), will this serve as a, let us say, "catalysing" event for further terror strikes to be used as justification for a war elsewhere?
Um, no. Why would it?
How does that even relate to your first question about whether we're going to war with Pakistan or not?
c) If b), who will be Osama's replacement for the yearly hate minute, if the answer leads them to being necessary?
I guess this is a 1984 reference. If you are asking who the next terror figurehead will be, I doubt anyone significant. The biggest players in the Islamic terrorist networks now are the Haqqani network and the LeT, and no one cares about their leaders. Why? Because they didn't create a media milestone out of the death of 3000 Americans on US soil. There's no identification.
d) What medium term effect will it have on the commodity market, given the short-term bearish response (albeit coupled with several moves to put pressure on prices)?
e) How long will the foreign exchange market's response to this announcement last?
Don't follow finance, so dunno. You tell me.
| My games - 
Of course some people *cough*Dick Cheney*cough* made out with a handsome profit so obviously my eye wasn't on the ball with my presumptions and estimation of power.
The only problem is such a move may evoke countermeasures by the counterparties (China, Russia). Proxy wars can be used you know.
