Osama Bin Laden Gets What He Gives

So the US media is going nuts over Osama's demise.So what does it mean?Does it mean that the so called war on terror is over? Does the individual create history as Carlyle impugns? Or is history made of mass movements as Goldhagen insists?Does this mean the US is allowed to stop destroying the world economy through wasting social security and medicare funds in an attempt to force male Afghans to treat women and children as humans (a loaded question and not entirely politically correct, yet appropriate).It should prove interesting to see the responses.Coffee house, obviously.

Thread copied here from the Osama Bin Laden Gets What He Gives thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

There was a conspiracy theory floating around that bin laden is only an invention that he does not truly exist. Never gave that theory a second thought until today when all they gave us again was a picture of a shot osama and told us they dropped his body in to the ocean. It is a kind of strange thing to do, firstly a normal world his body would be taken for autopsy, secondly the us had no right to bury his body the bin laden family does thirdly it took hours for the past president to announce that they caught the other guy from Iraq, DNA testing dental comparison ..... Edited by frako, : No reason given.

For now I am going to forgo all such speculation and just join in the chorus of happy Munchkins.

"They" haven't yet told us that he's been buried at sea. That's just a statement attributed to an unnamed "official". Other reports say that he might be going to be buried at sea; others put the time of burial at 4 p.m. Monday.I'm not sure they could (legally, according to the Geneva convention) if they wanted to. In the first place, Muslims should only be buried at sea in cases of necessity; and in the second place, you're meant to bury the enemy in a marked and recorded spot in case their family wants the body back.If I were you I'd wait for an official announcement before jumping to conclusions. Yes, normally the US armed forces do autopsies on all the guys they've just shot in the head, because it's crucial to find out what actually killed them. Why, it could have been anything. They should also have notified the CDC in case he died of the plague. Nuh-uh. According to the Geneva Convention the US should bury him. (Also, we should do so according to Muslim practice, and Muslim practice is that burial should be as quick as possible --- within 24 hours. It would take longer than that to sort out which family member should have him, arrange this with Saudi Arabia, and ship him there.)They do have to dig him back up and turn him over to the family if they want him. And it took seven-and-a-half hours for Obama to announce the shooting of OBL.---What is the source of that photo? Surely it can't be an official release.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

That photo shopped picture was not released by official sources.Also, why such a bad demonstration? Here's the two sources compared

Addendum --- according to one source: "This [burial at sea] adheres with Islamic tradition, as there is a stipulation that if it is likely that an enemy may try to dig up the grave or destroy the gravesite, burial at sea -- while not ideal -- is allowed." So it may be legitimate.

The US media and the government are milking the publicity in the hope of winning a propaganda battle. Realistically, it means very little from a strategic perspective. Our foreign policy objectives have angered more people than they have appeased, and if anything, Bin Laden will be seen as a martyr on the other side. For all we know, he simply gave up and was waiting for the inevitable.

That picture has been confirmed as fake. I haven;t seen any officially released photographs of Osama's corpse, but I think we can rest assured that the real pictures will be of much better quality than that.The conspiracy theories are bonkers. Yes, it is possible (though not particularly plausible) for Osama to have been killed long ago and for Obama to now take political credit. It's possible that Osama hasn;t even really been killed.But faking or delaying reports of Osama's death until now is hardly optimal. If this were a real conspiracy, Obama would have waited until shortly before the election, to hit the peak of the political capital this is going to give him when he can use it the most.That, on top of the usual arguments against any conspiracy theory - how many people would need to keep perfectly silent? How much evidence would need to be faked? Which scenario is more likely?But then, that's why we don't trust conspiracy theories. Let the gullible, the idiots, the whackaloons believe whatever they want; they won;t be dissuaded by such things as evidence or logic anyway, so why bother paying further attention?As for the actual facts of Osama's death...I'm extremely happy with teh way this went down. Obama chose to sit and wait on the intel for a long time to make absolutely certain that Osama would be there when the time came; he didn't use a Predator or a cruise missile or an airstrike, any of which could have:1) destroyed the remains too severely for identification
2) destroyed any documents or other evidence that may assist in further disassembling the al Qaeda network
3) most importantly, would likely have caused noncombatant deaths, since the "compound" was in the middle of a residential area.This could have easily been a repeat of the botched Iranian hostage rescue. It could have been another Black Hawk Down. The political risk, if this hadn't gone off without a hitch, was significant. Obama had the stones to order it anyway, and it paid off, big time.I'm also happy about the choice for disposing of Osama's body: burial at sea in full accordance with Muslim traditions. All of the bullshit about "douse the body in pigs blood" or other disgusting suggestions would do nothing but demonstrate our own hatred. It;s the same exact kind of inhuman shit Americans complain about when Iraqi/Afghani insurgents desecrate the bodies of American soldiers and contractors. We do not at all need to sink to that level; we've lost mroe than enough moral high ground in the so-called "war on terror," thank you very much, I'd prefer if we didn't continue to antagonize entire religions for no particular reason. And of course, burial at sea means that there will be no grave site to become a shrine for like-minded individuals, nor for desecration by hooligans who get off on expressing their hatred. Good fucking decision.Even though the timing was not optimal for getting him re-elected, this will still get Obama some major political capital. He's already getting congratulations from the likes of Bush and Cheney - the political far-right has no choice now but to admit that Obama did exactly what they would have wanted him to do.Just like with his initial election with a Democrat-controlled Congress, I predict Obama will focus so hard on his theme of "unity" and "bipartisan cooperation" that he will accomplish absolutely none of major initiatives regarding the budget etc, despite what will certainly be massive gains at the polls. And somehow, despite my pessimism, I'll still wind up being disappointed even further.

Dr A and Rahvin have adequately dealt with the conspiracy notions (laughable) that will come from this, and the legitimacy of handling of the body.It is true that the official describing the burial at sea remains unnamed, but I am in total and complete agreement with comments above that this was appropriate, in order to prevent any gravesite as serving as a shrine of sorts. Hopefully the entire Arabian Sea won't now serve that purpose lol.I am exhausted from a day of debate on Facebook with family members... I expressed (early on) my sense of disgust at the dancing-in-the-streets, Yee-haw attitude many of them had about this. Make no mistake, he was a bad guy and needed taking out, but to engage in mass celebrations and joyfully proclaim "Hallalujah" is just... disgraceful.One of my cousins (in America, I am in the UK) posted his similar unease with this, saying that it was sort of an "Americanised Allahu Akbar" taking place... and I think that's a fair assessment.I don't question people's happiness and jubilant reaction, I too felt a brief sense of victory and pleasure upon first hearing the news. However it only took me about 30 seconds to realise that there is something inherently wrong about celebrating the death of another. Yes yes yes... I know he was a monster... but he was a HUMAN monster... and I don't celebrate the death of fellow humans, I just don't. I hated Billy Graham with a passion but I didn't celebrate in the streets when he died lol.Anyway, this issue proved polarising throughout the day for my family, some of whom ended up in tears. The right-wingers seemed ready to pounce anyone that said anything that wasn't drenched in red-white-and-blue sauce. My brother insulted me in a dozen ways before removing me from his friend list on Facebook. And all I said was "This doesn't really change much, and I find the dancing-in-the-streets reaction distasteful." - to which he unloaded on me, saying "the UK is doing you wrong... what are you thinking" and "9/11 ... so shut up" lol (which reminded me of the Family Guy where Lois got elected mayor simply be spouting off "9/11" in response to every query.)So... I'm a bit unhappy as the day comes near to a close, unhappy that American politics has become so polarised that one cannot apparently hold an independent opinion that doesn't fall in lock-step with one of the two major parties without somehow being branded either "a traitorous liberal" on the one hand, or a "flag-waving sycophant" on the other.I sleep now, happy that UBL is gone, but fully realising that the world is NOT somehow a safer place.Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.Edited by Briterican, : Too eager to comment initially, took my time now.

I don't even think of him as a monster. He was an enemy and killing him may be justifiable but his biggest crime was being on the "other side". Paul Tibbets probably killed more innocent people.

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate

/agreeThe Western world regularly disapproves (to put it mildly) of the sort of partying in the streets that we see in the media from Muslim nations when disasters befall the West, particularly America, like on 9/11.Our current behavior upon the death of Osama bin Laden is eerily similar, and should make people think about their own actions, the perceptions of others, and what protesting Muslims might be feeling when they burn former President Bush in effigy, or set fire to an American flag.Osama needed killing. There was no way he was going to basically be Cobra Commander and not either get shot, blown up, or captured and executed. It's okay to be happy when a mass murderer finally gets some justice.But partying in the streets? Why not fire an AK-47 into the air and scream "God is great?" Burn a Saudi flag? A Pakistani one? Oh, I know - let's burn some Korans and some flags bearing the Muslim crescent! I bet we could make a straw effigy pretty easily and set it on fire too...This should be a solemn time of reflection, and gladness not that a man is dead, but that the families of that man's victims can now have at least some measure of closure and justice, and that the man won't kill anyone else ever again.

Chain of command would actually make it Harry S. Truman or his predecessor, FDR. Blaming an individual for an event only made possible by the work and direction of tens of thousands is a bit of a cheap shot.

I'm personally not dancing in the streets, though I am glad that we finally got Osama. I did get a chuckle out of this newly photoshoped image of an event that took place eight years ago! Edited by kjsimons, : No reason given.

I'm glad it happened too. But I don't think it will end the war on terror. That war is a guerrilla war and those kinds of wars are the hardest ones to fight, so I don't think it'll be over any time soon. And I'd still rather fight it over there instead of here on home soil.