Whose leadership led to the death of bin Laden?

[Will Robinson]

I'm reading the sycophants already trying to use the death of bin Ladden under Obama's watch as evidence that Obama is a great leader etc.
Well it is re-election season with Obama pretty much all the time so it isn't surprising but I'd like to point out to you FOO's (fans of Obama) if the democrats had their way we wouldn't have found bin Ladden yesterday.
It looks like it was intel gathered from one of the secret CIA prisons that Team Bush set up...the same prisons that the media and the left accused Bush of committing war crimes for creating that brought the CIA to figure out where he was!
So, how many of you lefties want to send Bush a thank you note on behalf of your leader Obama? Lol!

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.

If they could find that courier, they'd find bin Laden.

Read about it here

[Tunnelcat]

Bush may have set up the intel system, but he never seemed to want any of the information that was given to him that didn't involve finding some reason or another to justify invading Iraq. So that makes him the one we should look up to and say thanks? What a bunch of sh*t! Obama could have just as easily gotten the CIA and our military to find Bin Laden. He's the Commander in Chief and you're not crediting him or our agencies and military with any brains or initiative at all. Bush's intel groundwork was an uncoordinated tangled mess that even muffed warnings about the 9/11 attacks (unless they really knew all along and we've been played) and all he used the CIA and his torture farms for was to try and find reasons to invade Iraq. Talk about a myopic, imperialistic vision of foreign policy!

When Obama got into office, he made it one of his main priorities to find and either kill or detain Osama Bin Laden, which he's now done, so tough patooties. Bush whiffed, dropped the ball and gave up any pretense of finding Bin Laden once he got his little invasion of Iraq he so desperately wanted. He had his chance and blew it. Actually twice. He almost got Bin Laden at Tora Bora, but he farmed that out to local warlords and we all know how that went down. Bupkis!

[Will Robinson]

Reality just doesn't get in your way at all!

[Bet51987]

.

[Will Robinson]

Please consider the point I raised and explained instead of ignoring it to do the knee-jerk defense thing.
People claimed it was a sign of Obama's leadership as President when in fact the mechanism that killed bin Ladden was policy Obama and the left called criminal!
Is that too hard to understand?

[Spidey]

From what they were saying tonight on The News Hour, this particular operation goes back more than 4 years…so I’m thinking there is plenty of credit to be given all around…mostly the CIA and the Navy Seals.

Give credit where credit is due…

[CUDA]

Reality just doesn't get in your way at all!

why mess up a good fantasy with facts.

[CUDA]

and all he used the CIA and his torture farms for was to try and find reasons to invade Iraq.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05 ... -location/

Years of intelligence gathering, including details gleaned from controversial interrogations of Al Qaeda members during the Bush administration, ultimately led the Navy SEALs who killed Usama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan

well apparently they found more than reasons to Invade Iraq on those torture farms

[flip]

BRING ME HIS HEAD!! Or, like Cuda said, it might as well be a publicity stunt or WMD to me.

[null0010]

Some leadership, that Bush...

[dissent]

It's just lame to say that the Bush Administration had no input into the intel that led ultimately to this operation, as Allahpundit lays out here. As has already been pointed out, this has been going on for years, well before Obama took office.

By the same token, I think that Obama and his team made some good decisions in bringing the Osama hunt to a close, so he and they deserve credit for that. Story I heard was that initially they were just going to put a couple of JDAMs on the compound, but Obama wanted to be certain that the kill was made, so he opted for the boots on the ground operation instead. I also think it was a good idea to just go for the sea burial right away, instead of dragging out the disposition of the body, and possibly setting up Osama's tomb as a focal point for remembrance by the jihadis.

So how about if we just give everyone involved their due measure of credit, especially to folk who carried out the operation on the ground in Pakistan. Well done people.

[Top Gun]

This kind of sums up my response to this topic:

[Image removed by moderator - Keep it professional, folks.]

Seriously. He's dead. Be happy. That's it.

[Nightshade]

I don't think Foil will like that graphic dude...especially since this is DBB.NET, not DBB.COM.

[Gooberman]

Bee is right Will, doing all that water carrying makes you forget you don't like these people.

There are dems who think obama deserves all the credit, and there are republicans who give bush all the credit.

In reality, they both get some. Obama has taken alot of political points from his base on these war issues, and if you are really conservative and not a party fan boy then this post should be about the credit he legitimatly deserves (and also bush)

[ Post made via Android ]

[Will Robinson]

Just to clarify things for some people who can't seem to understand.
I don't take away any credit from Obama for any part he played and my original post was not an attempt to do so. My original intent is to point out how the methods used to bring bin Laden to his death at the hands of our CIA and SEAL team were methods that Obama and most democrats declared criminal and they tried to STOP those methods from being used.

To Obama's credit he has not kept his promise to shut down those operations and further to his credit he was even willing to take the long way there to have a better chance at success. He deserves all that credit. He does not deserve any kind of credit that suggests it was his leadership that made the difference in finding bin Laden. THAT is the only point I was making, it was the claims that Obama was the difference that made me post this yesterday... and of course I enjoyed making a little dig to the FOO's who find this obvious fact so disturbing.

To see them making claims that the next election is in the bag now because of this event is ridiculous! What exactly did Obama do to wrap up the election? He followed the plan that Bush started with at almost every turn, he initially was against the surge in Iraq saying it wouldn't work and he was against the secret interigations, GITMO etc. yet once he was President he kept them in play and that is the only part he played in CAUSING the event to take place. He gets the usual credit for being the captain at the helm when the ship returned from battle but he did not alter the course laid out from the previous captain and it was THAT COURSE laid out for him that led him to being able to take the wheel for the victorious return leg of the trip not some wonderful navigation changes he made. Obama was like the guy telling Christopher Columbus that the world was flat and then he got to steer the Santa Maria to port at Plymouth Rock and now a bunch of his friends want us to believe it was his brilliance that let us discover America?!? bull★■◆●!!

My point is about the decision to use the methods necessary to get the result we are happy about today. We all know who made that decision and we all know who was against that decision. And now we get to see the sycophants in the media ignore all reality to try and spin what we all know into something totally false for the sake of their own political agenda.

Any attempt to change the subject like TC did is just weak and TopGun you can take your fingers out of your ears and stop chanting 'I can't hear you...I can't hear you...' and just quietly ignore it without showing us how easily frustrated you get.

I think to say I'm carrying water for the repubs is way wrong. I'm carrying water for the fight against partisan bull★■◆● in the media. In this case it doesn't even help the repubs it simply refuses to accept the extra credit they are trying to give Obama that he doesn't deserve so to interpret it as pro repub/anti dem is an indication of the bias held by those who make that knee-jerk interpretation.
It doesn't make me forget all I hate about the R's to hold this position. I'd be a sellout to all my principles if I didn't hold it! Right is right no matter who it helps or hurts.

[CUDA]

In reality, they both get some. Obama has taken alot of political points from his base on these war issues, and if you are really conservative and not a party fan boy then this post should be about the credit he legitimatly deserves (and also bush)

Agreed, now someone might want to let TC in on the secret.

[woodchip]

Curious how one and all on the left are lauding Obama and special operations for the wet op the ended bin Laden's life. In the not too distant past the left was besmirching special ops teams:

"Under Bush, JSOC was routinely smeared by the left and placed at the center of many Bush/Cheney conspiracy theories. Specifically, New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh alleged it was Dick Cheney's personal assassination squad: "

So I guess now that it is Obama's personal assassination squad we can give special ops a gold star with a job well done lapel pin. Other than Obama giving the nod to go ahead the real people who should take credit are all those nameless people who tracked, ran interrogations, stitched together the leads and seal team 6 for running the last 40 minutes of a decades long operation. Bush and Obama were only bit players in comparison.

[null0010]

Curious how one and all on the left are lauding Obama and special operations for the wet op the ended bin Laden's life. In the not too distant past the left was besmirching special ops teams

Who on this site has done that?

[Spidey]

“They’re our planes now”

[null0010]

“They’re our planes now”

That was 18 years ago.

[woodchip]

Curious how one and all on the left are lauding Obama and special operations for the wet op the ended bin Laden's life. In the not too distant past the left was besmirching special ops teams

Who on this site has done that?

Wasn't relating comment to board members.

[Spidey]

I have a long memory.

[Tunnelcat]

Reality just doesn't get in your way at all!

And who's reality are you sniffing? You trying to guild the turd called Bush for posterity? The President who started 2 unfunded wars, started the ball rolling on the biggest national debt in history, brought torture as an viable and illegal option for interrogation of our enemies, gave us military tribunals, started wholesale spying on American citizens, was responsible for the elimination of Habius Corpus, created the draconian Homeland Security agency that has given us porno scans at airports, cut funding to support our veterans AFTER they've sacrificed parts of their bodies for our country AND Bush and crew didn't have the foresight to fund the military sufficiently at the start to protect our soldiers from IED's, making them easy bomb fodder! Nice legacy! Oh, and don't forget that binge drunking draft dodging episode of his youth, courtesy of his daddy's connections, which really makes him qualified as a military leader. And before you gripe, since Obama's not reversed any of Bush's crap, he's sliding down that same soulless road his predecessor did, since he's done absolutely nothing to change the evils bought about by the Bush Imperial Reign. He may have gotten Bin Laden, but he's sold his and our souls to do it.

One also has to consider whether Bush knew about the 9/11 plot beforehand. It'll never be provable theory, but everything about it smells. Consider this, he took the longest vacation in presidential history, 3 weeks, then after learning that Bin Laden was plotting to attack the U.S., what does he do? Go back to Washington to provide some leadership? Nope. He hops right over straight to Florida and reads children's books to a classroom of kids while American citizens died horribly. Oh, and by the way, his brother and gov. of Florida, Jeb, just happened to mobilize the state National Guard just before little Georgie arrives. Not quit marital law, but squeakingly close to it. So why? Governors haven't done it for regular presidential visit before. Why for that particular visit? Brotherly love? Kiss, kiss. Seems kind of fishy, so I can see why the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories got going. But even if you discount that, his very actions of ignoring those pointed warnings about Bin Laden was a serious lapse of judgement and makes him culpable. That and his family being in bed with the Saudis for so long didn't help matters either. You'll notice we no longer have any bases in Saudi Arabia now. Must have traded favors so he'd have Iraq as a fallback to get some new ones.

FACT: Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were NOT in Iraq before or after 9/11!

So where does Bush go sniffing after giving Afghanistan a cursory look and after blowing his best chance of getting Bin Laden and making himself a hero? Hmmmm, Iraq? Ding, ding, ding, YES! So why did he invade Iraq? Bin Laden there? Nope. If you said OIL, you win, because it's either the oil or revenge against Saddam for his daddy's failure, the latter not a very flattering international policy decision.

Sure, his evil water-boarding torture methods, which violated all international laws by the way and forever stained our international reputation (listening Obama?), gave us one tiny little lead from a terrorist prisoner, the name of Bin Laden's courier. So I'll give him credit with that. But then what did Bush and the CIA under his direction do with that little tidbit? Swing and a miss! They even disbanded the CIA station responsible for going after Bin Laden. Of course, they were getting a little stir crazy trying to find the guy all this time, but it sounds like the priority was no longer there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washi ... intel.html

FACT: Obama made it one of his priorities to find Bin Laden. He didn't lose sight of the ball like little Bushie did. Maybe Bush started it, but Obama sure oversaw finishing the job, which is what counts. So tough luck Bushie lovers! Same thing happens within any corporation. One manager may start and build a project, but if he gets fires or goes elsewhere, he's no longer the one in charge. The guy running the project at the end gets the kudos and accolades. Actually, Clinton started looking first, but he whiffed too.

Personally woodchip, you may think that lefties don't like special ops, but I myself never besmirched special ops teams. Those guys do the hardest, most dangerous and most difficult jobs in the military. I applaud what they do and we need their service and sacrifice. I personally like the Navy Seals. I think they're the best at what they do.

[TheWhat]

I don't think Foil will like that graphic dude...especially since this is DBB.NET, not DBB.COM.

Who you crackin' on spambot? 13 of the first 30 threads in this vastly diverse discussion forum are your posts. Why don't you start a weblog so we can forego this crap?

You brilliant people do realize Obama called Bill Clinton and George Bush to tell them of the mission when it was complete, right? And maybe everyone tasked to track terrorist activities since the Reagan administration might have something to do with the success of the mission, right? Sooo... what's the point of the thread? I know ya'll have top security clearance and have inside knowledge and if you did would be discussing it on a dead videogame web forum, right? Because you wouldn't get in trouble or something, right? Tossers.

[Will Robinson]

snip...endless campaign rhetoric.../snip....

note: Bush isn't going to be on the ballot, you can throw away the Bush notes and replace them with whatever the DNC is issuing for the upcoming cycle.

FACT: Obama made it one of his priorities to find Bin Laden. He didn't lose sight of the ball like little Bushie did.

Real FACTS:
* The only way the CIA found him was they were looking for a courier to Ossama that was exposed to them back in 2005 under the interrogations Bush established... interrogations Obama and the Dem's were against .

* They didn't know his real name and have been trying to identify him all this time and it was more intel gathered from GITMO that ultimately gave them his real name 5 years later. GITMO being that place Obama and the Dem's said they would close and said Bush had no right to send prisoners too...

*Only last summer they finally picked up a cell phone call from the courier to another suspect, one that the CIA had one of those illegal phone taps on...you know, the phone taps that Obama and the Dem's said Bush was wrong to do as well...

*The phone call led the CIA operatives on the ground to be able to physically find and follow the courier to the bin Laden compound only last August.

So I can't tell you where Obama, acting on his declared priorities, comes into play making him the master of those events...it looks to me his best contribution was to not screw up that which was already quite obviously in play before he became President!

Considering his capacity to screw up things he deserves some gratitude for letting the guys who really did make it a priority to find bin Laden continue the work they started before Obama ever had his first appearance on Oprah, and damn Trump anyway for making him have to rush that whole thing because god only knows how that interfered with his other priorities! Somewhere a kid is dying from malnutrition because Obama was sabotaged by that giant comb over on his way to campaign...er...I mean save the world!

Maybe Bush started it, but Obama sure oversaw finishing the job, which is what counts.

Let me fix that for you:
'Maybe Bush started it and put in place the authority and plan to use what tools were necessary to find bin Laden completely against the will and political machinations of Obama and the Dem's but Obama sure did hope no one would mention those facts when he said he gave the order to kill bin Laden. And that is all that counts to some FOO's.'

[null0010]

Youtube: Bush concedes apathy regarding Osama bin Laden

"Enhanced" torture techniques did not lead to the death of Osama bin Laden

Care to try again, Will?

[Will Robinson]

Youtube: Bush concedes apathy regarding Osama bin Laden

"Enhanced" torture techniques did not lead to the death of Osama bin Laden

Care to try again, Will?

Does it really matter that it was the regular interrogation or the waterboarding when the point is, if Obama and the Dems had their way those interrogations wouldn't have taken place because the prisoners would have been read Miranda rights, never seen the military interrogation and provided an endless supply of fancy lawyers inside our criminal justice system and the only thing we would have got was terrorists pleading the 5th amendment and doing interviews and publishing books about their lives in between remodeling the prison mosques and appeal appearances on Court TV!!

Bush is way too wrapped up in the integrity of the Office of the President to say I told you so. But we remember what the Dems and Obama said. You can't change that.

[null0010]

Obama now uses military interrogations and tribunals, too. And even when he didn't, nothing like this bizarre fantasy of Court TV appearances and book deals happened with terrorism suspects.

[Will Robinson]

Obama now uses military interrogations and tribunals, too.

Yes, he does, and he found out the hard way he was wrong in the campaign when he said Bush shouldn't be doing it. It sort of goes with my original observation doesn't it?

And even when he didn't, nothing like this bizarre fantasy of Court TV appearances and book deals happened with terrorism suspects.

Not quite, because "when he didn't" he basically did nothing!
He just stalled making excuses while trying to find the political will to bring them here to put them in the system but eventually he changed his mind and kept GITMO open...remember the State of NY saying 'WTF? Try the bastards here and give them court appointed lawyers?!? WTF? Holder.... WTF? Obama?!?'
I'm pretty sure none of the high profile prisoners got brought to the U.S. and had the opportunity to have that scenario play out.

Obama is President and he made the call to go in with real troops on the ground to do it with some precision. That took some guts as far as politicians and guts go.
I give him that and I don't care if you can find a way to take any credit away from Bush for it. Bush did plenty wrong when he had his chance to live up to the potential. I started complaining when he delayed going into Fallujah, obviously because of the election coming up then...
It is only the FOO's that think the CIA finding Ossama proves something special about Obama that ticked me off.
Obama wasn't on board with the methods that gave us this outcome and I find it aggravating that people in the media want to help him profit politically just for being there at the right time. I understand the Dem hacks doing it but the rest of them might want to check the job description in the encyclopedia for journalist...or have they edited that too?!?

You have heard the expression: 'Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes' right?
Well that doesn't mean we should change the Field Guide to Small Critters to read "Squirrels have extra sensory perception to help them find food". TC thinks the democrat squirrels do.

[Top Gun]

With all due respect, Will, even if the incarceration and interrogation methods in question had provided the specific data that allowed us to nail Osama, would that make them any more or less justified? Shouldn't the moral validity of those tactics stand independent of any results they generated? Or do you really want to go down an "ends justify the means" road?

[null0010]

And even when he didn't, nothing like this bizarre fantasy of Court TV appearances and book deals happened with terrorism suspects.

Not quite, because "when he didn't" he basically did nothing!
He just stalled making excuses while trying to find the political will to bring them here to put them in the system but eventually he changed his mind and kept GITMO open...remember the State of NY saying 'WTF? Try the bastards here and give them court appointed lawyers?!? WTF? Holder.... WTF? Obama?!?'
I'm pretty sure none of the high profile prisoners got brought to the U.S. and had the opportunity to have that scenario play out.

Did you not read that article I linked in my previous post at all? According to Eric Holder, the Attorney General:

The fact is, federal courts have proven to be an unparalleled instrument for bringing terrorists to justice. Our courts have convicted hundreds of terrorists since September 11, and our prisons safely and securely hold hundreds today, many of them serving long sentences. There is no other tool that has demonstrated the ability to both incapacitate terrorists and collect intelligence from them over such a diverse range of circumstances as our traditional justice system. Our national security demands that we continue to prosecute terrorists in federal court, and we will do so. Our heritage, our values, and our legacy to future generations also demand that we have full faith and confidence in a court system that has distinguished this nation throughout its history.

And just a little further down in the article:

While hundreds of successfully completed terrorism trials have taken place in the federal courts, the military commissions have resulted in only five convictions, including one in the trial of a former child soldier that relied on evidence obtained through torture.

Are you still going to maintain that federal trials are ineffective?

[Will Robinson]

He kept the high profile ones in GITMO. We took in well over a thousand and most of them were spontaneous belligerents not guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. So yea, I'll concede I made a sweeping generalization and should have been more specific. You are right, the courts work fine for a lot of the kids and villagers and average-angry-arab men who decided to join in the fight against the invading americans.
However, If you took Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others like him who had a bag thrown over their heads and woke up 16 hours later from a plane ride to find themselves, not in shiny America, but in a dirty dungeon in the hands of eastern European military interrogators (you know, the ones who just love Muslims) and a few non uniform CIA types standing around to observe the 'interrogation' you present a very unsettling potential outcome to the prisoner compared to what goes through his mind when you introduce him to his own personal Johnny Cochran who instructs him to refuse to say anything and then insists to his captors they provide him with suitable food, with medical attention, fresh bedding, a shower, a brand new prayer rug, instructions on where to find the prison mosque, a new Koran...and they respond by complying!

Do that and all of a sudden the prisoner isn't motivated to accommodate you, he wants to keep his lawyer happy because his lawyer seems to have some power in the criminal justice system.
Also in the criminal justice system the prisoner is entitled to see a lot of your evidence in the discovery process and that includes intel you might not want to trust him and his lawyer with. You start throwing rights and comforts at a prisoner instead of threats and pain and he is in charge to a much larger degree than we would like him to feel in the early stages of his stay with us.

Can the criminal justice work? Sure, it can do what it does with any prisoner. And Obama and Holder are right in wanting to use it but circumstances dictate a few exceptions. If KSM and a few others had been put there right away like the Dem's and Obama wanted bin Laden would probably be chilling in his house right now. I guess it really isn't that I don't want the criminal justice system to decide their innocence and guilt but you have to keep them out of that system until you are through with them as wartime prisoners and that creates all sorts of legal problems for Bush/Obama.
Even with all the flaws and consequences that come with the methods we used at least they also came with some results.

You don't get to claim the methods are wrong, then keep them in place when you get control of the system, take credit for the positive results they bring and still claim the methods don't work!
Well, you can make the claim but you would have to be talking to FOO's if you want them to believe it.

[Will Robinson]

With all due respect, Will, even if the incarceration and interrogation methods in question had provided the specific data that allowed us to nail Osama, would that make them any more or less justified? Shouldn't the moral validity of those tactics stand independent of any results they generated? Or do you really want to go down an "ends justify the means" road?

Every thing we all do in life is, to some degree, governed by our considering the ends justifying the means.
In wartime we 'justify' a lot of stuff we don't in peacetime etc. I have always believed that once you decide to start killing people as your justified solution to a problem the pain you cause them on their way to death suddenly becomes a really tiny factor in the ends/means calculation. I accepted Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fire bombing of Dresden etc. as acceptable so waterboarding a murderous Islamo-fascist is like a muffin with my coffee...I don't even need to think about it.

[null0010]

I accepted Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fire bombing of Dresden etc. as acceptable

There are multiple ways to approach the merit of events like these. You seem to be using a consequentialist mode of thinking, which explicitly states "the ends always justify the means." There are also deontology, which holds that the rightness of an action is determined by the action itself, and virtue ethics, which holds that the rightness of an action is determined by how the action would reflect on the character of the actor.

So, for example:

Consequentialist: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were morally justifiable because these actions prevented an even larger death toll from an invasion of mainland Japan.

Deontological: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not morally justifiable because dropping bombs on innocent civilians is wrong, no matter the context.

Virtue Ethics: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not morally justifiable because killing innocent civilians made the United States look bad.

[Will Robinson]

I accepted Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fire bombing of Dresden etc. as acceptable

There are multiple ways to approach the merit of events like these. You seem to be using a consequentialist mode of thinking, which explicitly states "the ends always justify the means." There are also deontology, which holds that the rightness of an action is determined by the action itself, and virtue ethics, which holds that the rightness of an action is determined by how the action would reflect on the character of the actor.

So, for example:

Consequentialist: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were morally justifiable because these actions prevented an even larger death toll from an invasion of mainland Japan.

Deontological: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not morally justifiable because dropping bombs on innocent civilians is wrong, no matter the context.

Virtue Ethics: Bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not morally justifiable because killing innocent civilians made the United States look bad.

You left out the Non Absolutist Deontologist which is kind of where I am coming from in this.

The people I'm suggesting we should single out for 'special treatment' are people that are not the least bit appeased by any degree of civility in the way we conduct ourselves on or off the battle field. They don't pose a higher risk to us because we don't extend civil rights to their murderous henchmen. So once we have flipped on the war/kill switch the rules are tweaked. The military should be concerned with consequences. The politicians can pretend to have virtue until they flip the switch, then it's a whole new game.

[null0010]

I do not think there should be a "switch," to use your metaphor.

[Will Robinson]

I do not think there should be a "switch," to use your metaphor.

Do you think Obama should be tried for invading a sovereign country and assassinating a person living there?

[null0010]

I do not think there should be a "switch," to use your metaphor.

Do you think Obama should be tried for invading a sovereign country and assassinating a person living there?

Here I am conflicted. It is a difficult moral question. On the one hand, the death of Osama bin Laden is certainly going to have an effect that will benefit the United States and other targets of al-Qaeda by destabilizing their central leadership and affecting their funding. On the other hand, conducting this operation without the consent or knowledge of Pakistani officials seems to me to have been a bad idea. However, Barack Obama has made it very clear to the Pakistani government that he was going to authorize the death of Osama bin Laden, on multiple occaisions, stretching back to the 2008 campaign. That is a grey area.

I do not think that murder is an appropriate response to Osama bin Laden, reprehensible though his actions have been. I think this man should have been tried in the United States Justice System and the International Criminal Court and questioned on the extent of his operation. The failure to do so is, at the very least, an incredible waste of an opportunity to gather intelligence to permanently dismantle the network of al-Qaeda, and at worst, a moral failing of the highest level.

[Duper]

Murder????

We declared war on that organization. War is about killing people. we killed, war over. (nearly)

[null0010]

What is the difference between assassination and murder?