SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
American history is filled with war stories that subsequently unraveled. Consider the Bush administration's false claims about Saddam Hussein's supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction or the imagined attack on a U.S. vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin. Now Johnathan Mahler writes in the NY Times about the inconsistencies in the official US story about bin Laden's death. "Almost immediately, the administration had to correct some of the most significant details of the raid," writes Mahler. Bin Laden had not been ''engaged in a firefight,'' as the deputy national-security adviser, John Brennan, initially told reporters; he'd been unarmed. Nor had he used one of his wives as a human shield. The president and his senior advisers hadn't been watching a ''live feed'' of the raid in the Situation Room; the operation had not been captured on helmet-cams.
But according to Mahler there is the sheer improbability of the story itself, which asked us to believe that Obama sent 23 SEALs on a seemingly suicidal mission, invading Pakistani air space without air or ground cover, fast-roping into a compound that, if it even contained bin Laden, by all rights should have been heavily guarded. How likely was that? Abbottabad is basically a garrison town; the conspicuously large bin Laden compound — three stories, encircled by an 18-foot-high concrete wall topped with barbed wire — was less than two miles from Pakistan's equivalent of West Point. ''The story stunk from Day 1,'' says Seymour Hersh whose most consequential claim was about how bin Laden was found in the first place. According to Hersh, it was not years of painstaking intelligence-gathering, he wrote, that led the United States to the courier and, ultimately, to bin Laden. Instead, the location was revealed by a ''walk-in'' — a retired Pakistani intelligence officer who was after the $25 million reward that the United States had promised anyone who helped locate him. And according to Hersh, the daring raid wasn't especially daring. The Pakistanis allowed the U.S. helicopters into their airspace and cleared out the guards at the compound before the SEALs arrived. The most blatant lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission.
"It's not that the truth about bin Laden's death is unknowable," concludes Mahler. "it's that we don't know it. And we can't necessarily console ourselves with the hope that we will have more answers any time soon; to this day, the final volume of the C.I.A.'s official history of the Bay of Pigs remains classified. We don't know what happened more than a half-century ago, much less in 2011."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @06:41AM
Cover stories prevent a lot of people getting killed. Plausible deniability was always going to be part of the story.
I don't know a single person that believed it ever went down exactly as we were told. I don't think anybody ever expected that.
The fiction protects people willing to help capture Bin Laden who may be still living in Pakistan, including some in the Pakistani intelligence service, who were never trusted by their own government.
There are still secrets about WWII that aren't admitted.
Pakistani West Point? Give me a break. Its a military high school. They students don't even have weapons.
(Besides, is there a single person on this list that believes the Cadets at the US West Point would have the slightest clue about a Canadian fugitive hiding quietly in the suburbs on the outskirts of West Point, or that the cadets would offer any resistance if a company of Canadian Mounties arrived by helicopter to snatch him? And it it was revealed the US knew he was there all along, who would be surprised?)
As for Pakistani air cover? They are pretty incompetent anyway, and could have simply received an evenings liberty, via real or forged orders, and we have no idea whether there was stealth air cover or not.
I suspect much of the story was invented to save face for many different Pakistani military officers. And I'm OK with that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @08:30AM
A terrible plan if one RPG could have totally ruined it...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @10:57AM
There are still secrets about WWII that aren't admitted.
Like what? Genuinely curious, not being sarcastic.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 23 2015, @11:27AM
Assuming a parallel between WWII and 9/11, it is in the air that Pearl Harbor could have been prevented just like 9/11. But for some reason, both were allowed to happen.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @01:18PM
In case anyone is interested here is a decent little article giving an overview on the pearl harbor claims.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1207/p02s04-usgn.html [csmonitor.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @06:26PM
Now now, mustn't let facts and reasoning interfere with the conspiracy nut-jobs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday October 23 2015, @03:58PM
or that the cadets would offer any resistance if a company of Canadian Mounties arrived by helicopter to snatch him?
We're even talking about special forces. A bunch of guys in black with night vision and silenced submachine guns or whatever, presumably roping down from one of those stealth helicopters.
Definitely not intimidating at all ;)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @05:59PM
frojack is one of those people that can write well and conform to the interests of their general audience, but if you dig a millimeter below that topsoil you realize his firm grounding in reality is actually a cow-manure bog.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday October 25 2015, @01:01AM
Good thing I wasn't agreeing with him. Then I might've looked *really* foolish.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"