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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: 2) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @08:13AM
Nobody believes they didn't take DNA.
Nobody.
Just because they haven't shown it to you doesn't mean they don't have it.
Nobody believes they didn't take pictures of the body.
Nobody.
But they haven't shown you those either.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 23 2015, @08:43AM
Our media said that samples were taken and verified, and if he is the most wanted man on the planet then somebody had to have a more persistent and accessible sample anyway.
The funny thing is that I believe that. The official story surrounding the death itself, not so much.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @06:32PM
The US made special attempts to get sibling DNA through the Saudis.
I think, (but don't know for sure) that they were successful.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Friday October 23 2015, @02:34PM
So ... the proof that these things exist is that we haven't any evidence? Cool!
"Oh! Let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday October 23 2015, @04:05PM
The AC's argument was that lack of evidence that they do have it is evidence that they don't.
We're talking about conspiracy theories and you disagree with the guy saying you're not being skeptical enough?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Friday October 23 2015, @06:15PM
Well strictly speaking, the lack of evidence is evidence that we don't have any evidence. And nothing else.
That much is true, no matter what side of the argument you're on.
Do I think the lack of a body is suspicious? Yes. Do I think they took DNA samples? What difference would that make, either way? They could have DNA samples and he could be walking around alive and well. Or he could be dead as a doornail and the samples fell out of the plane and were lost.
The lack of evidence is only evidence that we don't have any evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @04:22PM
No, you blithering nitwit! No "proof" is being offered to you. We don't have time to engage conspiracy theory wingnuts like the lot of you commenting here. You can believe whatever the hell you want to believe. The rest of us are all just going to laugh at you while we watch you chase your tails. Is it crystal clear now?
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Friday October 23 2015, @06:10PM
You're supposed to say "fnord" after a paragraph like that one.
Kids these days ... no respect for tradition.