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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 Hyperturtle on Friday October 23 2015, @08:41PM
I think that when the new system comes, he will still have a role. I wouldn't hold it against him (assuming he is a he) for remaining anonymous. You know we're on the right track when we find someone that has similar thoughts under a valid username. Maybe that person won't admit to being our AC in question, maybe not.
There is nothing wrong with courage coming through after seeing how it is done, since only fools rush in. I too stand back and let the experts handle things, and then offer to help and do what I can. The hardest thing one can do is lead -- you have to be very good at not having nearly as high of a level of skills your wide team of specialists has. You have to be a leader, a skill few specialists have.
This person could be a leader in training, in waiting, or just doesn't know it yet. Certainly one may want to express opinions unbecoming to a leader.
If I tried to write anon now, I think people could likely identify me at this point, or may try to. So I log in when I can and try to prevent someone innocent for getting blamed from a post I might make AC because I didn't log in...
When we hit 10,000 users, 100,000 users -- we'll have more like him, but I have no problems with anonymous people remaining anonymous. Some people do not want the recognition, and some of those are the best people I've worked with. They are so hard to reward, and the expression of gratitude like yours (and hopefully mine) might go farther than any moderation or karma score could provide.