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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: 4, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Friday October 23 2015, @08:27AM
Your problem with the theory that it wasn't Bin Laden is: Why hasn't Bin Laden popped up somewhere else. Or at least why are the US government not concerned that he might? Why have Al Queda accepted the news that he's dead, right from the moment and to this day?
So much for your conspiracy theory. Occam's razor is that Bin Laden was indeed killed that day.
As for the "live feed" being busted from a lack of helmet cams... What kind of idiot ever imagined they were getting a first person shooter live feed to the Whitehouse. The politicians in that room don't want to see a multiple snuff movie live any more than any normal civvy. Clearly it was a feed to the military situation room.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 23 2015, @09:21AM
It was when Bin Laden was alive that Al-Qaeda was established as an ideology rather than an organization of people -- that was central to framing the war on terror as a perpetual undertaking rather than simply a battle to be won.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, You-SIS, We-SIS, whatever the terrorist bad-guys of the day call themselves, the struggle never ends. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @09:27AM
Re not bin laden:
1. No doubt AQ find the story - assassinated by the great satan - is a much better than, he died 5 years earlier in some pedestrian way like falling off a camel on amountain pass, or blowing up while making a bomb.
2. Else simply retiring on a CIA pension seems just as plausible.
Even so, I agree ... anything else - other than killed by raiders (near enough as claimed, allowed or not) - would seem less likely.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Friday October 23 2015, @10:59AM
Your problem with the theory that it wasn't Bin Laden is: Why hasn't Bin Laden popped up somewhere else. Or at least why are the US government not concerned that he might?
Because he's been dead since December, 2001 [nytimes.com]. Duh. Subsequent videos were actually a look-alike, done to keep the legend going and the troops motivated.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:45AM
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:50AM
Meh. Hit "post" instead of "preview". Oh well, you get the idea.