Osama Bin Laden is dead - It’s time to end our wars
By louisehartmann
Osama Bin Laden is dead. US forces shot and killed the leader of Al-Qaeda yesterday in a highly secure compound just 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The boy of Bin Laden was secured and identified him using a sample of his brain tissue – before being buried at sea in accordance with Muslim traditions. President Obama addressed the nation last night to say, “We can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror: justice has been done” So what happens now?
Setting aside the morale boosting effects that the death of Bin Laden will have on US forces and the consoling effects that the death will have on people who lost loved ones – and the political effects for President Obama – does taking out Bin Laden really change anything in our “War on Terror”? Does it at least validate our efforts in the last decade? Our nation is vastly different than we were ten years ago when we set out to get Bin Laden – and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find one person who would argue it has been change for the better. And as a result, there are more men, women, and children that want to kill America than before we started. And despite the trillions spent in our War on Terror and the news we been made – we can’t honestly claim we are any safer today.
Yeah, we got Bin Laden – a criminal is dead – but looking at the list of problems our country is STILL facing at this hour because we decided to react to a crime with a war – he was the least of our worries. It’s time to end our wars.
Comments
#2
facts
#3
Do Matter
#4
not true fourarrows - this from an expert....
Islam allows burial at sea in extraordianry circumstances or instances where there is a concern that the body may be "exhumed, attacked or dug up and mutilated by the enemy".
http://www.al-islam.org/laws/burial.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/05/02/f-bin-laden-burial.html
The conspirators will say that even this was fabicated, part of the plot! You can't win with true-belivers and fundamentalists - indeed, that is their only hold and grasp on reality - the real thing is just too much for them to deal with!
#5
Now if only conservatives and socialists could be friends, it would be a wonderful world.
#6
Just watched 19 of the videos about 911 on the existential cowbow web site. They show one right after the other...on and on....don't know how many they end up showing...got tired and want to go to bed. But I have to say that although I have seen many of these 9-12 minute videos and the scenes in them before (interviews, etc) I have seen some new ones....very, very interesting...especially about the information about AB Buzzy Krongard, the interconnecting weave of acquaintences and good ole boy back slapping deals and the very, very unusual numbers of put options done just before 911. A number of very select numbers of people around the world...not Arabs....were expecting something terrible enough to happen that would make them fortunes. The series of connected videos are called "911 Coincidences". All you have to do is click on the first one and wait the few seconds between the vids and they continue automatically.
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/
I believe that the whole neocon/neoliberal conspiracy was all connected with the crooked economic ponzi schemes about to go bust...and some did go bust ...like...the Enron, Worldcom, (eventually taking down big financial behemoths), the Energy scam against California and elsewhere, the mortgage bubbles and insurance rackets, and wild speculative and wreckless abandon of uncontrollable derivatives by insider Wall Street gangsters and banksters. They all knew that unless there was a way to really corral people, make them very scared of an outsider...Muslim...no less...evil villain...that worked for the CIA (code named Tim Osman)....that many heads would roll. Could they have managed to get a massive tax-payer bailout any other way? Could they have been able to destroy social security and other social safety nets (they're working on it) any other way? It also had to do with oil, the control of oil, and eventual world domination. Seig Heil!
#7
Does Osama bin Laden have nine lives?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Osama-bin-Laden-s-Second-D-by-paul-craig-roberts-110502-455.html
#8
Obama Sin Laden- interesting what the letters BS can do. Like, did we really need to spend a few thousand on the President's "The Trump Whitehouse" neon decoration? He will continue to funnel money to the Texas oilmen military-industrial complex as the Army's April Fool's Day hat suggested.
XXXXX
#9
I know there are a lot of people who schoff at the 9/11 truthers. Even if you find it difficult or unimaginable to believe that our leaders would engage in the deed or allow it to happen, you must certainly ask yourself the following questions:
Why did the 9/11 investigation begin some 500 days past the event?
Why was all the evidence carted (and melted down) away before investigators could see it?
Why did Building 7 fall when it was not hit by a plane or debris--Building 6 stood between it and the Twin Towers? Building 7 was not mentioned in the 9/11 Comission Report.
Why did the fall of the towers look like a controlled demolition (Building 7 fell the same way)? Why did they fall at all? No other buildings hit by airplanes have fallen in that manner. Why didn't the buildings just pancake, or just topple, and follow the laws of physics. Each intact floor below would have slowed the interia of the above falling floors? The supports of the lower floors would have had to be weakened in order for the building to free fall.
Why did we go into Iraq and put so many resources there when bin Laden, the supposed mastermind, was in Afghanistan/Pakistan?
There are just too many things that don't make sense and facts/questions that cannot be denied.
#10
I'm a sometime listener, not a reader of this blog, not a chat room poster. I tend to agree with nearly all of your positions. But I just had to sign up and log in to say that, as a professional broadcaster, you have no excuse for your repeated and repeated and repeated confusing of "Obama" and "Osama." It makes you look bad, makes the president look bad, help conspiracy nuts who say the president is a Muslim make their insane connections. You are a pro; find a way, stop making the mistake, there is no excuse.
#11
If people don't have very serious reservations about the "official 911 conspiracy theory" and don't have a big red flag flashing before their eyes, they are not, and most probably will never see the real truth behind the 911 attacks. They are not really paying attention nor do they want to look at any evidence that would contradict the official conspiracy theory....as full of holes as it has. They will always bury their heads in the sands of ignorance and hide in their cellars of "lets believe what we are told". They will find any excuse not to really look into all of the evidence and see the overwhelming non-sequiturs and "coincidences" of 911. There are so many that I won't bother to try to post any here...many people's eyes and minds would gloss over anyway. Yes, there are a lot of kooky conspiracy theories but some of those are done by our own government as a psyops propaganda ploy to confuse people and get them to associate the nuttiest conspiracy theories with all theories...except their own...of course. And others are done by...well, kooks who either sincerely believe in their concoctions despite any really believable evidence to back them up....and rely on stretches of the imagination...and who are motivated by $$ and attention. But there are very prominent organizations made up of hundreds or thousands of prominent clear-headed thinkers...of scientists, engineers, architects, pilots, law-enforcement, firefighters, and many more who have been convinced that the official conspiracy theory is a lie.
I am absolutely not a Republican and hate those criminal greedsters and I am more of a Democrat....except I am finding that institutional Democrats are not really our friends either...as evidenced by their false promises and rhetoric and "sell out to the rich" actions. Some of those institutional Democrats will try to paint people like me as some kind of Republican detractor of Obama's re-election. They will do the same thing that the JDL and AIPAC do to people who see, and understand, how the world (and specifically, here in America) gets accused of anti-semitism, anti-israel, insensibilities even with the most sincere and honest opinions of those being accused. There are a lot of Jews, in Israel, and elsewhere in the world who hate what the zionistas have done in their name. There are, of course, blatant haters and xenophobes, and religious zealots that go to extremes to name-call and make evidence-lacking accusations against these, once victims. But they started becoming less of a victim as soon as they opened their own torture and death camps in Poland after the war. (read John Sack's "An Eye for an Eye"). And they are far from being victims for many, many years now....evidenced by their unprovoked and criminal attack on the USS Liberty and their continual subjugation and criminal actions against the Palestinians.
This happens with other groups that want to play their upper hand and force people to abide by their will as well. They will try to back you into a corner and ply their psychological thumb-screws to either make you back down or make everyone else believe that you are the one to blame for "slandering" poor innocent people who had to endure the holocaust or slavery. I am not anti-black, anti-latino, anti-Jew, anti-WASP, or anti-WASA, or anti anything except anti exploitation of the rich against the poor. I am not even anti rich. I am not anti capitalism (if it has the necessary and appropriate checks to keep it from running rampant...as it has been doing...against others). So yes, I am virulently anti-laissez faire capitalism. So I am hardly a Republican...keep that in mind tomorrow when Thom claims that Republicans are using the same kind of language I have expressed about Obama. I am not an Obama hater and wish him well but he is just not cut out to be President any more that Little Bush was. We need someone who can kick Republican a$$ and not get constantly pushed around by them.
According to Tariq Ali, on the Laura Flanders show, I believe I heard him say that it was really unclear just who got OBL, the Pakistanis or the Americans...and that it was not believable that OBL was living their, in that compound without many high up Pakistani officials knowing about it. That they finally sold him out. Was the price that America paid, in the relative eve of re-election high enough for the Pakistanis to finally sell OBL out. Was it even OBL? They wasted no time destroying the evidence. Like, you are going to believe photographs...in today's technology, you just cannot believe photographs (digital or otherwise). This all smells very fishy...really!
Well, it looks like, tomorrow, Thom's subject will be, possibly, doing the same thing against those of us Democrats who have seen through the hypocrisy of the institutional Democrat Party and try to counter our accusations that many of the members of the institutional Democrat Party are playing the people for all they can get. Like the Republicans, they are not interested in helping the poor, the working classes, or retired people. In my opinion, they are being doubly sneaky and pretending to be on our side while the rich continue to screw us all. They are being used as a smoke-and-mirrors, bait-and-switch, political pressure-relief valve that will buy yet more time to complete the job of complete slavery of all but those ruling elite. But their Pressure-relief valve is getting clogged up with people who no longer will buy into the ruse. I really hate it that, by my position, I might be aiding Republicans who might be doing anything they can to blight Obama and the Democrats but when the Democrat Party has carried on as it has, and has the attitude that "we have no other choice", then I will no longer be their "useful idiot". The pretenders deserve to lose their throne. Though our country back to the dogs that will rip the country apart in the light of day rather than letting the sniveling backstabbers pretend to be our buddies. At least in the first case, the country may see no other alternative but revolution against their oppressors.
I say that it would be really terrible if the Republicans took away the Presidency....but it is even worse when we have a proven useful-idiot for the wealthy ruling elite....war criminals...and blood thirsty capitalist vampires that pretends to be our friend but is stabbing us in the back. Again, I was fooled....I was Obama's and the institutional Democrat's, and ultimately the ruling elite's useful idiot in voting for Obama the first time. I won't vote for him again.
We desperately need to break our imprisonment by the two-party system, and elect someone different "for a change".
Incidentally, it was quite funny that Thom kept getting Obama and Osama mixed up. hmmmmm!!!
#12
"It remains unclear what, if any, role Pakistan’s military or intelligence forces played in the operation to kill bin Laden. US officials have said only that Pakistani intel aided the eventual operation. “We shared our intelligence on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan,” said an unnamed senior administration official. “That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel.” The fact that bin Laden’s compound was a stone’s throw from a Pakistani military installation in an urban area raises disturbing questions about how Pakistan’s military or intelligence services would not be aware of his location. As of this writing, the White House has not commented on this fact."
"Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high value terrorists. The Obama administration’s expansion of US Special Operations activities globally has been authorized under a classified order dating back to the Bush administration."
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160332/jsoc-black-ops-force-took-down-bin-...
And Mushariff is now claiming that the US violated their air space and sovereignty. My question is if we can send our hit men into other countries, with impunity, to kill people we believe are "high value terrorists" then does that mean that other countries who consider US officials "high value terrorists"...like Bush, Rummy, even now...Obama....that the other countries can send in elite forces to take out our "terrorists"? Of course, our disgusting weasel politicians will try to say "the terrorists" are out to get everyone, and anyone, in America when they may only be trying to protect their own sorry a$$e$.
#13
I bought and read this book many years ago but every time the term "Marshall Plan" is used I think of the following: Operation Golden Lily and there was another plan based on the gold from Germany as well but can't remember the name of the operation.
"Douglas Valentine reviews “Gold Warriors,” Peggy and Sterling Seagrave’s account of how gold looted from Asia by Japan was used to fund crime and covert operations by the US and its satraps"
“Gold Warriors is more than a book about Japan’s “serious, sober and deliberate” plundering of Asia’s treasure from 1895 until 1945, and its collusion after the war with American officials to recover and use the loot as a secret political action slush fund to promote right wing regimes: Gold Warriors:America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold is a journey into the darkest recesses of history and the human soul.
Authors Peggy and Sterling Seagrave not only unravel one of the greatest crimes and cover-ups ever, they reveal something new and startling about the depths of human depravity and barbarity, and the human capacity for deceit."
"...in order to share in the plunder, members of General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation army, along with US government officials and banks, connived to absolve Japanese corporations, war criminals and drug smugglers many prominent officials in the Post War government of responsibility for these ghastly crimes. How the Americans went about this is very interesting. To ensure his silence, General Yamashita was hanged by a military tribunal in February 1946, while his right hand man, Kojima, was tortured by a Filipino, Santa Romana, into revealing where the treasure vaults were buried in the Philippines. Romana then guided CIA officer Edward Lansdale to the loot. Lansdale did a quick inventory, and for the next 20 years supervised Romana, the unlikely front man for a number of slush funds. Thereafter the purloined gold was moved through 176 accounts in 42 banks in several countries, to people and organizations the CIA wanted to secretly support."
"....the Seagraves describe the devious means bankers have used to conceal the vast hordes of Nazi and Japanese gold in their possession."
"the Seagraves reveal how the banks use complex accounting methods, or claim that gold certificates are fake, or simply move gold to offshore accounts to conceal it."
"The reader will walk away from this book astounded and outraged at the immensity of the fraudulent activities that the world’s governments, banks, and spies are engaged in."
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/05/23/gold-warriors-how-plunder-from-asi...
#14
Kind of fun reading all these fairy tales! At least it keeps them out of more important things that are happening in the world. Next fairy tale - did you know that Obama is really a Robot! Really! Manufacture in China and controled by them, so as they can over the World when America goes South economically. Really!
#15
Gotta hand it to President Obama... He's not the Yosmite Sam or flight suit type like President Bush was... Obamas got a swagger, but it's a " Mindset" type of Swagger compared to Bush who liked to throwout threats and bully....now it's time to get outta Iraq and Afghanistan...
#16
Speaking of money and Bin Laden, I wonder if anybody or corporation took
out a dead peasant insurance policy on Bin Laden or just a regular death
insurance policy? There was a high probability that he would die soon in 2001,
but it took 11 years to happen. Probably no insurance company would insure him
anyway. He inherited 80 million dollars from his dad when he was 13.
I wonder if he had that money invested with high returns somewhere?
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Facts and reality do Matter. Try driving into a cement wall at 100 miles an hour. That’s a good test of reality.
Here is why I do not always believe what my government tells me. And why I am one of the few who still passionately believe that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld should all be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail or maybe even executed.
Prior to the lead up to the Iraq war, I was still working for the DOD. Even I, given the barest of facts, and just what I read and heard on the evening news, knew that these people were lying to the American people! And they even convinced Colin Powell! Iraq was a BIG lie! But since I was just a citizen, nothing much I could do anyway (Later I did – Hilary Clinton voted for this stupid war and that is why I voted for Obama). But I did base my decision on facts and logic alone, not conspiracy theories. It just not make any sense, and I was proved right – there was and never was any weapons of mass destruction. And what really galled me was watching bush doing a comedy routine looking for WMDs under tables! This after 1000s of our soldiers had been killed in Iraq! Sick!
OBL is Dead and it went down exactly as the administration is saying that it did. Why? Because it would just be totally impossible to fabricate or make up or cover up! There are also just way too many people involved. As to the burial at Sea, again, a very simple fact: Denial of the body to create a Shrine for his followers.
But this will keep the crazies busy for a very long time. It is way much easier to create fantasies than to digest facts. Facts are dry. Facts are concrete. Not much fun there. But fantasies – only endless vistas of fabricated nonsense.
You still all need to move into the late OBL now empty mansion in Pakistan! Maybe you will all get better inspiration there, assuming that your Pakistani neighbors will let you!