It is all over the networks. Obama will speak soon and share the details.
FoxNews has this word…
Here is the transcript of the President’s remarks on the operation that took down Bin Laden.
12 thoughts on “News reports: Osama Bin Laden is dead”
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I heard one of the commentators on ABC News say that his body was going to be buried at sea. I do not know if this has been proven to be factual or not. I suppose this would have to do with the idea of not allowing his tomb to become a point of veneration for Muslim extremists.
I’m still worried about the ‘martyrdom’ angle. A trial, followed by almost certain life imprisonment, would, IMHO, have been much better. (Admittedly, it may have been that ‘taking him alive’ just wasn’t a real possibility. However, it might have been good propaganda for the Obama administration to express – at least for ‘external’ consumption – ‘regret’ that he wasn’t captured alive pending a trial.)
The world is now vastly safer from Pulitzer-hungry journalists wanting to interview OBL in Gitmo and ruminate about what a “complex man” he is, so that’s a blessing in itself.
Regarding the burial at sea: it avoids the danger of a gravesite becoming either a pilgrimage site for his admirers or a vandalism/littering target for his detractors.
Predictably, it has already attracted criticism from some Muslim clerics. In Islamic law, burials at sea are not forbidden — hardly surprising given that many Muslim nations have been seafaring over the centuries — but they are discouraged unless absolutely necessary, and it’s not clear that the “absolutely necessary” condition was met in this case.
Of course, there will never be a shortage of carping imams ready to criticize America on some pretext or another.
Well, I don’t share the joy of many at Bin Laden’s death. It might have been much more useful to put together a tasteful dossier on his ‘champagne lifestyle’ and use it to highlight the man’s hypocrisy. (Wouldn’t it have been funny if he did indeed enjoy swilling the old champers whilst posing as a great islamist leader?!)
Is the world safer with his passing? I’m not at all sure about that, if I’m honest.
I’m sure things will become clearer in time.
I understand your point about how ‘expressing regret’ might not play well domestically, although it is now admitted by the Obama Administration that was a ‘capture or kill’ operation – at least according to the BBC.
(I do, with respect, think that your comment above is a little ‘overdrawn’ … but then we do often see things rather differently on this side of ‘the Pond’! We like Obama precisely because of his calm manner and calibrated rhetoric – a very refreshing change from what went before!)
One can be “almost certain” of all the following: that radical imams would call the trial a sham; that life imprisonment would lead to accusations of torture a la Gitmo and Abu Ghraib; that whenever OBL eventually died in prison, there would be rumors of foul play; and that when we buried his body, some of the very same Muslims who’d spent years saying that OBL was not a True Muslim at all would then turn around and accuse us of not giving him a proper burial with his head facing towards Mecca, to which Muslims are entitled!
One can be equally certain that although these accusations would originate among radical Muslims, they would eventually be taken up by assorted Western crackpots like Alex Jones and Lynne Stewart and Andrew Sullivan — some on the left and some on the right, but all under the guise of “just asking questions.”
So, Osama bin Laden would end up a Martyr who was
railroaded by a Jew-controlled kangaroo court, and then was viciously tortured and eventually murdered in prison by the hypocritical Islamophobic Americans.
It would’ve been disastrous domestically for Obama — a Democrat who never came within a mile of any kind of military service — to publicly second-guess the SEALs and CIA operatives on the ground, and to even hint that they had erred in not taking OBL alive for a trial.
I’m still worried about the ‘martyrdom’ angle. A trial, followed by almost certain life imprisonment, would, IMHO, have been much better. (Admittedly, it may have been that ‘taking him alive’ just wasn’t a real possibility. However, it might have been good propaganda for the Obama administration to express – at least for ‘external’ consumption – ‘regret’ that he wasn’t captured alive pending a trial.)
I’m sure things will become clearer in time.
I understand your point about how ‘expressing regret’ might not play well domestically, although it is now admitted by the Obama Administration that was a ‘capture or kill’ operation – at least according to the BBC.
(I do, with respect, think that your comment above is a little ‘overdrawn’ … but then we do often see things rather differently on this side of ‘the Pond’! We like Obama precisely because of his calm manner and calibrated rhetoric – a very refreshing change from what went before!)
One can be “almost certain” of all the following: that radical imams would call the trial a sham; that life imprisonment would lead to accusations of torture a la Gitmo and Abu Ghraib; that whenever OBL eventually died in prison, there would be rumors of foul play; and that when we buried his body, some of the very same Muslims who’d spent years saying that OBL was not a True Muslim at all would then turn around and accuse us of not giving him a proper burial with his head facing towards Mecca, to which Muslims are entitled!
One can be equally certain that although these accusations would originate among radical Muslims, they would eventually be taken up by assorted Western crackpots like Alex Jones and Lynne Stewart and Andrew Sullivan — some on the left and some on the right, but all under the guise of “just asking questions.”
So, Osama bin Laden would end up a Martyr who was
railroaded by a Jew-controlled kangaroo court, and then was viciously tortured and eventually murdered in prison by the hypocritical Islamophobic Americans.
It would’ve been disastrous domestically for Obama — a Democrat who never came within a mile of any kind of military service — to publicly second-guess the SEALs and CIA operatives on the ground, and to even hint that they had erred in not taking OBL alive for a trial.
The world is now vastly safer from Pulitzer-hungry journalists wanting to interview OBL in Gitmo and ruminate about what a “complex man” he is, so that’s a blessing in itself.
Regarding the burial at sea: it avoids the danger of a gravesite becoming either a pilgrimage site for his admirers or a vandalism/littering target for his detractors.
Predictably, it has already attracted criticism from some Muslim clerics. In Islamic law, burials at sea are not forbidden — hardly surprising given that many Muslim nations have been seafaring over the centuries — but they are discouraged unless absolutely necessary, and it’s not clear that the “absolutely necessary” condition was met in this case.
Of course, there will never be a shortage of carping imams ready to criticize America on some pretext or another.
Well, I don’t share the joy of many at Bin Laden’s death. It might have been much more useful to put together a tasteful dossier on his ‘champagne lifestyle’ and use it to highlight the man’s hypocrisy. (Wouldn’t it have been funny if he did indeed enjoy swilling the old champers whilst posing as a great islamist leader?!)
Is the world safer with his passing? I’m not at all sure about that, if I’m honest.
I heard one of the commentators on ABC News say that his body was going to be buried at sea. I do not know if this has been proven to be factual or not. I suppose this would have to do with the idea of not allowing his tomb to become a point of veneration for Muslim extremists.