The Obama "To Make Important Statement" MEGATHREAD

[jamesww]

Today is a good day for the world.

I think we might be pleasantly surprised by the ineffectual AQ response to this.

I'm pleased they offered the body to the Saudis, who apparently refused. Personally I'd like to have seen it left on the front steps of the Saudi 'Education Ministry' in Riyadh.

Given the proximity of his 'hide out' / guest house to a Pakistani military base and the country's capital the USA needs to really stick it to the Pakistanis about what they're involvement was in his 'hiding'.

Good to see CdM beat Timmay to breaking news thread of the decade, by a country mile. 

[Grey Fox]

What a wonderfull Monday Morning.

Also, hilarious thread.

[Richard Hakluyt]

He was probably a lecturer at the academy 

Nice commute.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm pleased they offered the body to the Saudis, who apparently refused. Personally I'd like to have seen it left on the front steps of the Saudi 'Education Ministry' in Riyadh.

I'm glad they dumped him in the ocean, like so much ocean liner waste and bilge.  What's it say in the Koran about being fish food, you Islamofucks?  HAHAHAHAHA

[Josquius]

Well, that was surprising news, my dad told me when I woke up and I was sure he'd got mixed up with Gadaffi's son and the vaguely similar name structure.

Odd timing though, coming just a week or two after the kill Osama and we nuke you announcment.

Lame they didn't release much about the assault or many pictures of the body- and just dumping it at sea right away, WTF?
Its like they're baiting the conspiracy nuts, already they're starting.

[Legbiter]

I'm going to have a pork sandwich and a beer later today to mark the occaision.

[jamesww]

Osama's death 'a good career move'?

Al-Qaeda's leader might appear to have died with a bang, but he had long since died with a whimper.
Robert Grenier

For Osama bin Laden, violent death must have come as a blessing. It has given him, at least fleetingly, a seeming prominence that in fact had long since ebbed away, not only in the Muslim world, but even within al-Qaeda itself.

To many in the US, for whom bin Laden's demise is indeed an important event, president Barack Obama's announcement represents long-delayed justice for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the fulfillment of a long-standing promise from two quite different US presidents. But in the Muslim world, where bin Laden and the movement he spawned produced the vast majority of their victims, the enigmatic Saudi's passing represents something quite different.

One supposes that for bin Laden, if he had any clear conception of his place in the world nearly 10 years after the attack which brought him to global prominence, life must have become unbearable. For the violent extremists whom bin Laden has sponsored and encouraged, it is a mark of pride that they seek death for what they believe. And even for those among them who hide in the shadows, it is with the conviction that they live today to strike at their enemies tomorrow.

But for bin Laden, who might well have met martyrdom with many of his followers at Tora Bora, such was his megalomaniacal conception of his importance that he believed his greatest contribution to the movement would be to ensure his own survival, even as those around him were martyred for the cause.

Consider, then, what it must have been like for such an ego to fade into functional obscurity. As he was reduced to issuing occasional audio tapes of increasing irrelevance, even the core of the organisation he founded learned to live without him. And the scattered little groups around the globe which had appropriated the al-Qaeda name in fact had little connection to bin Laden's organisation, and still less to bin Laden himself.

'Good career move'

Indeed, what must have been most crushing for bin Laden was the rise of the so-called Arab Spring. The very people in the Arab world whose concerns bin Laden claimed most importantly to represent have revealed the utter fallacy at the heart of Sheikh Osama's message.

The al-Qaeda leader had long professed that the only means of liberation for the Muslims was to strike at the Western powers who propped up their repressive leaders, and thereby to undo the vast US-led conspiracy to subjugate them. What the Arab youth have shown is that the means of their liberation is in their own hands, and has always been. Indeed, they have shown that in the face of their moral example, the Western world, more often than not, will be forced to support them.

Even more importantly, the world which those responsible for the uprisings throughout the Arab world are trying to construct for themselves looks nothing like the dark, obscurantist vision of bin Laden and his core followers. Even the most radically anti-western of the genuine religious leaders in the Muslim world have long since soundly rejected the Takfiri doctrines perpetrated by al-Qaeda. 

What remains of bin Laden's movement, while it may still represent a lethal threat on a tactical scale, has been clearly bypassed and marginalised by the historical evolution of those whom it would pretend to represent and to lead.

That is as true in South Asia, where local opposition to western involvement in Afghanistan has given al-Qaeda a seeming prominence which in fact it does not merit, as it is elsewhere in the Muslim world.

It may seem an odd analogy, but I am put in mind of a former Hollywood celebrity who had long since been personally repudiated by the public, whose death a number of years ago was described unkindly by one wag as a "good career move". 

The same might easily be said of Osama bin Laden. He might appear to have died with a bang. But he had long since died with a whimper.

Robert Grenier retired from the CIA in 2006, following a 27-year career in the CIA's Clandestine Service. He served as Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2006, coordinated CIA activities in Iraq from 2002 to 2004 as the Iraq Mission Manager, and was the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad, Pakistan before and after the 9/11 attacks.

More here:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115272712668919.html

[Josquius]

Will Osama be attacking us in our dreams now?

[Ed Anger]

I woke up bloated and gassy this morning from my celebratory pizza.

[Caliga]

Will Osama be attacking us in our dreams now?

Yes.  Also, he has a glove with razors sewed into it and wears a red and green striped dress now.

[The Larch]

A honest question for the yanks, particulary to the ones of a more martial persuation: Will hard proof be produced at some point in the short or medium term about this operation and its results and/or particulars or do we have to trust the official statements at face value?

[Legbiter]

Hamas is hurt over Binnie's hit.

"We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood," Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, told reporters. "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."

Another PR coup for the palestinians.

[Ed Anger]

Hamas is hurt over Binnie's hit.

"We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood," Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, told reporters. "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."

Another PR coup for the palestinians.

LOL

[Berkut]

[Legbiter]

A honest question for the yanks, particulary to the ones of a more martial persuation: Will hard proof be produced at some point in the short or medium term about this operation and its results and/or particulars or do we have to trust the official statements at face value?

I want to see a picture of his carcass. Plus, they should have had him stuffed and mounted in the Oval office, not thrown to the sharks.