Killing Osama: What Really Happened?

Russell Street

Russell Street

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Remember that crazy story and how it didn't really add up if you weren't a true believer?

Esteemed journalist Seymour Hirsch has a rather lengthy article on the real story of this fiasco and the spin afterward. The spins, to be accurate.

Here's the Cliff's Notes (video form to follow for OfficePants OfficePants
The White House's "most blatant" lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military officials were never informed of the mission, Hersh says.
  • While US officials say they found bin Laden by tracking his trusted courier, Hersh says they discovered his whereabouts from a former Pakistani intelligence officer who wanted the $25 million reward the US was offering.
  • The government claimed bin Laden was hiding out, but Hersh says the Pakistani intelligence agency had actually been holding him captive since 2006 to use him as leverage against Taliban and Al Qaeda activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
  • While the White House has said it would have taken bin Laden alive if it could have and that he was killed in a firefight, Hersh says that wasn't the case. "There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone," Hersh wrote.
  • The article also takes issue with the White House's claim that bin Laden was buried at sea in a service that followed Islamic practices. "The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains — or so the Seals claimed," Hersh reported, citing his senior US intelligence official.

Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/seymour-hersh-white-house-osama-bin-laden-2015-5?r=US#ixzz3ZsqWTOpD
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And the full text
Seymour M. Hersh · The Killing of Osama bin Laden · LRB 21 May 2015
 
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Allez Allez said:
So why is this story based on a single unnamed source more persuasive to you than the official account?
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Because unless there is a very good fiction writer involved, this narrative adds up and makes sense without all the inconsistencies, uncharacteristic actions, and other logic-stretching of the spin story. One can factor in respective motives too.

Please read the fourth paragraph of the full article and you'll see that there is more than one source.
 
Russell Street said:
Because unless there is a very good fiction writer involved, this narrative adds up and makes sense without all the inconsistencies, uncharacteristic actions, and other logic-stretching of the spin story. One can factor in respective motives too.
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Really?

It's good to be sceptical, particularly of government spin and business pitches. However, I don't think that Hersh's story adds up and makes sense - at least, it doesn't make any more sense than the official story and probable makes less.

Hersh posits that the "raid" was approved by the Pakistani government and that they'd agreed to hand over bin Laden in return for an increase in military aid and a freer hand in Afghanistan. I don't understand why the US would agree to the latter point (as claimed by Hersh) as the US had been working to reduce Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan for the previous decade (in particular, the pernicious influence of Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI). With regard to the former point, the raid caused a fracture in and a distinct cooling of relations between the US and Pakistan and resulted in less assistance to Pakistan, not more, so it had the opposite effect to that which Hersh claimed had been agreed upon.

Hersh also claims that the intelligence recovered from the Abbotabad residence was manufactured by the CIA to justify the raid - but if I remember correctly, Al Qaeda's second in command, al-Zawahiri, stated that the intelligence materials were genuine. I suppose that they could have been genuine but obtained elsewhere.

Anyway, my doubts about the raid come down to one main reason - why bother with such a complicated plot if it wasn't necessary?

Hersh claims that Pakistan had been keeping Bin Laden prisoner for years. In that case, why not just hand him over to the US? There didn't need to be a raid in Pakistan. Why not kill him, transport his body to Afghanistan, and then claim victory for US special forces in finding him tucked away in Afghanistan? Why would Pakistan willingly enter into a plan which openly embarrassed them, as it showed that the most wanted man in the world had been living in their country for some years and that the US could fly in, kill him, and fly out without an alarm being raised?
 
Read the full article. It really is worth the time. I know I sound like Grand Potentate Grand Potentate saying that.
At one point that spring, Pasha offered the Americans a blunt explanation of the reason Pakistan kept bin Laden’s capture a secret, and why it was imperative for the ISI role to remain secret: ‘We needed a hostage to keep tabs on al-Qaida and the Taliban,’ Pasha said, according to the retired official. ‘The ISI was using bin Laden as leverage against Taliban and al-Qaida activities inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. They let the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership know that if they ran operations that clashed with the interests of the ISI, they would turn bin Laden over to us. So if it became known that the Pakistanis had worked with us to get bin Laden at Abbottabad, there would be hell to pay.’
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The original deal was to claim, a week afterward, that bin Laden had been accidentally killed in a drone strike. But when, during a delivered blackout in town, they crashed a helicopter and then grenaded it into a huge fire to destroy the evidence...they had to explain that highly visible shenanigans.

And here's something that the article alludes to that I also thought myself on day one. Our elite mission force can absolutely perform a rescue mission against a few ragtags without having to kill a virtual invalid "in self defense" and to claim otherwise is highly insulting to our military. If they can't bring someone back alive from a lightly defended safe house, who the hell can?
 
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LelandJ said:
Not this 9/11 crap again.
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I'm totally ignoring the fact that the official WTC story is as fukakta as this one (or finding Saddam Hussein buried in a hole like a sitting duck).
You're really buying this story about two or three military helicopters swinging into this foreign country's resort town two miles from a base, a house that was "previously" a safe house for their intelligence agency, and the elite mission force that had been practicing in a mock-up house was incapable of capturing a valuable asset alive...then they blew up their crashed helicopter and sat around in the dark for a while in this foreign nation they'd intruded on until they could get to the ocean and dispose of their awesome trophy into the ocean with no record or witnesses?
Which part of that makes sense?
 
I underplayer the credentials of the article's writer, Symour Hersch by saying "esteemed." This is the man that exposed the friggin My Lai massacre and got Pulitzer for it. Anyone acting like this is some crank blogger in a basement is either ill-informed or disingenuous.
 
When the facts aren't on your side, attack the messenger!
This Slate author (btw, is every online journalist a homosexual now? wtf?) is really not one to cast stones. His reporting is not without controversy and inaccuracy.
James Kirchick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's worth noting that the kooks that dismiss Hersh's "single" source have no problem using the word of a single source as repudiation.

This is the Slate article I was reading, done by someone who knows how to reach out and find a source, and annoy them with poor interviewing.
Seymour Hersh interview: On his Bin Laden story, the New Yorker, journalism, and his own bad mood.
 
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Russell Street said:
I'm totally ignoring the fact that the official WTC story is as fukakta as this one (or finding Saddam Hussein buried in a hole like a sitting duck).
You're really buying this story about two or three military helicopters swinging into this foreign country's resort town two miles from a base, a house that was "previously" a safe house for their intelligence agency, and the elite mission force that had been practicing in a mock-up house was incapable of capturing a valuable asset alive...then they blew up their crashed helicopter and sat around in the dark for a while in this foreign nation they'd intruded on until they could get to the ocean and dispose of their awesome trophy into the ocean with no record or witnesses?
Which part of that makes sense?
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You have to be an idiot to think everything hasn't been an inside job.
 
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Snowden's an NSA agent btw, part of their public relations appeasement programs.
 
Fuck, I'd love to dive in on this one, but I've got Jade Helm, Cop Tyranny, the elite and a bunch of other threads on my plate. I'm swamped. I will say that you should never believe anything the government says.

 
Shortly after 9/11 there were a number of articles (in Foreign Affairs I think) that contemplated the notion of "fade away". Basically the idea was that you kill OBL and then keep his death quiet to confuse the terrorist networks. Maybe OBL died years ago in Tora Bora? Or maybe he died in the years following from kidney disease which he was also reported to have? Any of these scenarios are as plausible as this new theory. Or maybe he is still alive? I mean if we are going to discount the official narrative, all bets are off.
 
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Rambo said:
Sy Hersch is a fucking beast. He completely lays this schmuck from Slate on his ass.
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That's the same interview I alluded to, where this junior twat tries to play "gotcha" and Hersch has none of it. He browbeat Bob Garfield on NPR's On the Media too.
The thing that SY seems to get, that the other schmucks don't, is that shining the light and asking questions is the important thing. If the story is a bit off, the important thing is that people will find out more because he printed the article.
 
Russell Street said:
That's the same interview I alluded to, where this junior twat tries to play "gotcha" and Hersch has none of it. He browbeat Bob Garfield on NPR's On the Media too.
The thing that SY seems to get, that the other schmucks don't, is that shining the light and asking questions is the important thing. If the story is a bit off, the important thing is that people will find out more because he printed the article.
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I doubt anyone gives a shit, that's the unfortunate thing. The government lies to us so early and often that the public is just despondent.
 
Russell Street said:
The thing that SY seems to get, that the other schmucks don't, is that shining the light and asking questions is the important thing. If the story is a bit off, the important thing is that people will find out more because he printed the article.
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Agree with the first part, disagree with the second part.

Yes, it's vitally important to shine a light into spaces that the government/big business/etc would prefer to remain dark, and yes, it's vitally important to ask questions and to press for answers.

However, if the story is a bit off, then that provides government/big business/whoever the story is about with the opportunity to shoot the messenger - instead of responding to the details that may be correct, they will highlight the inconsistencies, point out the flaws, and use that to cast doubt on the entire story. That's an entirely understandable, justifiable tactic. Hence, if Hersh's info really is correct, then it behooves him to make sure that his story is watertight so that dung can't be flung at him.
 
Sorry, you guys are wrong. Life, real life, is now just an extension of a superhero movie.
 
Journeyman said:
However, if the story is a bit off, then that provides government/big business/whoever the story is about with the opportunity to shoot the messenger - instead of responding to the details that may be correct, they will highlight the inconsistencies, point out the flaws, and use that to cast doubt on the entire story.
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Highlighting inconsistencies and pointing out flaws in the story is not actually shooting the messenger. That's shooting the message.
 
Journeyman said:
However, if the story is a bit off, then that provides government/big business/whoever the story is about with the opportunity to shoot the messenger - instead of responding to the details that may be correct, they will highlight the inconsistencies, point out the flaws, and use that to cast doubt on the entire story. That's an entirely understandable, justifiable tactic. Hence, if Hersh's info really is correct, then it behooves him to make sure that his story is watertight so that dung can't be flung at him
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First, I'll point out the hideous double standard in that countless holes can be punched in the official story and it somehow is still deemed credible, but a few niggles somehow negate any detractors.
A flawed story trumps no story. Perfection is the enemy of the good, as they say. Delivering a wonderfully ironclad piece of reporting in 2025 is ultimately of less importance than getting some facts out now.
The dispelling of the mythology that US intelligence had much of anything to contribute is pretty useful knowledge to have in current debates, I'd say.
 
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