Killing of bin Laden: What are the consequences?

Transcription

Killing of bin Laden: What are the consequences? - Osama Bin...
http://www.salon.com/2011/05/02/bin_laden_12/
MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 10:30 AM EST
Killing of bin Laden: What are the consequences?
Beyond the emotional satisfaction, what benefits does this achieve?
BY GLENN GREENWALD
(updated below)
The killing of Osama bin Laden is one of those events which,
especially in the immediate aftermath, is not susceptible to
reasoned discussion. It’s already a Litmus Test event: all Decent
People — by definition — express unadulterated ecstacy at his
death, and all Good Americans chant “USA! USA!” in a
celebration of this proof of our national greatness and Goodness
(and that of our President). Nothing that deviates from that
emotional script will be heard, other than by those on the
lookout for heretics to hold up and punish. Prematurely
interrupting a national emotional consensus with unwanted
rational truths accomplishes nothing but harming the heretic
(ask Bill Maher about how that works).
I’d have strongly preferred that Osama bin Laden be captured
rather than killed so that he could be tried for his crimes and
Crowds gathers outside the White House in Washington early Monday, May 2, 2011, to
celebrate after President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. (AP
Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) (Credit: AP)
punished in accordance with due process (and to obtain
presumably ample intelligence). But if he in fact used force to
resist capture, then the U.S. military was entitled to use force
against him, the way American police routinely do against
suspects who use violence to resist capture. But those are legalities and they will be ignored even more so than usual. The 9/11 attack was a heinous
and wanton slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians, and it’s understandable that people are reacting with glee over the death of the person
responsible for it. I personally don’t derive joy or an impulse to chant boastfully at the news that someone just got two bullets put in their skull — no
matter who that someone is — but that reaction is inevitable: it’s the classic case of raucously cheering in a movie theater when the dastardly villain
finally gets his due.
But beyond the emotional fulfillment that comes from vengeance and retributive justice, there are two points worth considering. The first is the
question of what, if anything, is going to change as a result of the two bullets in Osama bin Laden’s head? Are we going to fight fewer wars or end the
ones we’ve started? Are we going to see a restoration of some of the civil liberties which have been eroded at the altar of this scary Villain
Mastermind? Is the War on Terror over? Are we Safer now?
Those are rhetorical questions. None of those things will happen. If anything, I can much more easily envision the reverse. Whenever America uses
violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed.
Futile decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may temporarily dampen the nationalistic enthusiasm for war, but two shots to the head of Osama
bin Laden — and the We are Great and Good proclamations it engenders — can easily rejuvenate that war love. One can already detect the stench of
that in how Pakistan is being talked about: did they harbor bin Laden as it seems and, if so, what price should they pay? We’re feeling good and
strong about ourselves again — and righteous — and that’s often the fertile ground for more, not less, aggression.
And then there’s the notion that America has once again proved its greatness and preeminence by killing bin Laden. Americans are marching in the
street celebrating with a sense of national pride. When is the last time that happened? It seems telling that hunting someone down and killing them
is one of the few things that still produce these feelings of nationalistic unity. I got on an airplane last night before the news of bin Laden’s killing was
known and had actually intended to make this point with regard to our killing of Gadaffi’s son in Libya — a mere 25 years after President Reagan
bombed Libya and killed Gadaffi’s infant daughter. That is something the U.S. has always done well and is one of the few things it still does well. This
is how President Obama put it in last night’s announcement:
The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set
our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our
citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Does hunting down Osama bin Laden and putting bullets in his skull really “remind us that we can do whatever we set our mind to”? Is that really
“the story of our history”? That seems to set the bar rather low in terms of national achievement and character.
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In sum, a murderous religious extremist was killed. The U.S. has erupted in a collective orgy of national pride and renewed faith in the efficacy and
righteousness of military force. Other than that, the repercussions are likely to be far greater in terms of domestic politics — it’s going to be a huge
boost to Obama’s re-election prospects and will be exploited for that end — than anything else.
UPDATE: Recall what happened in 2003 when Howard Dean interrupted the national celebratory ritual triggered by Saddam Hussein’s capture
when he suggested that that event would likely not make us safer. He was demonized by political leaders in both parties, with Joe Lieberman finally
equating him with Saddam by accusing Dean of being in a “spider hole of denial.” That will be the same demonizing reaction targeted at anyone who
deviates from today’s ritualistic script.
Meanwhile, here is the reaction to today’s events from Emily Miller of The Washington Times Editorial Page:
Those primitive, bloodthirsty Muslim fanatics sure do love to glorify death and violence.
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Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: @ggreenwald. More Glenn Greenwald
TUESDAY, JAN 3, 2012 9:04 AM EST
Profiting off the bin Laden killing
As-seen-on-TV "Justice Coin" quotes Bush, Obama
BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT
(UPDATED BELOW)
On May 1, American commandos helicoptered into Pakistan and
killed an unarmed Osama bin Laden, also killing three other men
and one woman in his compound, and wounding at least one
other woman. (Only one of the men, according to the Obama
administration, had fired at the Americans.)
Now, for just $19.95 plus $7.95 shipping, you can commemorate
the events of that day with a special brass, gold-plated “Justice
Coin.” These ads — which are apparently real — have been
running on various cable channels:
(Credit: justicecoin.com)
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It’s a project of Greenberg Direct, which says that a portion of sales is being donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (also a favorite of
Glenn Beck’s). I’ve asked the company how much of the profits are going to charity and I’ll update this post if I hear back.
The company’s eponymous founder, Paul Greenberg, lists his “mega hits” in the direct response TV business as the “H20 Mop, Flavorwave Turbo
and AbDoer Twist.” His other credits include “Free Money – They Don’t Want You To Know About” and “Tobi Platinum Steamer.”
(Hat tip: Michelle Goldberg)
UPDATE 1/11/12: An official at Revenue Solutions, which makes the Justice Coin, offers this explanation for its relationship with the Special
Operations Warrior Foundation.
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Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott
WEDNESDAY, DEC 21, 2011 10:30 AM EST
The best and worst tweets of the year
From Zuccotti Park to Tahrir Square, these tweets shook the world in 2011
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
One hundred and forty characters can make or sink a career. They
can start a movement. They can make history. We’ve witnessed
for years now the power of social media – from bearing witness to
the protests in Iran to providing a ringside seat to MIA’s feud with
Lynn Hirschberg. But in 2011, Twitter once again didn’t just offer
a bite-sized window into the news of the day – often enough, it
became it. Whether they were funny, harrowing, or just plain ill
advised, these were the tweets heard round the world.
“It’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all
the attention she’ll get.”
While covering the Egyptian protests back in February, CBS
reporter Lara Logan was separated from her crew and endured a
horrifying sexual and physical assault. And when the news filtered
out from Tahrir Square, New York University Center for Law and
(Credit: Salon/Sashkin via Shutterstock)
Security fellow Nir Rosen fired off a torrent of scathing tweets
about the attack, admitting “She’s so bad that I ran out of
sympathy for her,” and adding “it would have been funny if it
happened to Anderson [Cooper] too.” In the wake a furious backlash, Rosen swiftly deleted the tweets, apologized for his words, and resigned from
NYU. Today, he’s back on Twitter after a brief sabbatical, but as he wrote for Salon last winter, “with 480 characters I undid a long career.”
“Face it folks, you just feel better when you say it. #WINNING”
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Believe it or not, before March, Twitter was a Charlie Sheen-free zone. But in the midst of his epic spat with the producers of “Two and a Half Men,”
the guy with more catch phrases than a Bond villain took his Vatican warlock assassin fingertips and tiger blood to tweet town. He immediately set a
Guinness world record for “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers” and an unofficial one for least coherent stream of consciousness. Remember,
world, “You already own you. Now go… Earn the power.”
“What do Japanese Jews like to eat? Hebrew National Tsunami.”
Gilbert Gottfried, the man who helped bring the concept of “too soon” into the lexicon lived up to his reputation in March, when he unleashed a slew
of one-liners about the devastation in Japan. In the aftermath, he wasn’t just all but universally condemned – he lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac
duck. The company had to issue a distancing statement that the tweets “were lacking in humor,” and Gottfried himself quickly announced that “I
meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families.” The whole episode — which he discussed in a Salon exclusive
interview — proved that when you bomb in a club, it’s a bad night. But when you bomb on Twitter, it can cost you your job.
“Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”
When Pakistan IT consultant Sohaib Athar heard some unusual activity going on in the middle of a May night, he took to Twitter to talk about it. “A
huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty,” he wrote, adding a few minutes later that “all silent
after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too… Must be a complicated situation.” It was indeed. As Athar told the
world the next day, “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.” And with that, the musings of one sleepy guy who
wished he had a “giant fly swatter” to silence the noise became an eyewitness to the American raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden.
“im retiring Video: http://bit.ly/kvLtE3 #ShaqRetires”
Sure, he expanded on it in the accompanying video, but not much. When the legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal decided to end his nearly
two-decade career in June, he wanted to “tell you first” – you being the Twitterverse. And with a post so pithy it didn’t even bother with the
apostrophe, he was done.
“Touche Prof Moriarity. More Weiner Jokes for all my guests! #Hacked!”
Except he hadn’t been hacked. That unfortunate crotch shot, we learned back in June, was indeed the bulge of New York congressman Anthony
Weiner. In the fact of mounting evidence that no hack occurred, he admitted a few days after the damning image emerged that “The picture was of
me, and I sent it” to college student Gennette Cordova. It was the inauspicious end of a political career, and Weiner’s Twitter timeline as well. Lesson
– if you insist on sending ladies pictures of your junk, stick to texting.
“September 17th. Wall Street. Bring Tent. http://bit.ly/re9ENL #OCCUPYWALLSTREET”
A worldwide movement began as a simple plea back in July, when Adbusters, inspired by the protests in Egypt, issued the call. There had been a
poster in the July issue of the magazine, and a fiery blog post to “you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there.” But it was the power of the
hashtag that soon made itself known, as an action became a revolution. Occupy Seattle. Occupy Tuscaloosa. Occupy London. Occupy Hong Kong.
Occupy Antarctica. And behold the power of tents and tweets.
“Who’s #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?” and “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection
is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo.”
Corporate outreach gone terribly, terribly wrong! When the Casey Anthony verdict broke in July, #notguilty skyrocketed straight to the top of Twitter
trends. With a better sense of how to make a delicious crumb cake than what’s going on in the news, baked goods brand Entenmann’s leapt in with
an out of context – and wildly inappropriate — hashtag. The tweet was soon deleted, with a follow-up that “Our #notguilty tweet was insensitive,
albeit completely unintentional. We are sincerely sorry.” And even the ever-provocative Kenneth Cole went too far with a February tweet about the
Egyptian protests. Cole likewise quickly scrubbed the tweet, with a message that “We weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation.”
“Dear Fox News, don’t play our music on your evil fucking channel ever again. Thank you”.
Apparently Maroon 5′s Adam Levine is not a fan. When the network used a soundbite of the band’s “She Will Be Loved” on an October edition of
“Fox & Friends,” Levine took aim at the cable behemoth in a way that was both fearless and bitchy. While the network decorously didn’t reply, give
feistiness points to its Andy Levy, who shot back via Twitter, “Dear @AdamLevine, don’t make crappy f*cking music ever again. Thank you.”
#ohsnap
“How do you fire Jo Pa #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.”
What is it about these “Two and a Half Men” stars? In November, Kutcher responded to the dismissal of legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno
with a kneejerk expression of outrage. But Paterno, as the rest of the world knew and Kutcher later sussed out, lost his job over his lackluster
response to sex abuse accusations against his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Kutcher quickly admitted, “I feel awful about this error. Won’t
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happen again.” But then he then compounded the error by announcing he’d decided “to turn the management of the [Twitter] feed over to my team
at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content.” And how’s that been going? “I will forever cherish the time I spent
with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail,” he tweeted soon after. “Love and Light,
AK.” Ewwww.
“I have breast cancer. I am in good hands. There is a long road ahead and it leads to happiness and a cancer-free, long, healthy life.”
Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin lives her life online. So naturally, she live tweeted her first mammogram, or as she cheerfully put it, “the perky robot
pancake boobs squisher machine game.” But just a short time and several tweets later, she gave the stark news. Since then, Jardin’s been ferociously
tweeting from the new land of cancer. And whether she’s posting about data mix-ups or referring to her MRI tube as “an industrial music dance
party,” she’s proving every day the inspirational, and very healing, power of online community.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream."
Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams
WEDNESDAY, SEP 28, 2011 9:52 AM EST
U.S. tells court bin Laden photos must stay secret
Obama administration argues that public disclosure of images would compromise safety of Americans abroad
BY RICHARD LARDNER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Public disclosure of graphic photos and video taken of Osama
bin Laden after he was killed in May by U.S. commandos would
damage national security and lead to attacks on American
property and personnel, the Obama administration contends in
a court documents.
In a response late Monday to a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group
seeking the imagery, Justice Department attorneys said the CIA
has located 52 photographs and video recordings. But they
argued the images of the deceased bin Laden are classified and
are being withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence
against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems
and techniques used by the CIA and the military.
The Justice Department has asked the court to dismiss Judicial
Watch’s lawsuit because the records the group wants are
FILE - In this May 2, 2011 file photo taken by a local resident, the wreckage of a helicopter
next to the wall of the compound where according to officials, Osama bin Laden was shot
and killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The U.S. suspects that
Pakistan retaliated for the humiliating American raid that killed Osama bin Laden by letting
the Chinese military see secret American technology used in the mission. (AP
Photo/Mohammad Zubair, File) (Credit: AP/Mohammad Zubair)
“wholly exempt from disclosure,” according to the filing.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, accused the Obama
administration of making a “political decision” to keep the bin
Laden imagery secret. “We shouldn’t throw out our
transparency laws because complying with them might offend
terrorists,” Fitton said in a statement. “The historical record of Osama bin Laden’s death should be released to the American people as the law
requires.”
The Associated Press has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to review a range of materials, such as contingency plans for bin Laden’s
capture, reports on the performance of equipment during the May 1 assault on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and copies of DNA tests
confirming the al-Qaida leader’s identity. The AP also has asked for video and photographs taken from the mission, including photos made of bin
Laden after he was killed.
The Obama administration refused AP’s request to quickly consider its request for the records. AP appealed the decision, arguing that unnecessary
bureaucratic delays harm the public interest and allow anonymous U.S. officials to selectively leak details of the mission. Without expedited
processing, requests for sensitive materials can be delayed for months and even years. The AP submitted its request to the Pentagon less than one
day after bin Laden’s death.
In a declaration included in the documents, John Bennett, director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said many of the photos and video
recordings are “quite graphic, as they depict the fatal bullet wound to (bin Laden) and other similarly gruesome images of his corpse.” Images were
taken of bin Laden’s body at the Abbottabad compound, where he was killed by a Navy SEAL team, and during his burial at sea from the USS Carl
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Vinson, Bennett said.
“The public release of the responsive records would provide terrorist groups and other entities hostile to the United States with information to create
propaganda which, in turn, could be used to recruit, raise funds, inflame tensions, or rally support for causes and actions that reasonably could be
expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to both the national defense and foreign relations of the United States,” Bennett wrote.
Navy Adm. William McRaven, the top officer at U.S. Special Operations Command, said in a separate declaration that releasing the imagery could
put the special operations team that carried out the assault on bin Laden’s compound at risk by making them “more readily identifiable in the
future.” Before his current assignment, McRaven led the Joint Special Operations Command, the organization in charge of the military specialized
counterterrorism units.
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More Richard Lardner
TUESDAY, SEP 6, 2011 9:10 AM EST
What we should have done after 9/11
In the decade since the attacks, the U.S. consistently played into bin Laden's hands. Was there another way?
BY NOAM CHOMSKY
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous
atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held,
changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the
crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team
of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured,
unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was
finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the
U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S.
from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing
Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would
ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “‘Bleeding the
U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W.
Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s
trap… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt
addiction… may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who
thought he could defeat the United States” — particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the
Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate
tyranny.
That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book “9-11,” written shortly after those
attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize “that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the
prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a ‘diabolical trap,’ as the French foreign minister put it.”
The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in
telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely
succeeded: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with
substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin
Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death.
The First 9/11
Was there an alternative? There is every likelihood that the Jihadi movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and
undermined after 9/11. The “crime against humanity,” as it was rightly called, could have been approached as a crime, with an international
operation to apprehend the likely suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered.
In “9-11,” I quoted Robert Fisk’s conclusion that the “horrendous crime” of 9/11 was committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty,” an accurate
judgment. It is useful to bear in mind that the crimes could have been even worse. Suppose, for example, that the attack had gone as far as bombing
the White House, killing the president, imposing a brutal military dictatorship that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands while
establishing an international terror center that helped impose similar torture-and-terror states elsewhere and carried out an international
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assassination campaign; and as an extra fillip, brought in a team of economists — call them “the Kandahar boys” — who quickly drove the economy
into one of the worst depressions in its history. That, plainly, would have been a lot worse than 9/11.
Unfortunately, it is not a thought experiment. It happened. The only inaccuracy in this brief account is that the numbers should be multiplied by 25
to yield per capita equivalents, the appropriate measure. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11″: September
11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup
that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office. The goal, in the words of the Nixon administration, was to kill the “virus” that might
encourage all those “foreigners [who] are out to screw us” to take over their own resources and in other ways to pursue an intolerable policy of
independent development. In the background was the conclusion of the National Security Council that, if the US could not control Latin America, it
could not expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world.”
The first 9/11, unlike the second, did not change the world. It was “nothing of very great consequence,” as Henry Kissinger assured his boss a few
days later.
These events of little consequence were not limited to the military coup that destroyed Chilean democracy and set in motion the horror story that
followed. The first 9/11 was just one act in a drama which began in 1962, when John F. Kennedy shifted the mission of the Latin American military
from “hemispheric defense” — an anachronistic holdover from World War II — to “internal security,” a concept with a chilling interpretation in
U.S.-dominated Latin American circles.
In the recently published Cambridge University “History of the Cold War,” Latin American scholar John Coatsworth writes that from that time to
“the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of non-violent political dissenters in Latin America
vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites,” including many religious martyrs and mass slaughter as well, always
supported or initiated in Washington. The last major violent act was the brutal murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, a
few days after the Berlin Wall fell. The perpetrators were an elite Salvadorean battalion, which had already left a shocking trail of blood, fresh from
renewed training at the JFK School of Special Warfare, acting on direct orders of the high command of the U.S. client state.
The consequences of this hemispheric plague still, of course, reverberate.
From Kidnapping and Torture to Assassination
All of this, and much more like it, is dismissed as of little consequence, and forgotten. Those whose mission is to rule the world enjoy a more
comforting picture, articulated well enough in the current issue of the prestigious (and valuable) journal of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in London. The lead article discusses “the visionary international order” of the “second half of the twentieth century” marked by “the
universalization of an American vision of commercial prosperity.” There is something to that account, but it does not quite convey the perception of
those at the wrong end of the guns.
The same is true of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which brings to an end at least a phase in the “war on terror” re-declared by President
George W. Bush on the second 9/11. Let us turn to a few thoughts on that event and its significance.
On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy SEALs, who entered Pakistan by
helicopter. After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation
was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself.
There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no
opposition — except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, whom they shot in self-defense when she “lunged” at them, according to the White
House.
A plausible reconstruction of the events is provided by veteran Middle East correspondent Yochi Dreazen and colleagues in the Atlantic. Dreazen,
formerly the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is senior correspondent for the National Journal Group covering military affairs and
national security. According to their investigation, White House planning appears not to have considered the option of capturing bin Laden alive:
“The administration had made clear to the military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a
senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was
not to take him alive.”
The authors add: “For many at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency who had spent nearly a decade hunting bin Laden, killing the
militant was a necessary and justified act of vengeance.” Furthermore, “capturing bin Laden alive would have also presented the administration with
an array of nettlesome legal and political challenges.” Better, then, to assassinate him, dumping his body into the sea without the autopsy considered
essential after a killing — an act that predictably provoked both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.
As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama
administration’s counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in
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Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than
attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama. The authors quote former West German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt, who “told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been
detained and put on trial,” contrasting Schmidt with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he
didn’t pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel… that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every
way.’”
The disposal of the body without autopsy was also criticized by allies. The highly regarded British barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who supported the
intervention and opposed the execution largely on pragmatic grounds, nevertheless described Obama’s claim that “justice was done” as an
“absurdity” that should have been obvious to a former professor of constitutional law. Pakistan law “requires a colonial inquest on violent death, and
international human rights law insists that the ‘right to life’ mandates an inquiry whenever violent death occurs from government or police action.
The U.S. is therefore under a duty to hold an inquiry that will satisfy the world as to the true circumstances of this killing.”
Robertson usefully reminds us that “[i]t was not always thus. When the time came to consider the fate of men much more steeped in wickedness than
Osama bin Laden — the Nazi leadership — the British government wanted them hanged within six hours of capture. President Truman demurred,
citing the conclusion of Justice Robert Jackson that summary execution ‘would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our
children with pride… the only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit
and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear.’”
Eric Margolis comments that “Washington has never made public the evidence of its claim that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks,”
presumably one reason why “polls show that fully a third of American respondents believe that the U.S. government and/or Israel were behind 9/11,”
while in the Muslim world skepticism is much higher. “An open trial in the U.S. or at the Hague would have exposed these claims to the light of day,”
he continues, a practical reason why Washington should have followed the law.
In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In June 2002, FBI head Robert
Mueller, in what the Washington Post described as “among his most detailed public comments on the origins of the attacks,” could say only that
“investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, the actual
plotting was done in Germany, and the financing came through the United Arab Emirates from sources in Afghanistan.”
What the FBI believed and thought in June 2002 they didn’t know eight months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban
(how serious, we do not know) to permit a trial of bin Laden if they were presented with evidence. Thus, it is not true, as President Obama claimed in
his White House statement after bin Laden’s death, that “[w]e quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaida.”
There has never been any reason to doubt what the FBI believed in mid-2002, but that leaves us far from the proof of guilt required in civilized
societies — and whatever the evidence might be, it does not warrant murdering a suspect who could, it seems, have been easily apprehended and
brought to trial. Much the same is true of evidence provided since. Thus, the 9/11 Commission provided extensive circumstantial evidence of bin
Laden’s role in 9/11, based primarily on what it had been told about confessions by prisoners in Guantanamo. It is doubtful that much of that would
hold up in an independent court, considering the ways confessions were elicited. But in any event, the conclusions of a congressionally authorized
investigation, however convincing one finds them, plainly fall short of a sentence by a credible court, which is what shifts the category of the accused
from suspect to convicted.
There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that was a boast, not a confession, with as much credibility as my “confession” that I won the
Boston marathon. The boast tells us a lot about his character, but nothing about his responsibility for what he regarded as a great achievement, for
which he wanted to take credit.
Again, all of this is, transparently, quite independent of one’s judgments about his responsibility, which seemed clear immediately, even before the
FBI inquiry, and still does.
Crimes of Aggression
It is worth adding that bin Laden’s responsibility was recognized in much of the Muslim world, and condemned. One significant example is the
distinguished Lebanese cleric Sheikh Fadlallah, greatly respected by Hezbollah and Shia groups generally, outside Lebanon as well. He had some
experience with assassinations. He had been targeted for assassination: by a truck bomb outside a mosque, in a CIA-organized operation in 1985. He
escaped, but 80 others were killed, mostly women and girls as they left the mosque — one of those innumerable crimes that do not enter the annals
of terror because of the fallacy of “wrong agency.” Sheikh Fadlallah sharply condemned the 9/11 attacks.
One of the leading specialists on the Jihadi movement, Fawaz Gerges, suggests that the movement might have been split at that time had the U.S.
exploited the opportunity instead of mobilizing the movement, particularly by the attack on Iraq, a great boon to bin Laden, which led to a sharp
increase in terror, as intelligence agencies had anticipated. At the Chilcot hearings investigating the background to the invasion of Iraq, for example,
the former head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 testified that both British and U.S. intelligence were aware that Saddam posed no
serious threat, that the invasion was likely to increase terror, and that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had radicalized parts of a generation of
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Muslims who saw the military actions as an “attack on Islam.” As is often the case, security was not a high priority for state action.
It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos had landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him,
and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he was not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the
orders to invade Iraq — that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole” for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much
of the country and its national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially,
these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.
To say that all of this is uncontroversial, as it is, is not to imply that it is not denied. The existence of flat earthers does not change the fact that,
uncontroversially, the earth is not flat. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for horrendous crimes, though loyalists
deny it. All of this should, again, be too obvious for comment, and would be, except in an atmosphere of hysteria so extreme that it blocks rational
thought.
Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Bush and associates did commit the “supreme international crime” — the crime of aggression. That crime was
defined clearly enough by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg. An “aggressor,” Jackson proposed to the
Tribunal in his opening statement, is a state that is the first to commit such actions as “[i]nvasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of
war, of the territory of another State ….” No one, even the most extreme supporter of the aggression, denies that Bush and associates did just that.
We might also do well to recall Jackson’s eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: “If certain acts in violation of treaties are
crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal
conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”
It is also clear that announced intentions are irrelevant, even if they are truly believed. Internal records reveal that Japanese fascists apparently did
believe that, by ravaging China, they were laboring to turn it into an “earthly paradise.” And although it may be difficult to imagine, it is conceivable
that Bush and company believed they were protecting the world from destruction by Saddam’s nuclear weapons. All irrelevant, though ardent
loyalists on all sides may try to convince themselves otherwise.
We are left with two choices: either Bush and associates are guilty of the “supreme international crime” including all the evils that follow, or else we
declare that the Nuremberg proceedings were a farce and the allies were guilty of judicial murder.
The Imperial Mentality and 9/11
A few days before the bin Laden assassination, Orlando Bosch died peacefully in Florida, where he resided along with his accomplice Luis Posada
Carriles and many other associates in international terrorism. After he was accused of dozens of terrorist crimes by the FBI, Bosch was granted a
presidential pardon by Bush I over the objections of the Justice Department, which found the conclusion “inescapable that it would be prejudicial to
the public interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch.” The coincidence of these deaths at once calls to mind the Bush II doctrine
— “already… a de facto rule of international relations,” according to the noted Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison — which
revokes “the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists.”
Allison refers to the pronouncement of Bush II, directed at the Taliban, that “those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves.”
Such states, therefore, have lost their sovereignty and are fit targets for bombing and terror — for example, the state that harbored Bosch and his
associate. When Bush issued this new “de facto rule of international relations,” no one seemed to notice that he was calling for invasion and
destruction of the U.S. and the murder of its criminal presidents.
None of this is problematic, of course, if we reject Justice Jackson’s principle of universality, and adopt instead the principle that the U.S. is
self-immunized against international law and conventions — as, in fact, the government has frequently made very clear.
It is also worth thinking about the name given to the bin Laden operation: Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound that few seem
able to perceive that the White House is glorifying bin Laden by calling him “Geronimo” — the Apache Indian chief who led the courageous
resistance to the invaders of Apache lands.
The casual choice of the name is reminiscent of the ease with which we name our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Blackhawk…
We might react differently if the Luftwaffe had called its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”
The examples mentioned would fall under the category of “American exceptionalism,” were it not for the fact that easy suppression of one’s own
crimes is virtually ubiquitous among powerful states, at least those that are not defeated and forced to acknowledge reality.
Perhaps the assassination was perceived by the administration as an “act of vengeance,” as Robertson concludes. And perhaps the rejection of the
legal option of a trial reflects a difference between the moral culture of 1945 and today, as he suggests. Whatever the motive was, it could hardly have
been security. As in the case of the “supreme international crime” in Iraq, the bin Laden assassination is another illustration of the important fact
that security is often not a high priority for state action, contrary to received doctrine.
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Continue Reading
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor (retired) at MIT. He is the author of many books and articles on international affairs and social-political
issues, and a long-time participant in activist movements. More Noam Chomsky
WEDNESDAY, AUG 17, 2011 8:30 AM EST
Who’s behind the New Yorker’s bin Laden exclusive?
The article's heavy reliance on anonymous sources raises questions about whose story is being told
BY RUSS BAKER, WHOWHATWHY
The establishment media just keep getting worse. They’re further
and further from good, tough investigative journalism, and more
prone to be pawns in complicated games that affect the public
interest in untold ways. A significant recent example is the New
Yorker’s vaunted August 8 exclusive on the vanquishing of Osama
bin Laden.
The piece, trumpeted as the most
detailed account to date of the May 1 raid in Abbottabad,
Pakistan, was an instant hit. “Got the chills half dozen times
reading @NewYorker killing bin Laden tick tock… exquisite
journalism,” tweeted the digital director of the PBS show
Frontline. The author, freelancer Nicholas Schmidle, was quickly
featured on the Charlie Rose show, an influential determiner of
“chattering class” opinion. Other news outlets rushed to praise
the story as “exhaustive,” “utterly compelling,” and on and on.
To be sure, it is the kind of granular, heroic story that the public loves, that generates follow-up bestsellers and movie options. The takedown even
has a Hollywood-esque code name: “Operation Neptune’s Spear.”
Here’s the introduction to the mission commander, full of minute details that help give it a ring of authenticity and the most intimate reportorial
access:
James, a broad-chested man in his late thirties, does not have the lithe swimmer’s frame that one might expect of a SEAL — he is built more
like a discus thrower. That night, he wore a shirt and trousers in Desert Digital Camouflage, and carried a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol,
along with extra ammunition; a CamelBak, for hydration; and gel shots, for endurance. He held a short-barrel, silenced M4 rifle. (Others
SEALs had chosen the Heckler & Koch MP7.) A “blowout kit,” for treating field trauma, was tucked into the small of James’s back. Stuffed
into one of his pockets was a laminated gridded map of the compound. In another pocket was a booklet with photographs and physical
descriptions of the people suspected of being inside. He wore a noise-cancelling headset, which blocked out nearly everything besides his
heartbeat.
On and on went the “tick-tock.” Yet as Paul Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, noted, that narrative was misleading in the extreme, because the New
Yorker reporter never actually spoke to James — nor to a single one of James’s fellow SEALs (who have never been identified or photographed —
even from behind — to protect their identity.) Instead, every word of Schmidle’s narrative was provided to him by people who were not present at the
raid. Complains Farhi:
…a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story.
Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong
impression that he spoke with them directly.
That didn’t trouble New Yorker editor David Remnick, according to Farhi:
Remnick says he’s satisfied with the accuracy of the account. “The sources spoke to our fact-checkers,” he said. “I know who they are.”
But we don’t.
On a story of this gravity, should we automatically join in with the huzzahs because it has the imprimatur of America’s most respected magazine? Or
would we be wise to approach it with caution?
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***
Most of us are not the trusting naïfs we once were. And with good reason.
The list of consequential events packaged for us by media and Hollywood in unsatisfactory ways continues to grow. It starts, certainly, with the
official version of the JFK assassination, widely discredited yet still carried forward by most major media organizations. (For more on that, see this.)
More and more people realize that the heroic Woodward & Bernstein story of Nixon’s demise is deeply problematical. (I’ve written extensively on
both of these in my book “Family of Secrets”.)
And untold millions don’t think we’ve heard the real (or at least complete) story of the phenomenal, complex success of those 19 hijackers on Sept. 11,
2001. Skeptics now include former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who recently speculated that the hijackers may have been
able to enter the US and move freely precisely because American intelligence hoped to recruit them as double agents — and that an ongoing cover-up
is designed to hide this. And then, of course, there are the Pentagon’s account of the heroic rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq, which turned out to be a
hoax, and the Pentagon’s fabricated account of the heroic battle death of former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, who turned out to be a
victim of friendly fire. These are just a few from scores of examples of deceit perpetrated upon the American people. Hardly the kind of track record
to inspire confidence in official explanations with the imprimatur of the military and the CIA.
Whatever one thinks of these other matters, we’re certainly now at a point where we ought to be prudent in embracing authorized accounts of the
latest seismic event: the dramatic end to one of America’s most reviled and storied nemeses.
The bin Laden raid presents us with every reason to be cautious. The government’s initial claims about what transpired at that house in Abbottabad
have changed, then changed again, with no proper explanation of the discrepancies. Even making allowances for human error in such shifting
accounts, almost every aspect of what we were told requires a willing suspension of disbelief — from the manner of Osama’s death and burial to the
purported pornography found at the site. (For more on these issues, see previous articles we wrote on the subject, here, here and here.)
Clarke’s theory will seem less outrageous later, as we explore Saudi intelligence’s crucial, and bizarre, role at the end of bin Laden’s life — working
directly with the man who now holds Clarke’s job.
Add to all of this the discovery that the reporter providing this newest account wasn’t even allowed to talk to any raid participants — and the
magazine’s lack of candor on this point — and you’ve got an almost unassailable case for treating the New Yorker story with extreme caution.
***
We might begin by asking the question: Who provided the New Yorker with its exclusive, and what was their agenda in doing so? To try and sort out
Schmidle’s sources, I read through the piece carefully several times.
One person who spoke to the reporter, and who is identified by name is John O. Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. Brennan is quoted
directly, briefly, near the top, describing to Schmidle pre-raid debate over whether such an operation would be a success or failure:
John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told me that the President’s advisers began an “interrogation of the data, to see if, by that
interrogation, you’re going to disprove the theory that bin Laden was there.”
The mere fact of Schmidle’s reliance on Brennan at all should send up a flare for the cautious reader. After all, that’s the very same Brennan who was
the principal source of incorrect details in the hours and days after the raid. These included the claim that the SEALs encountered substantial armed
resistance, not least from bin Laden himself; that it took them an astounding 40 minutes to get to bin Laden, and that the White House got to hear
the soldiers’ conversations in real time.
Here’s a Washington Post account from Brennan published on May 3, less than 48 hours after the raid:
Half an hour had passed on the ground, but the American commandos raiding Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideaway had yet to find
their long-sought target.
…The commandos swept methodically through the compound’s main building, clearing one room and then another as they made their way to
the upper floors where they expected to find bin Laden. As they did so, Obama administration officials in the White House Situation Room
listened to the SEAL team’s conversations over secure lines.
“The minutes passed like days,” said John O. Brennan, the administration’s chief counterterrorism adviser. “It was probably one of
the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled.”
Finally, shortly before 2 a.m. in Pakistan, the commandos burst into an upstairs room.Inside, an armed bin Laden took
cover behind a woman, Brennan said. With a burst of gunfire, one of the longest and costliest manhunts in modern history was over.
.. The commandos moved inside, and finally reached bin Laden’s upstairs living quarters after nearly 40 minutes on the
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ground.
Almost all that turns out to be hogwash — according to the new account produced by the New Yorker three months later. An account that, again, it
seems, comes courtesy of Brennan. The minutes did not pass like days. Bin Laden was not armed, and did not take cover behind a woman. And the
commandoes most certainly were not on the ground for 40 minutes. Some of them were up the stairs to the higher floors almost in a flash, and it
didn’t take long for them to run into and kill bin Laden.
For another take, consider this account from NBC News’ Pentagon correspondent — also reported the week after the raid — two days after Brennan
told the Washington Post a completely different story. This one appears to be based on a briefing from military officials who would have been likely
to have good knowledge of the operational details:
According to the officials’ account, as the first SEAL team moved into the compound, they took small-arms fire from the guest house in
the compound. The SEALs returned fire, killing bin Laden’s courier and the courier’s wife, who died in the crossfire. It was the only time
the SEALs were shot at.
The second SEAL team entered the first floor of the main residence and could see a man standing in the dark with one hand behind his back.
Fearing he was hiding a weapon, the SEALs shot and killed the lone man, who turned out to be unarmed.
As the U.S. commandos moved through the house, they found several stashes of weapons and barricades, as if the residents were prepared for
a violent and lengthy standoff — which never materialized.
The SEALs then made their way up a staircase, where they ran into one of bin Laden’s sons. The Americans immediately shot and killed the
19-year-old son, who was also unarmed, according to the officials.
Hearing the shots, bin Laden peered over the railing from the floor above. The SEALs fired but missed bin Laden, who ducked back into his
bedroom. As the SEALs stormed up the stairs, two young girls ran from the room.
One SEAL scooped them up and carried them out of harm’s way. The other two commandos stormed into bin Laden’s bedroom. One of bin
Laden’s wives rushed toward the Navy SEAL, who shot her in the leg.
Then, without hesitation, the same commando turned his gun on bin Laden, standing in what appeared to be pajamas,
and fired two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head. Although there were weapons in that bedroom, bin Laden was also
unarmed when he was shot.
Instead of a chaotic firefight, the U.S. officials said, the American commando assault was a precision operation, with
SEALs moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor.
In fact, most of the operation was spent in what the military calls “exploiting the site,” gathering up the computers, hard
drives, cellphones and files that could provide valuable intelligence on al-Qaida operatives and potential operations
worldwide.
The U.S. officials describing the operation said the SEALs carefully gathered up 22 women and children to ensure they
were not harmed. Some of the women were put in “flexi-cuffs” the plastic straps used to bind someone’s hands at the
wrists, and left them for Pakistani security forces to discover.
***
Given that Brennan’s initial version of the raid was strikingly erroneous, his later account to the New Yorker is suspect as well. So who else besides
Brennan might have been Schmidle’s sources? At one point in his piece, he cites an unnamed counterterrorism official:
A senior counterterrorism official who visited the JSOC redoubt described it as an enclave of unusual secrecy and discretion. “Everything they
were working on was closely held,” the official said.
Later, that same unnamed counterterrorism official is again cited, this time seeming to continue Brennan’s narrative of the meeting before the raid,
in which participants disagreed on the likely success of such a mission:
That day in Washington, Panetta convened more than a dozen senior C.I.A. officials and analysts for a final preparatory meeting. Panetta
asked the participants, one by one, to declare how confident they were that bin Laden was inside the Abbottabad compound. The
counterterrorism official told me that the percentages “ranged from forty per cent to ninety or ninety-five per cent,” and
added, “This was a circumstantial case.”
From the story’s construction, one could reasonably conclude that the unnamed counterterrorism official may indeed still just be Brennan. If not,
who could it be? How many different white House counterterrorism officials would have debriefed the SEALs, if indeed that is even their role? How
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many would have been privy to that planning meeting? And how many different officials would have gotten authorization to sum up the events of
that important day for this New Yorker writer? Also, it’s an old journalistic trick to quote the same source, on and off the record — thereby giving the
source extra cover when discussing particularly delicate matters.
So, we don’t know whether the article was based on anything more than Brennan, under marching orders to clean up the conflicting accounts he
originally put out.
UNEXPLAINED DISPUTES
It’s curious that the source chooses to emphasize the fundamental disagreement over whether the raid was a good idea. Presumably, there was a
purpose in emphasizing this, but the New Yorker’s “tick-tock”, which is very light on analysis or context, doesn’t tell us what it was. It may have been
intended to show Obama as brave, inclined toward big risks (thereby running counter to his reputation) — we can only guess.
This internal discord will get the attention of anyone who remembers all the assertions from intelligence officials over the years that bin Laden was
almost certainly already dead — either of natural causes or killed at some previous time.
Here’s a bit more from the New Yorker’s on officials’ doubts going into the raid:
Several analysts from the National Counterterrorism Center were invited to critique the C.I.A.’s analysis; their confidence in the intelligence
ranged between forty and sixty per cent. The center’s director, Michael Leiter, said that it would be preferable to wait for stronger
confirmation of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
Those doubts are particularly interesting for several reasons: the CIA has had a long history of disputes between its covert action wing, which tends
to advocate activity, and its analysis section, historically prone to caution. The action wing also has a history of publicizing its being right — when it
could purport to be right — and covering up its failures. So when an insider chooses to make public these disagreements, we should be willing to
consider motives.
This dispute can also be seen as an intriguing prologue to the rush to dump Bin Laden’s body and not provide proof to the public that it was indeed
bin Laden. What if it wasn’t bin Laden that they killed? Would the government announce that after such a high-stakes operation? (“While we
thought he’d be there, we accidentally killed someone else instead“? Seems unlikely.)
***
Now, let us go to the next antechamber of this warren of shadowy entities and unstated agendas.
Who exactly wanted bin Laden shot rather than taken alive and interrogated — and why? There’s been much discussion about the purported reasons
for terminating him on sight, but the fact remains that he would have been a source of tremendous intelligence of real value to the safety of
Americans and others.
Yet, early in the piece, Schmidle writes:
If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and
kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.
That was the plan? Whose plan? We’ve never been explicitly told by the White House that such a decision had been made. In fact, we’d previously
been informed that the president was glad to have the master plotter taken alive if he was unarmed and did not resist. So, that’s a huge and
problematical discrepancy that is only heightened by Schmidle’s misleadingly matter-of-fact treatment of the matter.
GET ME RIYADH
If the justification for killing Osama presented in the New Yorker’s warrants concern, the account of how — and why — they disposed of his body
ought to send alarm bells clanging.
At the time of the raid, the decision to hastily dump Osama’s body in the ocean rather than make it available for authoritative forensic examination
was a highly controversial one — that only led to more speculation that the White House was hiding something. The justifications, including not
wanting to bury him on land for fear of creating a shrine, were almost laughable.
So what do we learn about this from the New Yorker? It’s truly bizarre: the SEALS themselves made the decision. That’s strange enough. But then we
learn that Brennan took it upon himself to verify that was the right decision. How did he do this? Not by speaking with the president or top military,
diplomatic or legal brass. No, he called some foreigners — get ready — the Saudis, who told him that dumping at sea sounded like a good plan.
Here’s Schmidle’s account:
All along, the SEALs had planned to dump bin Laden’s corpse into the sea — a blunt way of ending the bin Laden myth. They had
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successfully pulled off a similar scheme before. During a DEVGRU helicopter raid inside Somalia in September, 2009, SEALs had killed Saleh
Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of East Africa’s top Al Qaeda leaders; Nabhan’s corpse was then flown to a ship in the Indian Ocean, given proper
Muslim rites, and thrown overboard. Before taking that step for bin Laden, however, John Brennan made a call. Brennan, who had been a
C.I.A. station chief in Riyadh, phoned a former counterpart in Saudi intelligence. Brennan told the man what had
occurred in Abbottabad and informed him of the plan to deposit bin Laden’s remains at sea. As Brennan knew, bin Laden’s
relatives were still a prominent family in the Kingdom, and Osama had once been a Saudi citizen. Did the Saudi government have any interest
in taking the body? “Your plan sounds like a good one,” the Saudi replied.
Let’s consider this. The most wanted man in the world; substantive professional doubts about whether the man in the Abbottabad house is him;
tremendous public doubts about whether it could even be him; the most important operation of the Obama presidency; yet the decision about what
to do with the body is left to low-level operatives. Keep in mind SEALs are trained to follow orders given by others. They’re expected to apply what
they know to unexpected scenarios that come up, but the key strategic decisions — arrived at in advance — are not theirs to make.
Even more strange that Brennan would discuss this with a foreign power. And not just any foreign power, but the regime that is inextricably linked
with the domestically-influential family of bin Laden — and home to many of the hijackers who worked for him.
Is it just me, or does this sound preposterous? Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser is just winging it with key aspects of one of
America’s most important, complex and risky operations? And the Saudi government is the one deciding to discard the remains of a man from one of
Saudi Arabia’s most powerful families, before the public could receive proper proof of the identity of the body? A regime with a great deal at stake
and perhaps plenty to hide.
Also please consider this important caveat: As we noted in a previous article, the claim that the body had already been positively identified via
DNA has been disputed by a DNA expert who said that insufficient time had elapsed before the sea burial to complete such tests.
The line about Brennan himself having been a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia is just sort of dropped in there. No recognition of what it
means that a person of that background was put into that position after 9/11, no recognition that a person of that background and those fraught
personal connections is controlling this narrative. He’s not just a “counterterrorism expert” — he is a longtime member of an agency whose mandate
includes the frequent use of disinformation. And one who has his own historic direct links to the Saudi regime, a key and problematical player in the
larger chess game playing out.
It’s relevant to note that Brennan is not only a career CIA officer (they say no one ever really leaves the Agency, no matter their new title) but one
with a lot of baggage. He was deputy director of the CIA at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He was an adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, after
which Obama initially planned to name him CIA director. That appointment was pulled, in part due to criticism from human rights advocates over
statements he had made in support of sending terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured.
Of course, there could have been other sources besides Brennan. In addition to the unnamed “counterterrorism official” previously cited, the New
Yorker mentions a “special operations officer,” as in:
…according to a special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid.
Subsequent quotes from him indicate that this had to be a supervisory special ops officer. His comments are surprising:
“This wasn’t a hard op,” the special-operations officer told me. “It would be like hitting a target in McLean” — the upscale Virginia suburb of
Washington, D.C.
Whoops! Here’s a Special Ops guy saying the Special Ops raid was actually no big deal! Shouldn’t that, if a valid assessment, get more attention?
Especially given the endless praise and frequent statements of how difficult the operation was. I mean, the toughness and diciness of the Abbottabad
mission is the prime reason we want to read the New Yorker’s account in the first place!
To further underline the point, consider that this fellow is not alone in his assessment:
In the months after the raid, the media have frequently suggested that the Abbottabad operation was as challenging as
Operation Eagle Claw and the “Black Hawk Down” incident, but the senior Defense Department official told me that “this was not
one of three missions.”…. He likened the routine of evening raids to “mowing the lawn.”
Why would a person overseeing an operation like this deflate the bubble of adoration? It doesn’t seem helpful to the interests of Special Operations –
and it doesn’t seem credible, either. So there’s presumably a reason that this person is — again speaking to the New Yorker’s after this important
exclusive has been carefully considered and strategized. We just don’t know what it is, and the magazine doesn’t even bother to wonder.
***
Most of the other sources seem to play bit roles. One is “a senior adviser to the President” whose only comment is that Obama decided not to trust
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the Pakistanis with advance notice of the raid — which we already knew. Another — named — source is Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security
adviser, who does not evince any intimate knowledge of the raid itself.
The New Yorker’s also includes a few other officials who brief Schmidle on general background, like a “senior defense department official” explaining
the overall relationship between Special Operations and CIA personnel, and a named former CIA counsel explaining that the Abottabad raid
amounted to “a complete incorporation of JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] into a C.I.A. operation.”
That’s only slipped into the article, but it is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the piece, along with a brief mention of the way in which
former Iraq/Afghan commander General David Petraeus has gone to CIA while CIA director Panetta has been made Defense Secretary. (For more on
these important but confusing games of high-level musical chairs, which were not deeply scrutinized in the conventional media, see our
WhoWhatWhy pieces here and here.)
This may sound too technical for your taste, but the takeaway point is that fundamental realignments are afoot in that vast, massively-funded,
powerful and secretive part of the US government that is treated by the corporate press almost as if it does not exist. The tales of internal intrigue
that we do not hear would begin to provide us with the real narratives that are not ours to have.
In the New Yorker’s piece, we do learn lots of things we did not know before — for example, that Special Ops considered tunneling in or coming in by
foot rather than helicopter. We learn that CIA director Robert Gates wanted to drop massive bombs on the house. General James Cartwright, vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared that view — Cartwright is one of the few who is directly identified as a source for Schmidle. That’s
important stuff, and worth more than brief mention. And, once again, we need more effort to try and understand why we are being told these things.
“WE REALLY DIDN’T KNOW… WHAT WAS GOING ON”
About two-thirds of the article is a sort of scene-setter, a prologue to on-the-ground story we’ve all been waiting for. But when the big moment
arrives, the New Yorker’s Schmidle instead punts:
Meanwhile, James, the squadron commander, had breached one wall, crossed a section of the yard covered with trellises, breached a second
wall, and joined up with the SEALs from helo one, who were entering the ground floor of the house. What happened next is not
precisely clear. “I can tell you that there was a time period of almost twenty to twenty-five minutes where we really didn’t
know just exactly what was going on,” Panetta said later, on “PBS NewsHour.”
Until this moment, the operation had been monitored by dozens of defense, intelligence, and Administration officials watching the drone’s
video feed. The SEALs were not wearing helmet cams, contrary to a widely cited report by CBS. None of them had any previous
knowledge of the house’s floor plan, and they were further jostled by the awareness that they were possibly minutes away from ending the
costliest manhunt in American history; as a result, some of their recollections — on which this account is based — may be
imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.
Schmidle claims that the SEALs’ “recollections — on which this account is based” — are subject to dispute. But as I’ve noted, the article is NOT based
on their recollections, but on what some source claims to Schmidle were their recollections. Why the summary may be imprecise and thus subject to
dispute after it has been filtered by a person controlling the scenario, must be asked. Perhaps this is why the New Yorker is not permitted to speak
directly to the SEALs — because of what they could tell the magazine.
Now, killing the men who lived in the compound: First, the SEALs shot and killed the courier, who they say was armed, and his wife, who they say
was not, when they emerged from the guesthouse. Then they killed the courier’s brother inside the main house, who they say was armed. Then they
moved up the stairs:
… three SEALs marched up the stairs. Midway up, they saw bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, craning his neck around the
corner. He then appeared at the top of the staircase with an AK-47. Khalid, who wore a white T-shirt with an overstretched neckline and had
short hair and a clipped beard, fired down at the Americans. (The counterterrorism official claims that Khalid was unarmed,
though still a threat worth taking seriously. “You have an adult male, late at night, in the dark, coming down the stairs at you in an Al Qaeda
house — your assumption is that you’re encountering a hostile.”) At least two of the SEALs shot back and killed Khalid.
Ok, that’s pretty strange. First, Schmidle asserts that Khalid bin Laden was armed and fired with an AK-47. Then he quotes the counterterrorism
official — who could in fact be Brennan — saying that Khalid was unarmed. Why does the New Yorker first run the “Khalid was armed” claim as a
fact, and then include the official disclaimer? What’s really going on here, even from the New Yorker’s editorial standpoint?
Here’s another such instance: A dispute over where Osama was when they first saw him:
Three SEALs shuttled past Khalid’s body and blew open another metal cage, which obstructed the staircase leading to the third floor.
Bounding up the unlit stairs, they scanned the railed landing. On the top stair, the lead SEAL swivelled right; with his night-vision goggles, he
discerned that a tall, rangy man with a fist-length beard was peeking out from behind a bedroom door, ten feet away. The SEAL
instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft [codename for Osama]. (The counterterrorism official asserts that the SEAL first saw bin
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Laden on the landing, and fired but missed.)
What’s the purpose of all this? How good is intelligence work when they can’t reconstruct whether the singular focus of the operation was first
spotted peeking out from a doorway, or standing on the landing above them?
And then one of the most interesting passages, about the kill:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a
tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing
him — it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration
maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.)
Uh-oh. So who is this Special Operations officer? He is directly disputing the administration’s claim on what surely matters greatly — what were
President Obama’s intentions here? And did they always plan to just ignore them? That the New Yorker just drops this in with no further analysis or
context is, simply put, shocking.
It seems almost as if Panetta, Obama, and the people in the story who most closely approximate actual representatives of the public in a functioning
democracy, were basically cut off from observing what went down that day — or from influencing what transpired.
Consider this statement from Panetta, not included in the New Yorker piece:
“Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know
just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
“We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation
itself as they were going through the compound.”
Panetta’s “lost 25 minutes” needs to be seen in the context of a man with civilian roots, notwithstanding two mid-60s years as a Lt. in military intel:
Former Congressman, Clinton White House budget chief and Chief of Staff, credentials with civil rights and environment movements — a fellow with
real distance from the true spook/military mojo.
Taken together, here’s what we have: President Obama did not know exactly what was going on. He did not decide that bin Laden should be shot.
And he did not decide to dump his body in the ocean. The CIA and its Special Ops allies made all the decisions.
Then Brennan, the CIA’s man, put out the version that CIA wanted. (Keep in mind that, as noted earlier, CIA was really running the operation — with
Special Ops under its direction).
What we’re looking at, folks, is the reality of democracy in America: A permanent entrenched covert establishment that marches to its own drummer
or to drummers unknown. It’s exactly the kind of thing that never gets reported. Too scary. Too real. Better to dismiss this line of inquiry as too
“conspiracy theory.”
If that sounds like hyperbole, let me add this rather significant consideration. It is the background of Nicholas Schmidle, the freelancer who wrote
the New Yorker piece. It may give us insight into how he landed this extraordinary exclusive on this extraordinarily sensitive matter — information
again, significantly, not shared by the New Yorker with its readers:
Schmidle’s father is Marine Lt. General Robert E. “Rooster” Schmidle Jr. General Schmidle served as Commanding Officer of Special Purpose
Marine Air-Ground Task Force (Experimental) — that’s essentially Special Operations akin to Navy SEALs. In recent years, he was “assistant deputy
commandant for Programs and Resources (Programs)” — where, among other things, he oversaw “irregular warfare.” (See various, including
contract specs here on “Special Operations,” and picture caption here) In 2010, he moved into another piece of this, when Obama appointed him
deputy commander, U.S. Cyber Command. Cumulatively, this makes the author’s father a very important man in precisely the sort of circles who care
how the raid is publicly portrayed — and who would be quite intimate with some of the folks hunkering down with Obama in the Situation Room on
the big day.
You can see a photo of Gen. Schmidle on a 2010 panel about “Warring Futures.” Event co-sponsors include Slate magazine and the New America
Foundation, both of which, according to Nicholas Schmidle’s website, have also provided Schmidle’s son with an ongoing perch (with Slate giving
him a platform for numerous articles from war zones and the foundation employing him as a Fellow.) These parallel relationships grow more
disturbing with contemplation.
***
So let’s get back to the question, Who is driving this Ship of State?
First, consider this passage:
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2/27/12 3:44 PM
Obama returned to the White House at two o’clock, after playing nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base. The Black Hawks
departed from Jalalabad thirty minutes later. Just before four o’clock, Panetta announced to the group in the Situation Room that the
helicopters were approaching Abbottabad.
To be really useful reporting here, rather than just meaningless “color”, we’d need some context. Was the golf game’s purpose to blow off steam at an
especially tense time? Did Obama not think it important enough for him to be constantly present in the hours leading up to the raid? Is this typical of
his schedule when huge things are happening? We desperately need a more realistic sense of what presidents do, how much they’re really in charge,
or, instead, figureheads for unnamed individuals who make most of the critical decisions.
Here’s something just as strange: we are told the President took a commanding role in determining key operational tactics, but then didn’t seem
interested in important details, after the fact.
Forty-five minutes after the Black Hawks departed, four MH-47 Chinooks launched from the same runway in Jalalabad. Two of them flew to
the border, staying on the Afghan side; the other two proceeded into Pakistan. Deploying four Chinooks was a last-minute decision
made after President Barack Obama said he wanted to feel assured that the Americans could “fight their way out of
Pakistan.”
Now, consider the following climactic New Yorker account of Obama meeting with the squadron commander after it’s all over, with bin Laden dead
and the troops home and safe. Schmidle decides to call the commander “James… the names of all the covert operators mentioned in this story have
been changed.” The anecdote will feature a canine, one who, in true furry dog story fashion, had already been introduced early in the New Yorker
piece, as “Cairo” (it’s not clear whether the dog’s name, too, was changed):
As James talked about the raid, he mentioned Cairo’s role. “There was a dog?” Obama interrupted. James nodded and said that Cairo was in
an adjoining room, muzzled, at the request of the Secret Service.
“I want to meet that dog,” Obama said.
“If you want to meet the dog, Mr. President, I advise you to bring treats,” James joked. Obama went over to pet Cairo, but the dog’s muzzle
was left on.
Here’s the ending:
Before the President returned to Washington, he posed for photographs with each team member and spoke with many of them, but he left
one thing unsaid. He never asked who fired the kill shot, and the SEALs never volunteered to tell him.
Why did the president not want to ask for specifics on the most important parts of the operation — but seemed so interested in a dog that
participated? While it is certainly plausible that this happened, we should be wary of one of the oldest p.r. tricks around — get people cooing over an
animal, while the real action is elsewhere.
Certainly, Obama’s reaction differs dramatically from that of other previous presidents who always demanded detailed briefings and would have
stayed on top of it all throughout — including fellow Democrats JFK, Carter and Clinton. At minimum, it shows a degree of caution or ceremony
based upon a desire not to know too much — or an understanding that he may not ask. Does anyone doubt that Bill Clinton would have been on
watch 24/7 during this operation, parsing legal, political and operational details throughout, and would have demanded to know who felled
America’s most wanted?
Summing up about the reliability of this account, which is now likely to become required reading for every student in America, long into the future:
•It is based on reporting by a man who fails to disclose that he never spoke to the people who conducted the raid, or that his father has a long
background himself running such operations (this even suggests the possibility that Nicholas Schmidle’s own father could have been one of those
“unnamed sources.”)
•It seems to have depended heavily on trusting second-hand accounts by people with a poor track record for accurate summations, and an incentive
to spin.
•The alleged decisions on killing bin Laden and disposing of his body lack credibility.
•The DNA evidence that the SEALs actually got their man is questionable.
•Though certain members of Congress say they have seen photos of the body (or, to be precise, a body), the rest of us have not seen anything.
•Promised photos of the ceremonial dumping of the body at sea have not materialized.
•The eyewitnesses from the house — including the surviving wives — have disappeared without comment.
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We weren’t allowed to hear from the raid participants. And on August 6, seventeen Navy SEALs died when their helicopter was shot down in
Afghanistan. We’re told that fifteen of them came, amazingly, from the same SEAL Team 6 that carried out the Abbottabad raid — but that none of
the dead were present for the raid. We do get to hear the stories of those men, and their names.
Of course, if any of those men had been in the Abbottabad raid — or knew anything about it of broad public interest, we’d be none the wiser —
because, the only ”reliable sources” still available (and featured by the New Yorker) are military and intelligence professionals, coming out of a long
tradition of cover-ups and fabrications.
Meanwhile, we have this president, this one who according to the magazine article didn’t ask about the core issues — why this man was killed, who
killed him, under whose orders, what would be done with the body.
Well, he may not want answers. But we ought to want them. Otherwise, it’s all just a game.
More WhoWhatWhy
Seymour Hersh and the men who want him committed
A venerable publication launches a ridicule campaign against one of America’s top investigative
journalists
MATTHEW PHELAN February 23, 2011
The empire strikes again
Sex, oil, chaos and corruption at the American University of Iraq
RUSS BAKER AND KRISTINA BORJESSON February 15, 2011
Continue Reading
Russ Baker, an award-winning investigative journalist, is founder and editor-in-chief of WhoWhatWhy.com. More Russ Baker
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Killing of bin Laden: What are the consequences?

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