Widely reported: Osama bin Laden dead

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Widely reported: Osama bin Laden dead

Postby Lanji » Sun May 01, 2011 10:34 pm

I'm sure most of you have heard by now. Thoughts or commentary?

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Postby Flare™ » Mon May 02, 2011 7:47 pm

Its about time.

While he may be dead, there is still the rest of the group he was running to deal with. A more radical individual may step up to the plate which may take extreme measures to retaliate. Its not over yet folks.
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Postby Lanji » Mon May 02, 2011 9:57 pm

I'm with you on the part where a more Radical Individual will step in eventually.

Perhaps more targeted questions for those of us in RPG land, but do we dare have elements like this in a campaign so soon after the events happening in real life?

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Postby Flare™ » Mon May 02, 2011 10:00 pm

Sure, why not? The networks and cable TV will be all over this soon.
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Postby Kosh » Wed May 04, 2011 3:16 am

Lanji wrote:Perhaps more targeted questions for those of us in RPG land, but do we dare have elements like this in a campaign so soon after the events happening in real life?


If we dont do it, Michael Bay will :P

Come on, if there isnt a movie about this in the next 5 years I'll be amazed.

While I agree that it is not over yet, and I doubt it will be for some time still and Im pretty much waiting to see the retaliation strike for this, it was a good step forward and franky I think it was to quick for him.

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Postby Cobalt » Wed May 04, 2011 11:09 am

Well, Katherine Bigelow, the director of the Hurt Locker, is going to film a movie about the hunt for Bin Laden.

In terms of what it means to me personally, that is hard to say. I am not, by nature, a vicious man but I think that my feelings can be summed up by paraphrasing a quote from one of my favorite television shows.

"I'm going to drink a bottle of scotch as if it was Osama Bin Laden's blood and celebrate his death."
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Postby NuclearTreerat » Thu May 05, 2011 6:27 pm

"Live by the sword, die by the sword."

Am I relieved that he's dead and the victims of 9/11. USS Cole, and the embassy bombings can get some closure? Yes. They've waited too long through too many shifts in focus to know that the person behind those attacks has paid the price for them. Bin Laden's death will also put a damper on some attacks for a while; he was the rallying point for a lot of smaller groups and the one who could organize them.

Am I happy he's dead? Not really happy. He was one cog (even if a big one) in a network that by all accounts was highly compartmentalized to insure it's survival in the event of any individuals death. It takes a long time to dismantle a well-funded, organized, and (most frightening) disciplined group like that. The USA still hasn't been able to effectively dismantle all the various paramilitary militias and hate-groups here, and Al Qaeda makes them look like schoolyard bullies.

I'm more interested in what the Special Ops group was able to seize in terms of intelligence assets. If the rumored computer & disks actually were Bin Ladens they could be a treasure-trove of information on Al Qaeda's resources, organization, and plans. With that sort of information it would be much easier to take out entire chunks of the group at once and hinder their ability to stage the sort of large-scale attacks that have been their hallmark.
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Re: Widely reported: Osama bin Laden dead

Postby Lt Col Andy Reddson, REF » Thu May 26, 2011 12:18 am

The whole thing stinks; Too many questions, and no answers.
It's a flat out fraud.

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Re: Widely reported: Osama bin Laden dead

Postby Thorn » Fri May 27, 2011 7:25 am

Lt Col Andy Reddson, REF wrote:The whole thing stinks; Too many questions, and no answers.
It's a flat out fraud.


Like that entire "Hitler died in the bunker" thing? Or the "Man in the Iron Mask?" Or the Gunpowder Plot? Or the list of conspirators in the assassination of Caesar?

Fact is, no historical event is so well-documented that you're guaranteed to have the whole story. When the event in question involves people whose stock in trade is secrecy, who are using equipment that's not even supposed to exist, and who themselves are officially "computer programmers" and "consultants" (to use the usual covers back in the '90s), why do you expect to get all the answers at once?

Mind, personally I expect bin Laden's death will have all the real-world effect that his presence in Pakistan did - which is to say, none at all. But to scream fraud because a special operations force refuses to violate operational security just for your benefit? It's ludicrous.

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Postby Cobalt » Fri May 27, 2011 8:21 am

Well said, Thorn. Well said.
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Re: Widely reported: Osama bin Laden dead

Postby Gideon Krieg » Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:11 pm

Lt Col Andy Reddson, REF wrote:The whole thing stinks; Too many questions, and no answers.
It's a flat out fraud.


That sentiment is understandable.
For nearly a decade various media outlets, and middle-Eastern government officials have been saying Osama Bin Laden was dying, or was dead because of Kidney Failure.

Here's the TIME magazine article on the whole mess (it's from 2008 BTW).

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1819280,00.html

The New York Times did a piece in 2001 where they interviewed Doctor Mohammad Kahyal (Bagdad's leading Kidney Specialist at the time) who made the claim that he had been treating Bin Laden for Renal failure since 1998 and that Osama required a dialysis machine to continue living.

If what Dr. Kahyal said was in fact true, then Osama couldn't have lived past 2006 or 07 as six years is the maximum anybody can live with Kidney disease.

In 2002 CNN reported on the fact that Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf believed Bin Laden to be dead when he told the CNN reporter:
"...bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout".

Many officials have gone on record in the last decade saying this man died years ago.

Here's just a few:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, FBI counter-terrorism chief Dale Watson, Israeli intelligence sources, the late former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Bin Laden expert Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program.

Then there's the French government's "secret" memo of 2006 that stated:
"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs,"

Are they telling the truth?
I have no idea, but I do know that the way the situation with this latest "We Got Em" scenario was conducted (meaning how many times they changed their story) does nothing to strengthen the credibility of this administration nor does the death of a man who may have already been dead for years have any real impact on the events of the world today.

It was a "feel good" moment for America, and that's about it.

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Postby Lt Col Andy Reddson, REF » Mon Jun 06, 2011 7:50 pm

I still say there’s too many questions and not enough answers, but I DO (and did then, BTW) believe he is very very DEAD.
But there isn’t even a “feel good” to this.

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Postby Kosh » Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:04 am

While we're at it, lets add the Moon landings and the Earth being round to the table.

Game on gentlemen!

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Postby Cobalt » Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:08 am

Oh, and while we're at it, we can add the "Obama is really a foreign national out to undermine the United States" and "Tupac is alive" to the table, too.
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Postby Gideon Krieg » Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:00 am

Lt Col Andy Reddson, REF wrote:I still say there’s too many questions and not enough answers, but I DO (and did then, BTW) believe he is very very DEAD.
But there isn’t even a “feel good” to this.


I agree.
Whether he died in 2002 or 2011 is irrelevent.
The "feel good" moment is now dead (if it ever existed in the first place) and with it the boost Obama got in the polls.

It would seem that is the reason some people try to down play the poor way the PR was done after Osama's supposed assasination.

GW Bush taught me not to trust government with his constant calls for increased police-state powers all in the name of fighting a terrorist boogeyman that hasn't reared its head since 2001.

I bring this up because now that Osama is officially dead, and supposedly there are only a few hundred Al Queda worldwide, should we not now dismantle the TSA, DHS, "Patriot Act" and other organizations created for the express purpose of fighting a now impotent enemy?

I question the motivations for these laws since the way they're being used is not what we were told they were for.
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Postby Cobalt » Tue Jun 07, 2011 12:07 pm

You do realize that some of the worst terrorist attacks in history were perpetrated by less than a handful of people, right?
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Postby Thorn » Tue Jun 07, 2011 4:54 pm

I can name, off the top of my head, at least three major terrorist operations in the last ten years, all of which resulted in fatalities. There's the Madrid bombings of 2004, the London bombings of 2005, and the Morocco bombings of just last year. Again, these are off the top of my head, without digging. Of those, Madrid and Morocco have probable al-Qaeda links. That there have not been bombings in the US is less a matter of desire than a matter of opportunity. For that matter, the Lockerbie bombings back in the '80s were not the work of al-Qaeda, nor were the various terrorist incidents back in the '70s and '80s at the Rome airport.

I dislike the existence of the TSA and Homeland Security as much as the next man, and I fully agree that their existence is a blight on the United States. I would rather fly with the risks than live in fear, especially an artificially induced state of fear. However, the excuse behind their creation still exists.

Now, I'm as in favor of reasonable argument as the next person (even unreasonable argument, as a look at the stats board will show), but we're approaching the point where we show why it's impolite to discuss religion, politics, or romantic relationships at dinner.

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Postby Gideon Krieg » Tue Jun 07, 2011 6:36 pm

Thorn wrote:I can name, off the top of my head, at least three major terrorist operations in the last ten years, all of which resulted in fatalities. There's the Madrid bombings of 2004, the London bombings of 2005, and the Morocco bombings of just last year. Again, these are off the top of my head, without digging. Of those, Madrid and Morocco have probable al-Qaeda links. That there have not been bombings in the US is less a matter of desire than a matter of opportunity. For that matter, the Lockerbie bombings back in the '80s were not the work of al-Qaeda, nor were the various terrorist incidents back in the '70s and '80s at the Rome airport.

I dislike the existence of the TSA and Homeland Security as much as the next man, and I fully agree that their existence is a blight on the United States. I would rather fly with the risks than live in fear, especially an artificially induced state of fear. However, the excuse behind their creation still exists.

Now, I'm as in favor of reasonable argument as the next person (even unreasonable argument, as a look at the stats board will show), but we're approaching the point where we show why it's impolite to discuss religion, politics, or romantic relationships at dinner.


Of course terrorism is a crime of opportunity.
And 9/11 was clearly the result of a lack of funding to the US agencies that are actually effective in fighting terrorism, and thus the opportunity to conduct such an attack presented itself.
Those agencies being the CIA, NSA, and FBI.
The TSA and DHS on the other hand have routinely failed to catch test bombs and firearms that are put through the screening process.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/08/over_half_of_ts.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-17-airport-security_N.htm

Not too mention the fact that the southern border of the United States is wide open for any would be terrorist to walk through.

Those reasons, and others is why Osama Bin Laden's death means absolutely nothing to the reality of worldwide terrorism.

The TSA and DHS do not make us any safer now that Osama is dead than they did while he was supposedly alive.
Both agencies focus more on the citizens of the USA and internal policing of travel than they do stopping terrorism.

Like for example screening students at a prom.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/tsa-patdowns-at-santa-fe-prom-25305206

The TSA later vehemently denied this.
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Postby Thorn » Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:04 am

You know what... at this point, it's very difficult to argue without my post coming across as snarky at the least, and directly, deliberately offensive at worst. There are serious logical holes in your argument, which at this point boils down to an ad-hominem attack on the agencies in question, rather than a discussion of their purpose and whether they have a place in an open society. I suspect that this is because we agree that they don't; not a single American life has been saved by the collective shoe removals of every air passenger since 2004, and it's wasted more time than is measurable, made us conscious of a threat that cannot even be shown to exist and even if it did exist strikes fewer people in a given population than, say, skin cancer or car accidents, and inculcated a culture of fear, all of which adds up to a direct assault on the concept of personal freedom. As I said, I would rather live with the risk than artificially generated fear.

However, you have shifted from arguing that the DHS should be disassembled because bin Laden is dead to stating that his life or death has no impact on global terrorism; if that is the case, why should his life or death have any impact on the continuing survival of the agency whose stated purpose is to reduce the risk of terrorism in the United States?

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Postby Cobalt » Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:23 am

Thorn wrote:Now, I'm as in favor of reasonable argument as the next person (even unreasonable argument, as a look at the stats board will show), but we're approaching the point where we show why it's impolite to discuss religion, politics, or romantic relationships at dinner.


As I fully agree that this discussion is fast approaching said point, I am locking the thread.
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