Osama Bin Laden is dead.

[Damocles]

It's far too easy to dismiss your enemies as evil and twisted

9/11. Pure evil.

I can see that I'm obviously not going get people to understand where I'm coming from here, but goddammit, I'll give it one more try.

Yes, 9/11 was an act of evil. So was bombing civilians in Sudan. So was Churchill signing an order to murder people in Dresden and Hamburg. The point is, you aren't at war with 9/11, it was a completely isolated incident that has never happened before and probably won't again. The people who committed it are dead and have been for a decade. We're at war with "Global Terrorism", which basically picks numerous groups that the U.S. decides is a threat and says that they are evil.

Nothing exists in isolation. 9/11 happened because Islamic fascism rose. Islamic fascism rose for hundreds of different reasons, some of which are entirely the fault of the US/UK, some of which are the fault of the religion itself, some of which are the fault of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, some of which are the fault of economic circumstances, some of which are the fault of generations of Popes. There's an inelegance in the causal links here which isn't helping anything. You can't just say "oh well, OBL created Al-Qaeda so 9/11 happened". 9/11 would have happened even if Osama Bin Laden had never been born, the seeds of which were planted during the Cold War and the Iranian Revolution.

The point, is that in the minds of themselves and their followers, they are entirely justified in felling the Great Satan. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to throw planes at buildings, it is done after a long list of atrocities are committed to the point of where they feel that they have no option but vengeance.

The capture of Bin Laden was a chance to show all of these potential terrorists that their propaganda isn't true; that Western society isn't all about who we can destroy next. Bin Laden would have been sent to the UN, put on trial and quite probably executed there. What we have done instead, is once again shown the Arab world that we are merciless killers who only respect justice when it suits us.

As I've said before, the War on Terror is nonsense of the highest order; it's an excuse for perpetual war. I feel like I've just landed in 1984 or something, where retaliation for a first strike attack is an excuse to retaliate and murder them. It's like everybody is talking in newspeak or something where justice and vengeance are synonyms of each other, and good/evil are absolute concepts. Like I've landed in a world entirely imagined by WWE writers.

"Citizens, we are now raising the chocolate ration to 4 grammes a week"
"Didn't it used to be 6 grammes a week?"

 

[20sbc07]

He's not dead.

The 1 picture they had of him was a fake (http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/787/binfake.jpg) and they just happened to throw the body in the sea so there can't be any other pictures.

I call bullshit.

NOBODY from Washington has released any pics or vids yet. They are deliberating as of sensitivity of the assassination.

Humble pie may yet be served, mate.

When did you meet obama?

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Damo,
I've got issues with many things you've said and I understand you've got a perspective but I do want to point out a few things, starting with the above post.

So you're telling all of us that because Osama truly believed in his work and his idea of Islam that his actions are justifiable? I understand that people have their own world views, but I think everyone here can tell you that what Osama preached was downright wrong and not how the Koran is meant to be interpereted. Speaking of simplifying things, Osama simplified the words of this text to work to his advantage in order to recruit, teach, and arm a group of people created to incite violence and kill innocent people. Osama was a bad man and there certainly a point when you give up your rights as a human, and Osama had passed that point when he decided to purposely murder civilians in order to further his ideology.

The second thing I don't get is your consistant denial that Osama is at fault for any of this. What you're claiming is that thousands, probably tens of thousands, of intelligence, armed forces, and government officials in the US and across the globe are working in concert to falsely accuse Osama of being behind several terrorist acts in the last 20 years. Are you nuts? Just because you don't have the information doesn't mean that Osama is innocent. You really think that the government is going to share this info with the general public? Do you think Bush gathered a group of thousands of people and said, "listen up guys, we are going to pin this all on Al-Qaeda so we can invade a shithole country in the middle east that no one wants anything to do with...so why don't you all go make up a bunch of jibber-jabber that implicates Bin Laden so we can get in there."

I'm just curious how you can justify that you somehow know more than the entire intelligence community, world leaders, and thousands of people that literally work every single day on finding and killing the people who have essentially declared war on basic human rights.

Although you weren't addressing me I have an issue with this bit in bold.

You simply can't have this mentality if you want to resolve anything, it's dismissive and wrong. You can't just assume somebody is born into this world 'pure evil', it's all a matter of circumstance, upbringing and environment that leads people to do what they do. You could preach insanity, but he's still a human being, and all human beings should have rights whether you like it or not. To take away things like the right to a fair trial is just ludicrous and I can't believe people are arguing with Damocles on that point.

It undermines morality in an unspeakable way which will always lead to further conflict.

 

[MCFC BOB]

9/11. Pure evil.

I can see that I'm obviously not going get people to understand where I'm coming from here, but goddammit, I'll give it one more try.

Yes, 9/11 was an act of evil. So was bombing civilians in Sudan. So was Churchill signing an order to murder people in Dresden and Hamburg. The point is, you aren't at war with 9/11, it was a completely isolated incident that has never happened before and probably won't again. The people who committed it are dead and have been for a decade. We're at war with "Global Terrorism", which basically picks numerous groups that the U.S. decides is a threat and says that they are evil.

Nothing exists in isolation. 9/11 happened because Islamic fascism rose. Islamic fascism rose for hundreds of different reasons, some of which are entirely the fault of the US/UK, some of which are the fault of the religion itself, some of which are the fault of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, some of which are the fault of economic circumstances, some of which are the fault of generations of Popes. There's an inelegance in the causal links here which isn't helping anything. You can't just say "oh well, OBL created Al-Qaeda so 9/11 happened". 9/11 would have happened even if Osama Bin Laden had never been born, the seeds of which were planted during the Cold War and the Iranian Revolution.

The point, is that in the minds of themselves and their followers, they are entirely justified in felling the Great Satan. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to throw planes at buildings, it is done after a long list of atrocities are committed to the point of where they feel that they have no option but vengeance.

The capture of Bin Laden was a chance to show all of these potential terrorists that their propaganda isn't true; that Western society isn't all about who we can destroy next. Bin Laden would have been sent to the UN, put on trial and quite probably executed there. What we have done instead, is once again shown the Arab world that we are merciless killers who only respect justice when it suits us.

As I've said before, the War on Terror is nonsense of the highest order; it's an excuse for perpetual war. I feel like I've just landed in 1984 or something, where retaliation for a first strike attack is an excuse to retaliate and murder them. It's like everybody is talking in newspeak or something where justice and vengeance are synonyms of each other, and good/evil are absolute concepts. Like I've landed in a world entirely imagined by WWE writers.

"Citizens, we are now raising the chocolate ration to 4 grammes a week"
"Didn't it used to be 6 grammes a week?"

I admire you sometimes, Damocles. Sometimes you can be a mad man, and on the odd occasion you can really offend people with your posts - like calling me a **** when I moaned that we hadn't signed sufficient back-up for Silva. But you stick to your beliefs and don't fall in any argument.

A lot of what you said makes sense. Even though I do believe that Al-Qaeda are repsonsible for the 9/11 attacks, because I don't see why George W. Bush would sacrifice the lives of his own citizens... even for oil... but it just... what you are saying makes sense. Let's just put it that way.

 

[ali benarbia's studs]

I can see that I'm obviously not going get people to understand where I'm coming from here, but goddammit, I'll give it one more try.

Yes, 9/11 was an act of evil. So was bombing civilians in Sudan. So was Churchill signing an order to murder people in Dresden and Hamburg. The point is, you aren't at war with 9/11, it was a completely isolated incident that has never happened before and probably won't again. The people who committed it are dead and have been for a decade. We're at war with "Global Terrorism", which basically picks numerous groups that the U.S. decides is a threat and says that they are evil.

Nothing exists in isolation. 9/11 happened because Islamic fascism rose. Islamic fascism rose for hundreds of different reasons, some of which are entirely the fault of the US/UK, some of which are the fault of the religion itself, some of which are the fault of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, some of which are the fault of economic circumstances, some of which are the fault of generations of Popes. There's an inelegance in the causal links here which isn't helping anything. You can't just say "oh well, OBL created Al-Qaeda so 9/11 happened". 9/11 would have happened even if Osama Bin Laden had never been born, the seeds of which were planted during the Cold War and the Iranian Revolution.

The point, is that in the minds of themselves and their followers, they are entirely justified in felling the Great Satan. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to throw planes at buildings, it is done after a long list of atrocities are committed to the point of where they feel that they have no option but vengeance.

The capture of Bin Laden was a chance to show all of these potential terrorists that their propaganda isn't true; that Western society isn't all about who we can destroy next. Bin Laden would have been sent to the UN, put on trial and quite probably executed there. What we have done instead, is once again shown the Arab world that we are merciless killers who only respect justice when it suits us.

As I've said before, the War on Terror is nonsense of the highest order; it's an excuse for perpetual war. I feel like I've just landed in 1984 or something, where retaliation for a first strike attack is an excuse to retaliate and murder them. It's like everybody is talking in newspeak or something where justice and vengeance are synonyms of each other, and good/evil are absolute concepts. Like I've landed in a world entirely imagined by WWE writers.

"Citizens, we are now raising the chocolate ration to 4 grammes a week"
"Didn't it used to be 6 grammes a week?"

I admire you sometimes, Damocles. Sometimes you can be a mad man, and on the odd occasion you can really offend people with your posts - like calling me a **** when I moaned that we hadn't signed sufficient back-up for Silva. But you stick to your beliefs and don't fall in any argument.

A lot of what you said makes sense. I do believe that Al-Qaeda are repsonsible for the 9/11 attacks, because I don't see why George W. Bush would sacrifice the lives of his own citizens... even for oil... but it just... what you are saying makes sense. Let's just put it that way.

oh bob you need your own couch and tv show and tell the world how to live..... you could be OUR(bluemoons) live icarly or something

 

[Damocles]

Damo,
I've got issues with many things you've said and I understand you've got a perspective but I do want to point out a few things, starting with the above post.

So you're telling all of us that because Osama truly believed in his work and his idea of Islam that his actions are justifiable?

No. I'm telling you that in his mind, he was the white knight doing good and the US was the devil incarnate; not because he was some utter insane individual, but because in his mind he was justified against previous atrocities. It's far better for everybody concerned if his mindset and atrocities are put in front of a court off the whole world, so that others may see the fallibility of them. Dismissing people as extremists is somewhat incorrect, whilst there may be some extremists, the next generation of terrorists aren't.

I understand that people have their own world views, but I think everyone here can tell you that what Osama preached was downright wrong and not how the Koran is meant to be interpereted. Speaking of simplifying things, Osama simplified the words of this text to work to his advantage in order to recruit, teach, and arm a group of people created to incite violence and kill innocent people. Osama was a bad man and there certainly a point when you give up your rights as a human, and Osama had passed that point when he decided to purposely murder civilians in order to further his ideology.

No, there is never a point where you give up your own rights. Your rights aren't yours to give, your rights are things that may or may not be given to you by the authority at that specific time. That isn't a right. To get around this problem, we created the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, to name infallible rights of all human beings. Not "all human beings who aren't our enemies", or "all human beings who aren't terrorists", but ALL members of our species. One of them was the right to a fair trial.

If we give up our own principles, then where does that leave us?

The second thing I don't get is your consistant denial that Osama is at fault for any of this. What you're claiming is that thousands, probably tens of thousands, of intelligence, armed forces, and government officials in the US and across the globe are working in concert to falsely accuse Osama of being behind several terrorist acts in the last 20 years. Are you nuts? Just because you don't have the information doesn't mean that Osama is innocent. You really think that the government is going to share this info with the general public? Do you think Bush gathered a group of thousands of people and said, "listen up guys, we are going to pin this all on Al-Qaeda so we can invade a shithole country in the middle east that no one wants anything to do with...so why don't you all go make up a bunch of jibber-jabber that implicates Bin Laden so we can get in there."

I'm just curious how you can justify that you somehow know more than the entire intelligence community, world leaders, and thousands of people that literally work every single day on finding and killing the people who have essentially declared war on basic human rights.

Your putting words into my mouth and you are doing it badly. In addition to this, you've used the whole "well, our government say they know, so I believe them" which is just daft and doesn't even need to be argued.

What I said, is that no person has ever linked Bin Laden to 9/11 apart from the tortured KSM and an entirely faked video, and even the US Government doesn't blame him for the USS Cole.

I made no such statements about conspiracies or intelligence officers and the like of. My version of what probably happened, is that the US needed someone to hit back after 9/11 and picked Bin Laden as he was a known terrorist due to the Embassy bombings, and because they their intelligence told them that it was a group of Islamic fascists who hit them. Bin Laden was already top of the most wanted list, and he was an Islamic fascist, and they had to make a decision quickly. Investigations into organisations like Al-Qaeda work in terror cells in loads of networks and the like. It isn't an easy thing to just crack, and the speed of which they declared it was Bin Laden is highly suspicious.

5 days after 9/11, Bin Laden released this statement:

In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, "The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it.

"I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said.

"I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations," bin Laden said.

Wikileaks also was leaked CIA translations of Bin Ladens communications around 9/11. He even said privately that he didn't do it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikileaks_obtains_10_years_of_messages,_interviews_from_Osama_bin_Laden_translated_by_CIA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikileaks_o ... ted_by_CIA</a>

 

[MCFC BOB]

I admire you sometimes, Damocles. Sometimes you can be a mad man, and on the odd occasion you can really offend people with your posts - like calling me a **** when I moaned that we hadn't signed sufficient back-up for Silva. But you stick to your beliefs and don't fall in any argument.

A lot of what you said makes sense. I do believe that Al-Qaeda are repsonsible for the 9/11 attacks, because I don't see why George W. Bush would sacrifice the lives of his own citizens... even for oil... but it just... what you are saying makes sense. Let's just put it that way.

oh bob you need your own couch and tv show and tell the world how to live..... you could be OUR(bluemoons) live icarly or something

I don't know what happens on iCarly.

 

[jerseyblue]

Damo,
I've got issues with many things you've said and I understand you've got a perspective but I do want to point out a few things, starting with the above post.

So you're telling all of us that because Osama truly believed in his work and his idea of Islam that his actions are justifiable? I understand that people have their own world views, but I think everyone here can tell you that what Osama preached was downright wrong and not how the Koran is meant to be interpereted. Speaking of simplifying things, Osama simplified the words of this text to work to his advantage in order to recruit, teach, and arm a group of people created to incite violence and kill innocent people. Osama was a bad man and there certainly a point when you give up your rights as a human, and Osama had passed that point when he decided to purposely murder civilians in order to further his ideology.

The second thing I don't get is your consistant denial that Osama is at fault for any of this. What you're claiming is that thousands, probably tens of thousands, of intelligence, armed forces, and government officials in the US and across the globe are working in concert to falsely accuse Osama of being behind several terrorist acts in the last 20 years. Are you nuts? Just because you don't have the information doesn't mean that Osama is innocent. You really think that the government is going to share this info with the general public? Do you think Bush gathered a group of thousands of people and said, "listen up guys, we are going to pin this all on Al-Qaeda so we can invade a shithole country in the middle east that no one wants anything to do with...so why don't you all go make up a bunch of jibber-jabber that implicates Bin Laden so we can get in there."

I'm just curious how you can justify that you somehow know more than the entire intelligence community, world leaders, and thousands of people that literally work every single day on finding and killing the people who have essentially declared war on basic human rights.

Although you weren't addressing me I have an issue with this bit in bold.

You simply can't have this mentality if you want to resolve anything, it's dismissive and wrong. You can't just assume somebody is born into this world 'pure evil', it's all a matter of circumstance, upbringing and environment that leads people to do what they do. You could preach insanity, but he's still a human being, and all human beings should have rights whether you like it or not. To take away things like the right to a fair trial is just ludicrous and I can't believe people are arguing with Damocles on that point.

It undermines morality in an unspeakable way which will always lead to further conflict.

I fully agree that people are not simply born pure evil, never said that would be crazy to think that. I still can't agree that he deserved a trial and all that shit. He was at war with the US, and vice-versa. In my mind he's lucky we didn't find him right after 9/11 because I don't think he would have been givin a burial consistant with Islam had we caught him then. The right to a fair trial is an important right, but I fear in this situation that a quick death was the only option. A trial for Bin Laden would have cost a ton of $, would have been a media circus, and would have allowed Bin Laden to use the stage to propogate more filth. I see where you're coming from and I'm right there with you, but this situation called for exactly what occurred.

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

9/11. Pure evil.

I can see that I'm obviously not going get people to understand where I'm coming from here, but goddammit, I'll give it one more try.

Yes, 9/11 was an act of evil. So was bombing civilians in Sudan. So was Churchill signing an order to murder people in Dresden and Hamburg. The point is, you aren't at war with 9/11, it was a completely isolated incident that has never happened before and probably won't again. The people who committed it are dead and have been for a decade. We're at war with "Global Terrorism", which basically picks numerous groups that the U.S. decides is a threat and says that they are evil.

Nothing exists in isolation. 9/11 happened because Islamic fascism rose. Islamic fascism rose for hundreds of different reasons, some of which are entirely the fault of the US/UK, some of which are the fault of the religion itself, some of which are the fault of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, some of which are the fault of economic circumstances, some of which are the fault of generations of Popes. There's an inelegance in the causal links here which isn't helping anything. You can't just say "oh well, OBL created Al-Qaeda so 9/11 happened". 9/11 would have happened even if Osama Bin Laden had never been born, the seeds of which were planted during the Cold War and the Iranian Revolution.

The point, is that in the minds of themselves and their followers, they are entirely justified in felling the Great Satan. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to throw planes at buildings, it is done after a long list of atrocities are committed to the point of where they feel that they have no option but vengeance.

The capture of Bin Laden was a chance to show all of these potential terrorists that their propaganda isn't true; that Western society isn't all about who we can destroy next. Bin Laden would have been sent to the UN, put on trial and quite probably executed there. What we have done instead, is once again shown the Arab world that we are merciless killers who only respect justice when it suits us.

As I've said before, the War on Terror is nonsense of the highest order; it's an excuse for perpetual war. I feel like I've just landed in 1984 or something, where retaliation for a first strike attack is an excuse to retaliate and murder them. It's like everybody is talking in newspeak or something where justice and vengeance are synonyms of each other, and good/evil are absolute concepts. Like I've landed in a world entirely imagined by WWE writers.

"Citizens, we are now raising the chocolate ration to 4 grammes a week"
"Didn't it used to be 6 grammes a week?"

WWE writers? impossible, this stuff is logical.

good/evil absolute concepts? what's Randy Orton's latest persona then?

I agree with a lot of the rest, though I still think Bin Laden wasn't capturable, he'd either have murdered anyone trying to(like shooting at Seals) or shot himself if they tried to capture him. Sometimes we can't do it the way some of us would like it to be. I admire you for sticking to your principles, I think people like Bin Laden are a) incredibly difficult to capture and b) probably cause more harm than good being captured, but it can work both ways, it can either show extremists the punishment or it can spur them on, particularly if he gives a motivational speech in court which is broadcast across the world. It's all guesswork at this point anyway, because we won't know what would have happened if they'd captured him.

In reality, if he got executed after trial or dies via american fire, it makes no difference to me, he's still dead. The only advantageous point for him having a trial to me is for him to sit in a practically bare cell for the rest of his life, murdering him before or after a trial, well they have no difference to me.

 

[Damocles]

I want to stick this here too:

<a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm</a>

We didn't go into Afghanistan because of 9/11, we were already going in anyway. Famously, Bush signed an order about an invasion (of which type I can't recall) on September 10th, 2001