Open Thread–OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

UPDATE–Bin Laden death photo.

A photo has been circulating that purports to be a picture of bin Laden after he was killed.

MSNBC is saying, based both on photo analysis and on statements from government officials, that they think it’s a fake.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com…

This is, among other things, a reminder of the importance of actual journalists and reporting to help us understand what’s going on. Not everything can be resolved by people with opinions sitting at their keyboards.

UPDATE

Just a reminder that today is the anniversary of the day that Bush got dressed up in his pilot outfit to do his “Mission Accomplished” dance on the deck of the aircraft carrier.

Now we have the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed by CIA and military forces outside of Islamabad, Pakistan.

What are the implications, including for Obama’s reelection prospects and the mission in Afghanistan?

Feel free to post your thoughts.

Obama has just come on.

11 thoughts on “Open Thread–OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

  1. At his press conference, it was good to see the President disclosing Bin Laden’s “Long-Form Death Certificate.

  2. Balanced, gave appropriate credit to the forces on the ground.

    A couple of quick thoughts:

    Kind of undermines the “Obama is a Muslim terrorist” and “Democrats are soft on defense” memes, doesn’t it?

    I’m not too worried about retaliatory attacks. I think it’s safe to conclude that they’re producing all the terrorist attacks they have the ability to produce, don’t you?

  3. wanted man in the world was living in a mansion outside the capitol of our ally Pakistan.A nuclear power and what is often called an unsteady democracy.

  4. in a hotel room in Frankfurt Germany, representatives of the Taliban government of Afghanistan met with representatives of the Clinton administration and agreed to help us kill Osama bin Laden. The method of choice was to isolate bin Laden and his followers under house arrest in a compound in a village called Daronta and have the Taliban give us coordinates for a cruise missile strike.

    (I picked up this story from Counterpunch in 2006. In 2007 I interviewed the Afghan-American translator who was present at that meeting. http://www.minorheresies.com/e… )

    Of course, two days later we had a contested election, Bush vs Gore, and everything was put on hold till that was worked out. (Theory: Clinton wanted to hand the operation to Gore so he could start his term with a bang.) The Supreme Court appointed Bush, who kept the back-channel talks going, but, according to my source, kept delaying the program. It got to the point where the Taliban representatives were joking about loaning the U.S. fuel for our missiles because it seemed as if we had run out.

    Then, September 11th, and you know the rest. So, no great sense of victory here. Bush could have killed him on January 21, 2000.  

  5. At our house, we were absorbed in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1”…the hunt for Voldemort’s horcrux…I guess it’s kind of the same thing. 😉

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