Re: What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?

[rich]

Things were better in the 80s when both the US and Pakistan were supporting
the mujihadeen against the Soviets. But there's always the worry of
Pakistan's nukes. But beyond that it was inevitable that the two countries
interests would clash. I think the US forgets that much of what motivates
the Pakistanis in its support for radical Islamic movements stems from its
decades long clash with India. The proxy war in Afghanistan was always part
of that. Once the US invaded, well here we are.

Which leads one to be disheartened by Obama's decision to keep troop in
Afghanistan till 2017. Obama for all his generally good qualities is a
politician after all, and this was solely a political decision. The war has
become so impersonal as to be nonexistent. is it a war anymore at least as
we understand it? The Taliban whoever they are are still there and will be
there. WE cant admit that the US self-view as the only superpower is no
longer the case. And all the drones in the world and global assassinations
wont change that.

rich

On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 4:03 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> I assume, Rich, that you mean to characterize the relations between the US
> and Pakistan as strained at the time of the killing of OBL, but such a
> description implies that the relations were, at some point, less than
> strained, or even good, and I'm not sure that they were ever good, or less
> strained than they were when the US killed OBL. Hindsight, they say, is
> 20-20, but when I read that OBL was hold up in Pakistan, I thought....of
> course....Pakistan.
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 11:17 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I still think much of what is concerning is how the torture effect was
>> spun to look a lot more favorable, in movies, hearings, etc. If anything,
>> Zero Dark Thirty should never be shown again. I wouldnt put it up there
>> with Jud Suss but it's pretty close.
>> With that siad, I didnt find much of Hersh's report all that
>> mind-blowing. The admin used Bin Laden's killing for political purposes. My
>> god, OBL wasnt armed, he didnt get a proper burial. Really? who cares. the
>> fucker's deserved a worse death than that.
>> Was the raid staged and Pakistan knew all about it? dont think we'll ever
>> get to the bottom of that one. Knowing the strained relations between the
>> US and Pakistan I do find it a tough sell to claim that the Pakistanis
>> would willingly make them selves look like bozos for the whole world to
>> laugh at.
>> There's much to be suspicious about. I think we need to focus on the
>> right ones
>> rich
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 6:36 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks, Dave. A balanced article which -- surprisingly, as it is the NYT
>>> -- does not feed into the new and rather transparent "Seymour Hersh has
>>> lost it" narrative (roughly: past achievements are acknowledged, but now he
>>> is old and has forgotten to take his meds). Hersh's pieces for the London
>>> Review of Books are very important. Which is not to say that his version of
>>> the events in question is accurate (how would I know?), just that they
>>> should be taken into account.
>>>
>>> http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/seymour-m-hersh
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 17.10.2015 um 06:05 schrieb Dave Monroe:
>>>
>>>> "It’s not that the truth about bin Laden’s death is unknowable; it’s
>>>> that we don’t know it. And we can’t necessarily console ourselves with
>>>> the hope that we will have more answers any time soon; to this day,
>>>> the final volume of the C.I.A.’s official history of the Bay of Pigs
>>>> remains classified. We don’t know what happened more than a
>>>> half-century ago, much less in 2011.
>>>>
>>>> "There are different ways to control a narrative. There’s the
>>>> old-fashioned way: Classify documents that you don’t want seen and, as
>>>> Gates said, 'keep mum on the details.’' But there’s also the more
>>>> modern, social-media-savvy approach: Tell the story you want them to
>>>> believe. Silence is one way to keep a secret. Talking is another. And
>>>> they are not mutually exclusive."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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