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

[Dave Monroe]

I genuinely worry about even a "limited" nuclear exchange between
India + Pakistan (w/ China waiting in the wings, poss. even Israel,
depending).  We basically shut down the world over a couple jets
slamming onto a couple towers.  One nuclear deployment here'd be bad
enough.  Now you've got ca. a billion (or two, counting China)
wallowing in essentially a 3rd world infrastructure
(medical/economic/sanitary/logisticc).

+ then there's the nuclear fall, if not winter, not to mention the fallout.

But it'd sure (hopefully) teach us a lesson, were we up to learning
one in the aftermath ...

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 8:28 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l