Osama dead?

They made a mention of that on NPR as well.

He certainly hasn't been very visible for a while, has he?

 

This was also mentioned on the Find Law website. I'm curious as to why this hasn't been discussed more extensively in the media.

 

Actually, it was discussed alot several months ago. But now I think people are more concerned about Iraq.

And while for a while I have believed him dead (he is too much an egomaniac not to release a video), I still want to see a body or a few strands of DNA. Unfortunately, a daisey cutter or bunker buster probably do not leave much for the next-of-kin to identify.

And others in his organization are still alive. I think OBL was more of a charismatic leader anyway, I think Atef (now dead) and al-Zawahiri (still alive) were the real decision makers/planners/brains.

 

My wife and I were talking about this last October when the bombing started. We agreed that if OBL died, he would become a martyr and perhaps even more inspirational than if he lived. So, it seemed that the best case scenario was for OBL to just disappear; let him die in a cave, cover it up and never tell anyone.

If the US Special Forces know he is dead and have quietly orchestrated the scenario I mentioned above, then kudos to them. They probably would have loved all of the publicity associated with telling the world that OBL was dead. So, if he is dead, they know about it, aren't talking about it and ignoring all of the potential publicity, it is really impressive.

Then again, maybe he is eating pie in Peshawar right now. Who knows?

Murf

 

It's interesting how another tyrant's body never turned up in that German bunker. Did the Soviets pull the same trick suggested above?

I would disagree martyring ceases through physical corpse absence.

 

Too bad we didn't catch him alive. Because it sure would be fun to see him get executed. There's so many ways to do, we could strap a stick of dynamite and watch him blow up. Or my favorite would be to injest him in a jet engine. Liquid Osama, what more could you want?

 

True. But if there is a disagreement on whether he is dead or alive, it reduces the martyrdom. Covering up his body and keeping quiet about it just allows the debate on his fate to thrive.

Perhaps these shadowy third-person reports of OBL being seen in the northern border towns of Pakistan are really coming from the CIA as disinformation to keep the mystery alive.

Murf

 

every time that Al-Qaeda puts out a video without his face, I get more and more confident that he is no longer around. I don't think he all of a sudden became camera shy. In fact, I think he would have relished showing up on the television and sticking it to us. Between the bombs and his kidneys, Ifigure he's dead.

 

Actually, the Russians have part of his skull.

They never said they did though.

Stalin was paranoid ("understatment of the week") that Hitler survived and had the Army and KGB do several investigations to prove he was dead.

 

It doesn't do the campaign any good long-term for OBL to turn up dead. It would be much better if he were eternally trapped under something heavy, unable to reach the telephone to call his bankers and foot soldiers.

A living OBL allows fear to prosper among the US people. To the Bush administration, fear is good. Fear keeps people on their toes, and makes it easier for them to get support for future military action. A dead OBL means the public celebrates for a couple of days, loses interest, and stops supporting the anti-terrorism effort because they think it's all over. This is the flip side of using one guy as the focal point when identifying an enemy.

 

So when Togo was removed from office in 1944, the US public suddenly lost interest in the war against Japan?

I think you do not understand the American people.

 

Osama's been dead since early last December, in Tora Bora. I'm convinced of it, since all the videos of him have been inconclusive as to when they were filmed. There's no question in my mind that a real tape of him would've shown up by now. Unfortunately, since he's probably buried under a mountain there will never be evidence proving his death. It will just become assumed that he is dead. He will never be heard from again and people will begin to wonder if the devil ever really existed (ala Kaiser Souse in The Usual Suspects).

 

Wait, wait, wait. I could have sworn lots of people on this board and elsewhere have said that the longer Bin Laden remains alive (i.e. not captured or killed), the worse it is for the Bush administration, because the supposed focal point of the war on terror hasn't been a success.

Face it, whatever the news is, you want to spin it so that it reflects negatively on the President.

 

Osama Bin Laden was captured by employees of Boeing and is being kept alive on a fake "afghanistan" set in Northern Arizona. As soon as they need to sell more fighters to the Navy, he'll make another video. Just kidding.

I actually agree with Ian. Not only is he dead, he used to be Kevin Spacey. Still kidding.

Okay, to be serious, I think he's dead, for pretty much the same reasons McCraken mentioned. What bothers me is that they had supposedly been planning 9/11 since sometime after the 93 bombing failed. After Sept 11, I (and the rest of America, obviously) have been wondering whether or not he had an Act 2 that would follow up 9/11. Would he detonate a nuke, etc? What scares me is not whether he is alive or not, but rather what he plans he has coming. Whether he is still alive and working on them (unlikely) or if did he leave a bunch of them before he died. For all we know, there are 10 more 9/11s coming that could play out over the next 15 years. (okay, I think I just sold some fighters for boeing). That scares me.

Hopefully, if we kill, jail, marginalize or pay off enough of his cronies, it won't matter. Can we do that? I really don't know. One positive thing is that- if he is dead- the access to money, influence, and government assistance his group enjoyed might have died with him.

 

I wanted his head for my companie's lunch time kick around. I think he is dead, if our bombs didn't get him then his kidney illness did.

 

I saw the dude walking down the street the other day smoking a doobie. He had on a disguise, but I knew it was him.

Seriously, I think he bite the dust.

 

Alot of people here are saying it's better if we don't know he's dead, because then he'd be a martyr. I disagree.

The "Arab Street" was all set to rise up in the Gulf War, but Saddam's ass was kicked so thoroughly that they cowered. It was supposed to rise up during the war against the Taliban, but our overwhelming power cowed them.

By its very nature, this kind of public opinion is going to be like a ManU fan in Singapore. Osama's head on a stick would help keep a lid on things, IMHO.

 

On a related note, when Che Guevera was killed by the Bolivian Army, the Bolivians cut off his hands before burying his body (under an airport runway) so they would have proof of his death. They kept the hands in a jar with a preserving fluid.

After a few years, Castro sent some covert agents to Bolivia to steal Guevera's hands. The agents were successful and now Guevera's hands reside in a secure place in Cuba. Apparantly, Castro shows them to distinguished guests that ask about them.

Murf

 

I think I saw Osama in my plate of spaghetti last night.

 

I can't speak for other people, but I've never said that. For the overall happiness of the country it'd be nice to know for sure that OBL had joined the ranks of the rotting, but how does it help the war on terrorism? First, people are so conditioned to believing that OBL (with his buddy Saddam) is the be-all and end-all of terrorism that interest in the war would undoubtedly wane if the #1 target was eliminated. Second, OBL's demise makes very little difference with regards to the reality of the terrorist threat. So if we still would have to fight the war but the public wasn't as much behind it, what's the point of telling?

Not true. First of all, nothing I said it meant to reflect negatively on Bush. I'm talking political and military tactics, not personal opinion. In this age, a little bit of fear is not a bad thing for the country overall, especially considering that our complacency was so easily shattered last September. This is true regardless of who is in power. Allowing people to believe that OBL is still out there keeps that fear going.

Whether the President was a Republican or Democrat, right now I don't believe that any military leader would prefer to announce to the public that OBL was dead.

 

Did they save his brain?

 

i'm hoping they have some DNA if he is dead. It'd be nice to clone him and then kill at every super bowl halftime show for the next few hundred years

 

First, my apologies for putting words in your mouth. I fear interest might wane, but I don't think it would, not significantly anyway.

I agree that it makes little difference. I happen think the administration would be singing from the rooftops if they had concrete proof Osama was dead. I read an item the other day about how the U.S. Customs Service was patting themselves on the back for intercepting a large shipment of cellphones bound for Al Queda. Now, a wiser man than me would ask, why the hell didn't these people intercept the phones, and rig them so that the NSA or CIA or whomever could track them or eavesdrop on them?

My point is, government too oftens wants to tout its good work, while failing to see the big picture.