Was that big wall around his compound to keep outsiders out or to keep bin Laden in? Or both?
May 3, 2011
Why didn't bin Laden have a gun?
There could be a lot of reasons, but commenter Wandrin just pointed out one: If he were in prison.
Was that big wall around his compound to keep outsiders out or to keep bin Laden in? Or both?
Was that big wall around his compound to keep outsiders out or to keep bin Laden in? Or both?
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65 comments:
That makes a lot of sense.
Obama always seems to have something up his sleeve.
I wonder what's next...
The goat asked him to put it down???
Then why kill the prisoner and throw him in the sea?
Oh, that's right. You don't want the guy talking or anyone knowing what was going on with him (physically, medically, etc.) while he was in prison. That's also probably why the Whitehouse won't release the tape of the assault on the Bin Laden compound.
Perhaps the release of the birth certificate was meant to give him credibility and make it harder to assert that Obama was involved in some sort of conspiracy. The timing of the birth certificate release is very suspect too.
Obama visited Pakistan in the early 80s while he was in college to visit "college friends". I wonder if they were from elite families with connections to the military and that he visited them Abbottabad.
So are we saying Bin Laden was a prisoner there and we and the Pakistanis knew it, and we just decided to kill him for political gain?
This would be an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist. But real life never works like that.
Osama had a bunch of kids running around the compound. His pistol was probably in a lock box hidden under a stack of Playboy magazines at the bottom of a closet.
Saddam Hussein's sons never got the respectful Islamic burial. Nobody worried that their grave (or their father's) would become a shrine. This crap about respecting Islam and burial site terrorist shrines is nonsensical. If we didn't care about it during the middle of a protracted civil war, why should we care now?
A lot of Muslims think burial at sea is disrespectful. Why inflame them and create more terrorist sympathizers? Why not a more respectful land burial or at least giving the body to the family? Unless, of course, you don't give a damn about Muslim sentiment and are using that as an excuse to dispose of a body quickly and permanently.
The Whitehouse gave us some baloney about not being able to find a country to bury the body. That's stupid, as we could just find some secret location. Like we did with Al-Zarqawi's body. That would've solved the shrine problem too.
Bin Laden also had no gun. Why not capture him and put him on trial, like we did with Saddam and with numerous terrorists? Maybe at least we could torture Bin Laden and get some useful information??
Osama Bin Laden was killed and disposed of quickly to cover up something important. That much I guarantee.
*Bin Laden.... buried right away.
*Saddam Hussein's sons..... buried after 11 days.
*Bin Laden.... burial site could become shrine.
*Saddam and sons..... buried in the ground during violent civil war.
*Bin Laden..... killed while unarmed.
*Saddam.... captured alive and put on trial.
I think the reason is more human. He would not have wished to be seen as a violent man. Carrying a gun would undermine his greatest pretense.
Or, maybe he did have a gun, and shot himself. This could have been apparent on autopsy (hence the hasty dump), and would not provide nearly the propaganda boost of taking one from a SEAL.
Where is the goddamn photo fer crissakes! Why not release it on an adult web site like Live Leak in the category Severe Head Trauma. Obama seems to have a deep seated need to withhold things.
By the way, congratulations to Donald Trump for forcing Obama to perform triage on his collapsing poll numbers by killing Osama Bin Laden, not to mention produce his long form birth certificate. As it turns out, the CIA knew OBL's whereabouts since last March, maybe earlier, but Obama refused to proceed unless there was a guarantee that white men with high ASVAB scores would be put in extreme harm's way.
The reason for this seems pretty clear. Osama would not have wanted to associate himself with violence. He lived a pretense.
I think the "Pakistan knew" claims are almost definitely wrong and definitely wildly speculative on the evidence. A cute example here is Sauron's blindness to Sam and Frodo. We are often blind where we are strongest.
"So are we saying Bin Laden was a prisoner there and we and the Pakistanis knew it, and we just decided to kill him for political gain?"
This sounds like that Patrick McGoohan show from the 60's.
That's good; Pakistan needn't reveal they have him and the money keeps flowing. Of course they treat him well, refer to him as a "guest", he has privileges; they're sympathetic.
But they're also thinking he might come in handy some day. One hell of a trump card.
That doesn't make a conspiracy involving the US however; what we found and raided was a very special prison. I like the thesis. I wonder if anyone is following that lead.
Because he died over a decade ago, and the rigor mortis makes it difficult to hold one.
I doubt he would've had much intel in the compound, then. The SEALs spent three minutes shooting him and about 38 taking his computers, files, etc.
Look, if this is all a big bad conspiracy and Bin Laden wasn't really killed, then why not have an actor play the part of Bin Laden and capture him? Why not have someone go on trial, talk about how he hates us for our freedoms, and then have a fake execution? You conspiracy nuts get so wrapped up in your own BS that you miss the obvious.
I am reminded of that guy on King of the Hill that believed in NWO helicopters, but didn't notice his own son didn't look like him.
Now what Dennis Dale says makes sense and isn't far from the truth as we know it: Maybe Bin Laden was some hybrid of guest/prisoner. Maybe they (Bin Laden and Pakistani military) reached a deal years ago - you give me protection and you can keep milking Uncle Sugar for $3 billion a year.
If the prison is right by one of the most elite military installations in a police state, you have to conclude that the Pakistani elite were deliberately holding Bin Laden. Holding Bin Laden while convincing America for more aid to help with the "search."
Killing Bin Laden means nobody ever finds out what was really happening. Dumping him at sea eliminates additional evidence that could be found through autopsy.
Conspiracy?
Bin Laden was dumped in the sea immediately after his death because it respects Islam. The Hussein boys were buried after 11 days.
Bin Laden was gunned down while defenseless. Saddam was taken prisoner and given a trial.
The original story was that Bin Laden resisted with a gun, so he had to get. Now the Whitehouse claims that Bin Laden was unarmed. What really happened?
Bin Laden was living nearby a huge elite Pakistani military site. What the heck?
We ask questions because the current story makes no sense.
Nice theory that he was a privileged prisoner of the Pakistanis, but it is much more likely that he just got complacent after living in the same place for several years.
No phone, no internet. What does he do all day?
"Look, if this is all a big bad conspiracy and Bin Laden wasn't really killed, then why not have an actor play the part of Bin Laden and capture him? Why not have someone go on trial, talk about how he hates us for our freedoms, and then have a fake execution?"
Why not fake Bin Laden landing on the moon, where he taunts the terrestrial infidel with daily broadcasts from Moonbase Mecca? Then, fake a bunch of space borne marines attacking the Lunar jihadist traiing camp and dueling with laser pistols, sorta like in Moonraker.
Actually, I've been wondering if Bin Laden crapped his pants when he got shot? Or is that classified White House information which might inflame the Muslim world if it, ahem, leaked out. I'm filling out the FOIA request form first thing in the morning.
My favorite example of the Machiavellian subtlety of the US government was the billion-dollar search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, culminating in the triumphant public statement that there weren't any.
Surely demonstrating and openly admitting that you're a bunch of ignorant, excitable, group-thinking damn fools is the most subtle move of all....
Well there was a little thing called an election between the death of the Hussein boys and OBL. Is it really so unbelievable that Barrack Hussein Obama and the people around him want to show hyper-sensitivity to Islam? They clearly want to show they are more understanding of it then Bush was.
Moonbase Mecca, I love it! I mean, since "they" faked the moonlandings, certainly they could pull that off. Does anyone even know if Pakistan really exists? Have you ever seen Pakistan with your own eyes?
gchochran makes a great point ... this group is so highly intelligent they do incredibly stupid things all the time, just to throw us off. God they are so crafty.
Is that the Greg Cochran by the way? This sites gets some big names viewing it.
If Obama is so "sensitive" to Islam, why throw the body in the sea? Most of the Muslim Imams are saying that it's disrespectful to dump a body in the sea and that Bin Laden should have gotten a land burial.
Why kill Bin Laden? If you're so sensitive, give the man a Muslim trial.
Yesterday, the Whitehouse officials were saying Osama Bin Laden resisted with a machine gun and that he used his wife as a human shield, but that they would've allowed him to be captured alive. Now the Whitehouse is saying Osama was unarmed and that there was no wife shield. Stories only change when you're lying about something.
It seems obvious that the mission was to kill Bin Laden and dispose of the body quickly.
"gcochran said...
My favorite example of the Machiavellian subtlety of the US government was the billion-dollar search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, culminating in the triumphant public statement that there weren't any."
Quite so. Stupidity explains far more of history than does conspiracy.
Mr. Cochran, you are a national resource. Please post here more often.
That's quite an interesting thought. Pakistan might have been keeping Osama prisoner so that the government would not have to face the wrath of its own people by handing him over to the U.S. And he was in a place where the military could keep an eye on him. And that's why he didn't have a gun. Makes quite a lot of sense actually.
Basically, any set of facts will be seen by those who want to see a conspiracy, as a conspiracy. There is absolutely no stream of events that conspiracy theorists wouldn't find a thousand problems with.
I would repeat the line that Cochran said ... if they are so clever at stagecraft and so good at keeping secrets, why didn't they at least fake some Weapons of Mass Destruction? That would have been very easy for them to "find".
I think it is more painful to realize how dumb our rulers are then to see the truth ... I'd rather believe I was ruled by high IQ sociopaths then the morons that appear on my screen nightly.
Perhaps he simply realized that it was useless to arm himself, and that he know that if we ever sent someone to kill him, it would be exactly the kind of people that we did in fact send - physically fit, fire eating, twenty-something professional killers with night-vision goggles, who had practiced the whole operation until it had become second nature. A chronically ill, fifty-four year old man, no matter how well armed, would have stood as much chance against them as would a fly against a can of Raid.
The poster is right about Bin Laden not having a chance against Navy Seals. But it still seems like a normal human instinct to want a gun in your possession. Old people keep them around even if they can barely hold them up. It would seem the Pakistanis didn't want him armed.
Do we know for sure that OBL didn't have a gun? Is there a hi-tech way to disable a gun from a distance?
Intriguing possibility. A couple of points in contradiction to a few commenters here: it takes ten seconds of googling to find pictures of Bin Laden holding guns. He was no Gandhi. Second, he explicitly stated in one of his tapes that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, "to die in the belly of the eagle."
Well, at least I think we now know the reason for that very peculiar "burial at sea" and also the total unwillingness to release any photos or videos of the attack.
The photos, videos, and body would all prove that Bin Laden was executed, with no attempt made to capture him, despite his being unarmed. The Seals are very well-disciplined, and would only have executed an unarmed target if that had been their explicit order.
Obviously putting Bin Laden on trial would have been a mammoth propaganda coup for Obama, the gift-that-keeps-giving all the way through the Presidential election. The reason we can't try the Gitmo detainees in regular court is because all the evidence against them came from torture and that would come out during the trial. But Bin Laden would be a "clean" arrest, and perfect for a show-trial to get Obama reelected. We put Saddam, Noriega, and all the other targets on trial, so why give the order to summarily execute Bin Laden?
The only answer I can think of is to permanently shut him up. About what? Well, I think there are some pretty likely possibilities...
That would also explained why World's Most Wanted Terrorist didn't try to run away when military chopper crashed into his garden in the middle of the night.
"Why didn't bin Laden have a gun?" Great interview question.
"Well there was a little thing called an election between the death of the Hussein boys and OBL. Is it really so unbelievable that Barrack Hussein Obama and the people around him want to show hyper-sensitivity to Islam? They clearly want to show they are more understanding of it then Bush was."
One of Obama's first foreign policy acts as president was to continue the Bush policy of murdering people in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan via remote control drones. Obama has continued this policy and expanded it to Libya. The piles of dead Muslim men, women, and children killed under Obama keeps growing.
And you people have the naivete (or chutzpah) to come here with a straight face and claim that the Obama administration shows "hyper-sensitivity to Islam"? Are you nuts? Did you really drink the Obama koolaid in 2008, such that, even now, you still don't 'get it'? Obama's "Hyper-sensitivity to Islam" is domestic PR aimed at SWPL; it has no bearing on US foreign policy.
And can we please stop with this "oh, I'm so smart, all you conspiracy theorists are a big bunch of dummies, hyuck hyuck". You guys simply take the most ridiculous conspiracy theories as typical of all conspiracy theories, and then claim that anyone who questions anything at all about the official story must be the exact same thing as someone who thinks that the Moon Landings were faked.
There is a huge continuum between blindly accepting everything we are told by government, and blindly accepting every crazy conspiracy theory out there.
We aren't being shown any solid evidence that we are usually shown (bodies, photos, videos), and the story keeps changing (he had a gun; no he didn't; he used his wife as a human shield; no he didn't). Only a complete moron would assume that we are being told the complete and unvarnished truth.
Apparently some of you @ssholes think that if one speculates at all about these discrepencies, one is no different from a Moon Landing Hoaxer. F_ck you and the horse you rode in on.
So all of you 'rebellious', anti-mass media, geniuses, actually believe that we killed OBL last week without having seen a body -- because the mass media tell you so.
I'm speechless, this just gets better all of the time!
BAAAAAAAAAA BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
A humorous take from an Indian point of view that would also answer the question (and a lot of related questions)
http://greatbong.net/2011/05/02/his-final-moments/
A BBC interview with a Pakistani former mucky muck last night said that Osama was not even able to stand up. The Paki guy did not say when he had last heard or seen of Obama, but in the context of the interview it was "not recently". The interviewee was a former Paki government official living in the UK it seemed.
Also, Osama's last video with contemporary topical content was released 7 years ago in Oct 29th, 2004 when he suddenly claimed responsibility for 9/11 in contrast to his earlier video denials.
The timing of this video clearly boosted Bush's 2004 re-election bid four days later on Nov 2, 2004. After this point, Obama had served his purpose for our WoT and his continued existence was less desirable than his virtual existence.
After that Oct 29th, 2004 video, there were no more videos of Osama discussing contemporary issues. Except for 1 or 2 very brief general topic video segments pasted into longer audio releases and periodic audio only tapes with his static photo attached in a video, the popular and telegenic Osama went off the air for good. This inexplicable change in propaganda tactics is one of the main reasons why many believe Osama died, possibly due to his known medical issues, years ago.
The best explainations why Osama stopped making his highly popular videos (among his followers) was that he either (a) was dead or (b) too sickly to be seen on video.
Which means that the US SEALS may have had to put a bullet into the head of some sickly bed-ridden Osama (or one who just committed sucide). Alternatively, they may have gotten someone who was a stand-in for Osama.
In more likely former case, this helps explain some of the oddities in the official account which has changed within the first 24hrs.
* (according to the latest version) Why didn't Osama have a gun, shoot himself or at others given so much time with the noises outside?
* Why didn't Osama try to escape? Certainly he would've had escape tunnels for just such an expected event and there was sufficient warning from the helicopters and noises outside to scramble down an escape tunnel.
* Why was he so lightly guarded? He was too sick to move, possibly near death, and if discovered he would die if moved anyway.
* Why did his wife sheild him and have to be shot in the leg to get her out of the way? Or not, depending upon the version - but it very easy to image a woman covering her bedridden husband.
If Osama was gravely sick, it seems provisions would at least be made for a suicide pill or injection to avoid potential "enhanced interrogation" or worse (handover to a black site in an allied country like Egypt).
* The details of this scenario would strongly argue for a quick disposal of the corpse to avoid any investigations into the details of Osama's death - be his gravely ill or dead by suicide before our SEAL team got there.
This doesn't take anything away from the bravery of our US SEALS who faced real danger from potentionally hostile elements within the Pakistani military and executed flawlessly their mission.
Still, our leaders have brazenly lied and twisted facts to us before on many occassions. Think of how the very pedestrian and sad stories of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman were twited into heroic propaganda stories. The urge to do anything that makes Obama seem heroic is irresistable in elite circles.
Maybe bin Laden was just that confident in the goodwill of his hosts, that he didn't feel the need to have arms close at hand at all times. Yet more evidence that the Pakistanis lied to us.
Let's say for sake of argument that I keep a loaded Sig Sauer in .40 S&W by my bedside. So if a Navy Seal team blows open my front door with a flash bang in the middle of the night, I will be able to jump up and meet them in my pajamas with my gun blazing?
Sure.
Albertosaurus
"As it turns out, the CIA knew OBL's whereabouts since last March, maybe earlier, but Obama refused to proceed unless there was a guarantee that white men with high ASVAB scores would be put in extreme harm's way."
Oh Christ. This site has gone full retard.
"Truth said...
Because he died over a decade ago, and the rigor mortis makes it difficult to hold one."
Dayum! It be da CIA. Bix Nood.
maybe OBL died of kidney failure and the operation was staged to get some propaganda value for Obummer?
That would also explained why World's Most Wanted Terrorist didn't try to run away when military chopper crashed into his garden in the middle of the night.
"Why didn't bin Laden have a gun?" Great interview question.
Or "Why didn't he have a tunnel which led out back and which would have allowed him to escape down the street?"
Everyone knows that all the best criminal lairs have tunnels -
<SPOILER ALERT>
- even that little shack which Sondra Locke called home, in The Gauntlet, had a secret passage in the bathroom which emptied into a storm runoff drain and which allowed them to sneak out under the road to safety.
"Surely demonstrating and openly admitting that you're a bunch of ignorant, excitable, group-thinking damn fools is the most subtle move of all...."
...And then, of course, the administration, realizing their mistake, immediately brought the troops home...
With a compliant MSM, it doesn't matter how stupid the original story is, when the truth becomes overwhelmingly apparent you just admit your mistake and keep going ("my bad"). The point is it fooled enough people long enough to achieve their initial goal of regime change. Same with the financial collapse: admit "mistakes were made" (and billions of course) and move on to the next short term opportunity. As exampled by outsourcing and mass immigration our elites are thinking NOW not tommorow.
Elements within the ISI lending logistical support to the 911 operation leads directly to a 'Man in the Iron Mask' scenario.
Obviously Osama was killed and his body quickly disposed of to cover up a few inconvenient truths, but it seems to me that they are pretty obvious ones. What was the secret that Osama could not be allowed to reveal if he were put on trial? The Saudi role in 9/11 of course. What is the secret that his autopsy would reveal? The fact that he looked like a walking cadaver and was functioning on 10% of one kidney. The Pakistanis were not only protecting him, they were keeping him alive by regular dialysis treatments. I don't see anything too sinister in any of this. We can't admit that the Saudis are our enemies unless we are prepared to invade their country and take over the oil production ourselves, and we can't admit that the Pakistanis are our enemies as long as we want to use their country as a base for our operations in Afghanistan. It is hypocrisy but not a conspiracy waged by the State Department against ourselves. We are probably also sympathetic to the notion that the Pakistanis have to maintain some sort of secret relationship with the Taliban while we are occupying their country. It is their only hope of keeping the country together after we leave. We are not going to be able to defeat the Taliban before pulling out and the Pakis are going to have to deal with the mess we leave behind. So it is hypocrisy all around and everyone playing a double game. I have to agree with Steve that the British were better at this sort of thing.
Stuck in the house all day and night for years with no internet?
I`d want someone to shoot me.
"Jeff Burton said...
Intriguing possibility. A couple of points in contradiction to a few commenters here: it takes ten seconds of googling to find pictures of Bin Laden holding guns. He was no Gandhi. Second, he explicitly stated in one of his tapes that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, "to die in the belly of the eagle.""
Ten seconds of googling will also display pictures of any number of nitwit Hollywood pacifists, who barely know which end of the gun to hold, holding guns. It's called acting - a necessary component of leading men. And sure he may have said he'd like to go out in a blaze of glory - who wouldn't? Who ever says "I want to die of an aneurism while sitting on the toilet working a Sudoku puzzle". All his bravado aside, in the end, he's just a groggy middle-aged man sitting on the edge of a bed in his night-shirt.
"No phone, no internet. What does he do all day?"
He had four wives.
""No phone, no internet. What does he do all day?"
He had four wives."
The guy was being nagged in quadraphonic. Clearly, he was better off dead.
The claimed fear that land burial of Osama might lead to the site becoming a 'shrine' appeals to a basic lack of understanding of Wahhabism - the sect of Islam to which Osama was adherent. Wahhabis are always buried in unmarked graves. They believe even tombstones to be idolatrous.
The Wahhabist movement in Saudi Arabia has, on such grounds, pulled down shrines and monuments left by the pre-Saudi Hashemite and Turkish rulers, who were Sunni but not Wahhabi. The Taliban used the same grounds for destroying the ancient statues of Buddha at Bamiyan. It strains credulity to suppose that militant Wahhabis like those in charge of al Qaeda would erect a shrine to anyone, even Osama.
Are we to suppose no one in the U.S. government knows these facts about Wahhabism, which anyone can find in an encyclopedia article about it?
This shrine business is a non-explanatory excuse for a hasty and opaque action that we can be reasonably sure had different motivations and objectives.
Both. The Pakistani government needed to keep him alive to keep the bucks rolling in from Uncle Sucker.
There may be parallels with how US troops allegedly discovered Saddam Hussein asleep (or drugged?) in a so-called spider hole in Iraq in 2003. Saddam was known for having been well-dressed and well-groomed (and he was, even in prison up to his execution), but at the time of his capture, he looked like vagrant with a long, unkempt beard. There were reports that he had been put in that spider hole by Kurdish guerillas and left there to be picked up by US forces.
Likewise, well-known gun fetishist Bin Laden turns out to be unarmed when he is attacked by US SEALs. So maybe he was not hidden "from" the Americans in the Abbottabad compound, but rather "for" the Americans, at least when it became convenient to declare the war on terror over and withdraw from Afghanistan.
If the Pakistan-stabbed-us-in-the-back meme spirals out of control in the US, Pakistan will either have to play terminally stupid or tell the full and likely quite convoluted story of why Bin Laden was not caught back in 2001 when US special forces were reported to have him surrounded in the Tora Bora mountains.
Larry M.
I'll see your "where's the gun?" and raise you a "where's the bullion?".
Following the new Trump Doctrine: you go in, you get the oil. In this case gold ingots would be more likely since Usama would have 'deliquified' his assets around 9/11 when bank accounts became unavailable to him.
Now we hear that he had 500 Euro running away money 'sewn into his clothes'. Hilarious.
If this was some bigass drug dealer the cops had nailed, tossed his place and come back to the station with 700 bucks, the IA would be on the case.
Glibert Pinfold (...the real one)
This is too bad. He could have gone for a Tony Montana exit.
"No phone, no internet. What does he do all day?"
He had four wives.
Great. Just shoot me.
Wait.
"The Seals are very well-disciplined, and would only have executed an unarmed target if that had been their explicit order."
What constitutes "unarmed" when you're dealing with a suicide terrorist? In Israel, the way they detonate their bombs is by raising their arms - which usually indicates a surrender. I think the SEALS probably had little choice but to shot first and ask questions later.
"Foresight Gaga said...
This is too bad. He could have gone for a Tony Montana exit."
Instead all he got was the Frank Lopez exit.
"The Seals are very well-disciplined, and would only have executed an unarmed target if that had been their explicit order."
What constitutes "unarmed" when you're dealing with a suicide terrorist? In Israel, the way they detonate their bombs is by raising their arms - which usually indicates a surrender. I think the SEALS probably had little choice but to shot first and ask questions later.
Osama was not a suicide terrorist (or else he was very bad at it). He was primarily a propagandist and secondarily a terrorist think thank leader.
Bereft of financial resources, sickly, isolated and cut off from the world save for very infrequent 17th century human foot courriers - Osama was not much of a threat to anyone. Note that it took years tracking one of his trusted courriers to locate this place.
What makes no sense is that this "Osama safehouse" had virtually no security, guards, weapons, escape tunnel, suicide pills, etc. This safehouse was nothing like Osama's safehouse discovered in the mountains which had an escape tunnel big enough for a car.
What would make sense would that the place would be that there would be panic rooms, escape tunnels and the place wired with explosives and booby traps for just such an attack. Not to mention more than a few armed guards with RPGs and automatic weapons.
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