Some Interesting bin Laden Stories I Found Today

The Navy SEAL team that offed the 21st century’s most wanted man Sunday was so concerned about preparation and accuracy that they re-created the one-acre compound where their target was living, “Ocean’s Eleven” style. The SEALS ran trial runs there in early April until they were ready to take down Osama bin Laden.

This snippet, mentioned in a depiction of the raid posted at the Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... en/238163/ highlights one particularly interesting facet of this operation: It centered on people. Certainly, the specialized Black Hawk helicopters, hyperspectral imagers and other tactical technology were key — but in the end, bin Laden met his demise at the hands of ultra-trained human warriors, not machines. Here’s how it went down.

If the history of counterterrorism is any guide, the action will also inspire a desire for retribution among al Qaeda and its myriad affiliate groups throughout the world. The threat is real but not as great as it might loom in our imaginations, argues sociologist Charles Kurzman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kurzman is an expert on the Middle East and social movements. He is author of The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists, forthcoming from Oxford University Press in the summer. Scientific American asked him to weigh in on the terrorist threat we might anticipate in the wake of Bin Laden's death.

Like most people, I’m mostly glad that Osama is dead. What I’m having some trouble with are the responses from the right, the ones that question Obama’s timing of this exercise.

What is being overlooked here is the obvious, as usual. Much has been made here of the failure of the Royal Wedding planners to invite Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to the wedding of the century, or the millennium, or something. Many commentators seem greatly troubled by this. If that’s true, imagine how Obama must feel. This is hugely embarrassing. So, clearly Obama went after Osama at the point that he did in order to distract attention from his grievous failure to receive an invitation to the Royal Wedding, and remove all that Royal Wedding coverage off the front pages of the world’s newspapers. And he’s been remarkably successful. Simple, really. :thumbsup: lol

By the time Sunday ended in California more than 265,000 people had "liked" an "Osama bin Laden is Dead" page at social networking service Facebook.

In contrast, a set of English and Arabic Facebook pages titled "We are all Osama bin Laden" had logged fewer than 600 "likes."

"This page is a disgrace to Islam," a fresh comment at one of the pro-bin Laden pages read.

"He tarnished the name of Allah and (you are) proud?" the message continued. "May Allah have mercy on your ignorance."

If you want to find Bin Laden death conspiracy theories–and apparently they’re already hatching–it seems to me the pertinent question to ask is, who has a deep emotional motivation to question the fact that Bin Laden is actually dead? So I would tend to look first to Al Qaeda supporters, etc, not birthers. But this will be interesting to watch and I’m interested in what others think.