WatchI'm glad Obama had Osama whacked, but it's disturbing that there was no involvement of our justice system at all. Ron Paul pointed this out during one of the debates.
We could have tried Osama in absentia, and then at least the public would have seen the charges against him and the evidence.
If someone is going to be killed, that's a death sentence, and death sentences should be handed down only by the justice system. Extra-judicial killing is right up there with permanent imprisonment without trial and censorship of the web as a symptom of how the US is devolving into a police state without laws, run only for the profit of and by the fears of the 1%.
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So you want to waste taxpayer money and clog the courts with a fake trial? We have a HUGE backlog of cases in the federal courts since Reoublicans refuse to confirm any judges. We simply don't have the time for fake trials.
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If he would have turned himself in, he would have received a trial. Instead the bearded freak monkey chose suicide by Navy SEAL double-tap.
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What's double-tap? Ah, a kind of ammo.
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To use a trial in absentia like those used to prosecute Nazis would have set a precedent of following international law rather than acting unilaterally without any restraints or accountability. Such a system only works under transparency, which is the last thing Obama wants. It is the least transparent administration ever, even including Bush's. And that's coming from NPR.
Ron Paul was right. The United States should have captured Osama instead of assassinating him. And don't anyone give me any bullshit that Seal Team 6 couldn't capture an old man on dialysis alive. Then Osama should have been brought before trial in accordance with international laws regarding illegal warfare and crimes against humanity. You know, just like we did with the Nazis.
That would have made America a nation of laws rather than a nation of thugs. It would have also confirmed that Western Civilization is the best form of civilization and can live up to its principles. Instead, we allowed the terrorist to convince us to tear down our civilization by becoming terrorists ourselves. They won, we lost.
Given the evidence against Osama, a drunken retarded monkey could get a conviction. If we couldn't get a conviction in an open and fair court, then we don't deserve to get to kill him. Assassinating him instead of bringing him before trial was the act of cowards who do not believe in the very principles upon which our country was founded.
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Patrick says
I thought it was when two guys and a girl, well...
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Patrick says
I stand corrected.
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Extra-judicial killing is right up there with permanent imprisonment without trial and censorship of the web as a symptom of how the US is devolving into a police state without laws, run only for the profit of and by the fears of the 1%.
blah blah blah 1%.
Getting a bit old, Patrick.
If the 99% want it, the 1%'s effect on events is irrelevant.
Anti-terrorism only directly involves the 1% if you think the Jewish cabal is the 1% controlling the world.
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The congressional-corporate cabal controls US laws. That much is a fact.
Sure the 99% could in theory do something about it.
The fear of the 1% that we might do something about it is why our rights are being chipped away at, in the name of anti-terrorism.
We have already seen anti-terrorism used as a lame excuse for protecting corporate profits. For example, some Congressman claimed that imports of discount drugs from Canada are funding terrorism.
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Read up on how in absentia works in the U.S. We do it, but it's only constitutional in certain situations. The biggest problem for bin Laden is that the defendant generally has to be present at some stage.
But the better answer is that bin Laden personally declared and waged war on the United States. Trials aren't necessary for killing belligerents in war. Plenty of history around that. No law, precedent, or tradition supports the contrary view.
If you want to wring hands about bin Laden's killing, the best subject to ponder is our violation of Pakistani sovereignty.
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I don't lose sleep over this sort of thing. That the self-acknowledged leader of a group that perpetrated the destruction that occurred on 911 and other terrorist acts is killed without a predetermined verdict of guilt in a court of law is OK with me. As an aside, one could easily make the case, probably false, that he was killed in an attempt to capture him wink wink. There was certainly enough evidence to issue a warrant for his arrest and apprehend him, that he was killed in the operation oh well it happens. In this regard at least there was the possibility he could have been captured and brought to trail, Obama didnt use a missile strike as was suggested by his defense Secretary Gates. I feel Obama acted correctly
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I somewhat agree with Patrick. The "trial" could have been a simple procedure with a military tribunal etc.
My personal belief is that the presumed "assignment" of the Seals was to capture Osama Bin Laden if he asked to go with them. They had the space on the chopper for him obviously.
The fact that he was reported to be going for a weapon meant he would be shot. I.E. there was "plausible deniability" that he was resisting capture.
All of those seal guys are officers. They cannot commit murder, regardless of who ordered it.
I was of course not against him dying.
The thing to remember is that also, if a guy is a "combatant", i.e. takes up arms against the USA if he is out of uniform, he has zero rights under the Geneva conventions. He can be summarily shot in the field, forget just waterboarding him.
Likewise, if someone pledges his allegiance to a foreign power, and takes up arms against the USA, even if he is a USA citizen, he forfeits his rights.
"Double tap"=being shot twice.
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That picture is fake.
This picture is real:
Bush didn't find Osama because he was told not to find Osama.
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All's I know, is Osama is as quiet now, as he has been for 7 Goddamn long years as we played fort in the Oil Fields.
Coincident? I think NOT!
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GameOver says
Great point.
Might be really embarassing for ALL the info to come out.
I was also very frustrated when Gen. Manuel Noriega was just picked up an imprisoned forever without getting to make a statement. I definitely wanted to hear what he was going to say, but we never got to hear it.
Maybe there should be some law that prisoners always get to talk to reporters if they want.
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Patrick says
Bush didn't have to use tongue.
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Patrick says
Absolutely. The very day of 2001/09/11, all flights were grounded except for flights carrying Osama's family out of the United States. The Bush administration knew about attack before hand, and let it happen because "America needs another Pearl Harbor".
Once it happened, the Bush administration made sure Osama's family was safely out of the U.S. before word got out who was behind the attack.
The last thing that Bush wanted to do was kill a member of the Saudi royal family, even Osama. America drinks from the teat of Saudi Arabia and Bush's cronies reap in the profits.
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I'm not sure the Bush administration knew the attacks were going to happen. I can believe it, but is there any evidence of that?
They definitely got all the Bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family out of the US while no American was allowed to fly anywhere.
Osama isn't actually royal family, but the Bin Laden family was and is really close to the Saudi royal family.
Osama's father Mohammed: "As the "royal builder," Mohammed bin Laden forged close relationships with the royal family, particularly Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Awad_bin_Laden
The Bush family is also very close to the Saudi royal family, to the point that one of the Saudi princes (Bandar bin Sultan) lived with the Bushes and was known as "Bandar Bush".
Also, Osama's brother was an investor in George W. Bush's former oil business in Texas.
The whole thing really reeks.
Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11. They are a country with no democracy, no freedom of speech, and no freedom of religion. So what did we do in response? We attacked the Saudi's enemy Iraq for them. You can shit on America, as long as you're connected to the Bush family.
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One Word (or Acronym): WAMY. World Association of Muslim Youth
Run by Saudi Princes and one of the greatest sources of terrorist funding. The Bush Admin called off the FBI from investigating WAMY in the Spring/Summer of 2001.
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Unfortunately, without a wiretap on the Whitehouse, such things can never be proven, and as with the case of Nixon, the evidence might get "accidentally" erased. However, the sheer amount of circumstantial evidence that Bush and Cheney knew the attacks were going to happen and on what day would make Casey Anthony in contrast look like the mother of the year.
1. On August 6, 2001 Bush's daily intelligence briefing included a report titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." which detailed Osama's hijacking plans. I hate to judge a book or report by its cover, but in this case…
2. John Ashcroft, the attorney general at the time, stopped flying commercial aircraft two months before the above memo citing a threat assessment by the FBI.
3. Bush was out of Washington D.C. on 9/11. Perhaps not unusual itself despite having recently gotten debriefed on an imminent attack on the U.S.
4. Cheney told NORAD to not follow standard operating orders in regards to intercepting the hijacked planes. This is extremely unusual in itself, but even more unusual since no president or vice president has every taken direct control over NORAD since it was created or order NORAD to not do exactly what they have trained to do in event of a national security threat.
5. All that might just be coincident and bad judgment. Nothing implies motive until you remember that
Dick Cheney said, "America needs another Pearl Harbor", a phrase he got from the The Project for the New American Century, a Republican think tank, in its publication Rebuilding America's Defenses which stated
Page 51 of Rebuilding America's Defenses
6. On Oct 2, less than a month after 9/11, the first version of the USA Patriot Act was introduced to Congress. Given how long and complex the act is, much of it must have been written prior to 9/11. It is likely that the power-grabbers in Washington had this bill on the back burner for years waiting for the right opportunity to get it passed. Congress spent more time debating the name of the bill than it spent on the bill's contents.
Now of course, this circumstantial evidence isn't enough to convict the Bush administration of deliberately ignoring the threat of 9/11 for political gain, but it sure would be enough to launch an investigation if you or I did it. Such an investigation would have either cleared the Bush administration or turned up damming evidence. Unfortunately, now it's way too late to investigate. Lack of transparency allowed another black flag operation to succeed and result in massive deaths, loss of liberty, and making the world less safe.
I doubt the Bush administrator had any idea how big 9/11 would be, but they were hoping for a Pearl Harbor and they got what they wanted. If they had the ability to go back in time and prevent 9/11, knowing that they wouldn't have gotten their wars waged, their legislation passed, their re-election run, and their oil profits, do you really think they would give up all they got to undo 9/11?
In conclusion, I believe that it's most likely that the Bush administration knew the attack was coming and chose to ignore it for political gain.
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That does all seem like pretty good evidence.
The NORAD standown in particular is weird.
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Truther on aisle 5.
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Patrick says
Nope, not true:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp
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Crazy conspiracy theories like this are exactly what is wrong with America. Why do all the conspiracy theorists all support Ron Paul?
With a 5 minute Google search, virtually every piece of nonsnse written above about 9/11 coudl be disproved. But I have better things to do...
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HousingWatcher says
Looks like Snopes might be wrong:
http://www.saintpetersburgtimes.com/2004/06/09/Tampabay/TIA_now_verifies_flig.shtml
The saintpetersburgtimes.com is a reputable paper.
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The snopes data comes directly from page 329 of the official 9/11 Commission report:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf
I think a government report is abit more reputable than a newspaper.
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Also, your Sant Petersburg Times article does not prove that the Suadis and bin Ladens were allowed to leave the country even if it was ture. The entire article only focuses on a DOMESTIC flight from Florida to Kentucky.
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HousingWatcher says
The point of a free press is exactly to say things that the government won't say. If you're just going to take the government's word for everything, why have a free press at all?
The article also says "The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. "
I'm just saying there is reputable evidence here that Saudis might have left while the rest of us were still grounded. Not certain, but not dismissable simply by claiming the government says otherwise.
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The only documented bin Laden flight occurred on September 20, a week after the airspace was re-opened:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/fahrenheit-911-facts/what-fahrenheit-911-says-about-the-saudi-flights-out-of-the-country-after-september-11
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Dan8267 says
Not really. There was nothing in the memo that was specific enough to stop a terror attack. In fact, the memo says that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes to gain the release of prisoners, not to use as missiles. So there is a HUGE difference between what the memo says and what actually occurred on 9/11:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf
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I realize this is "old school" and no one reads books anymore but if you are interested in a well researched, non-conspiracy theory oriented book on the what led up to the events on 911, read the book Looming Towers.
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I say that someone who is:
- Not a citizen
- Is found outside of the United States
- Openly admits to crimes he is accused of
- Openly advocates for more harm to be done to America
...doesn't really qualify for constitutional protection.
Now, if he was a citizen, or was found on U.S. soil, or hadn't openly confessed to his crimes and advocated for more, I'd be all for a trial, but as it stands -- no, I think this was a perfectly OK thing to do.