Fascinating Article on the Bin Laden Raid
I’ve always been fascinated by the military and top secret plans and classified information. My guess is many people probably are. The most recent example of this is the Navy SEALS thoroughly planned and highly secretive raid to capture Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011 in Pakistan. The wide-spread picture of our military leaders watching the raid (right) and the raw emotion that they convey is indeed worth 1,000 words.
However, for even more detail, I recommend reading this article from The New Yorker because its 8 times as detailed as that. Yep – 8,000+ words. It’s loooong, but very worth it. It goes into great detail about the intelligence, planning, preparation, practice, and execution of the infamous raid.
I didn’t read this article in one sitting and I doubt you would either. If you haven’t signed up for the free service (they have a paid version as well) called Instapaper, I highly recommend you do so and then use it for this. Instapaper is simple – you save webpages and articles you want to read later. It’s best use is on mobile devices so when you’re stuck somewhere with nothing to do, you can catch up on things you want to read. The best part is, it keeps track of where you are in an article so you can piecemeal your way through it. Try it out!
Here’s the article from The New Yorker entitled ‘Getting Bin Laden‘:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?currentPage=all
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Agreed. Fascinating read indeed. Almost better than a Clancy novel. Unfortunately though, I think the story bears about as much credibility as a novel. You simply can’t believe anything the military reports, sadly even if it’s a piece in the New Yorker. You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to question this fable.
For one, there are just glaringly inaccurate/misleading facts in the article itself, e.g. the Pakistani Dr. who was ‘running an immunization program’ for the CIA was doing no such thing…http://www.salon.com/2012/05/26/the_imperial_mind/. The SEALS shoot an AK-47 strapped dude, and his wife “Bushra, who was standing, unarmed, beside him.” Funny, but every report the military offered immediately after the event said he threw the chick in front of him as a human shield. And then there’s the scene where one bin Laden son is raining bullets down upon SEALS atop a flight of stairs, like he’s Persian Rambo, before he’s shot down. Directly following is a sentence in parentheses from a source that says he wasn’t even armed. Huh? Which is it? I think that’s a hugely relevant fact/lie that could have been nailed down either way by now.
Fearing that the wives were wearing bomb vests? Get real. A stealth invasion in the middle of the night, scenes of scared people running and hiding, and these 2 women, 20 confusing minutes after the landing, were believed to have strapped on vest-bombs, ready to somehow trigger/detonate and blow themselves up? Wha? That wouldn’t even be believable in a video game. Did they just walk around with active explosives hanging on door hooks ready and armed for use, like bathroom robes? I don’t think so. Who reports this shit unquestioningly? Makes for heroic drama though.
The whole kill scene with the wives has been reported in about 10 different ways now, first a report in which a cowardly OBL used the wives as human shields, where one wife was actually killed, then another report where the elderly, sickly OBL was rushing the SEALS in an attempt to spear them like Goldberg in a WWE match, then another report where he was fighting back in a volley of gunfire, etc etc.
And don’t forget he had porno! That’s about the only fact that has remained consistent in every story. “We find it on all these guys,” mocks the soldier (who like every good soldier we know disapproves of guys looking at porno). Huh? I guess that detail is meant for the churchgoers who have bigger issues with titties than murder.
This event wasn’t the hazy ‘fog of war’ where Charlie is in the jungle trees and who the hell knows what happened. As the article says: it was highly prepped and practiced, the logistics were actually rather dull and routine to these guys, and the whole thing was highly monitored by all sorts of recording equipment/surveillance. I mean, Hello!!! http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CeKbeL5UwgY/Tb9bPUulmpI/AAAAAAAAGkw/bfAujbBIQhc/s1600/osama_operation.jpg Aren’t we supposed to believe this episode of A-Team is exactly what these heroic leaders are watching, as it goes down?
From Tonkin, to WMD’s, to Jessica Lynch, to Pat Tillman….the military = propaganda. They are one and the same. And the biggest lies are directed at their own public, who must remain convinced what they do is righteous and necessary.
There’s not much I can say to that! Well written (sprinkled with some good inside jokes and humor) and very interesting points. Now that you bring it up, I know I’ve heard a number of conflicting portions of this story too. Many involving the body afterwards. Sad thing is we’ll probably never know many of the details for sure. Either way, it seems like you need your own blog to voice these opinions!
You getting this book? Another revision to the story… http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/29/opinion/bergen-obama-osama-books/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
I added it to my “Read Later” list. As to when I’ll get around to it… who knows! Should be interesting, though.