I’m tellin’ ya, this has been a done deal for months. “Capture” Osama just at the right time to give Bush the boost he will certainly need.
He may already be in custody.
You can see Karl Rove smiling like a Cheshire cat.
[quote]Bin Laden ‘surrounded’
February 22, 2004
A British Sunday newspaper is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sunday Express, known for its sometimes colourful scoops, claims the al-Qaeda leader has been “sighted” for the first time since 2001 and is being monitored by satellite.
The paper claims he is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him.
The claim is attributed to “a well-placed intelligence source” in Washington, who is quoted as saying: “He (bin Laden) is boxed in.”[/quote]
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]I’m tellin’ ya, this has been a done deal for months. “Capture” Osama just at the right time to give Bush the boost he will certainly need.
He may already be in custody.
You can see Karl Rove smiling like a Cheshire cat.
[/quote]
If they indeed already do have OBL (I don’t think they do)… then Bush should get the credit for it.
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]I’m tellin’ ya, this has been a done deal for months. “Capture” Osama just at the right time to give Bush the boost he will certainly need.
He may already be in custody.
You can see Karl Rove smiling like a Cheshire cat.[/quote]
Wow, that would suck! Perhaps Germany, Russia, France, and the Democraps can start a “Free Osama!” campaign. You could use such slogans as “no blood for Osama!” and “Bush Lied!” and “Halliburton!” to drive home your barbs. Demand that Osama – call him Sam, it’s more familiar and less frightening – be given a fair trial in the Hague and sentenced to fifteen months minus time spent hiding.
After all, there is no public proof that Osama did anything wrong! O how tragic, is an innocent man being railroaded by the Neocons in order to ensure a Bush victory?!?!? Those damn Jews, er, Neocons!
Come on, join in, “Die Fahne hoch, die Bushen fest geschlossen!” You know the tune!
[quote]Bin Laden angeblich eingekreist
Die britische Boulevardzeitung “Sunday Express” berichtete unter Berufung auf einen Mitarbeiter eines US-Geheimdienstes, der Kopf des Terrornetzwerkes El Kaida, Osama bin Laden, sei in Pakistan an der Grenze zu Afghanistan von britischen und amerikanischen Spezialeinheiten eingekreist. Zwei hochrangige amerikanische Milit
I vote conspiracy. How is it possible that the US forces are going after Osama only now? Oh the snow in the mountains will thaw in the spring and then is when they will make their move. Oh, that seems logical but spring is also a long way off from the November elections. I mean look at how quickly the capture of Saddam fizzled, but still somehow there must be a conspiracy here by the neocons. Must be.
[quote=“tigerman”][quote=“wolf_reinhold”]I’m tellin’ ya, this has been a done deal for months. “Capture” Osama just at the right time to give Bush the boost he will certainly need.
He may already be in custody.
You can see Karl Rove smiling like a Cheshire cat.
[/quote]
If they indeed already do have OBL (I don’t think they do)… then Bush should get the credit for it.[/quote]
Bush’s credit will be minimized if the capture is being manipulated for political gain. In fact, the damage done to US national security and the War on Terror will be heavy.
[quote=“AP via LA Times (Feb. 28, 04)”]
Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured
[quote=“flike”][quote=“tigerman”][quote=“wolf_reinhold”]I’m tellin’ ya, this has been a done deal for months. “Capture” Osama just at the right time to give Bush the boost he will certainly need.
He may already be in custody.
You can see Karl Rove smiling like a Cheshire cat.
[/quote]
If they indeed already do have OBL (I don’t think they do)… then Bush should get the credit for it.[/quote]
Bush’s credit will be minimized if the capture is being manipulated for political gain. In fact, the damage done to US national security and the War on Terror will be heavy.[/quote]
I really doubt that OBL has been captured by the US (or Pakistan). Can you imagine how difficult it would be to keep that a secret?
[quote=“tigerman”]I really doubt that OBL has been captured by the US (or Pakistan). Can you imagine how difficult it would be to keep that a secret?[/quote]I’m with Tigerman on this. When there is a puzzle, we should always look for the most probable answer. The trouble with most conspiracy theories is that they are the least probable answers.
[quote=“Alien”]…But when I think about the stocks that can make us the most money, they’re always the most corrupt industries. Can we blame wealthy politicians for having shares? I mean, especially when we ourselves may invest in ‘non PC’ corporations, as they’re typically the ones who can earn us big money… The world order is far too complex to fathom. [/quote]This is off-topic, but I believe Friends Provident and some other ethical investment organisations give good returns. Sorry I don’t have figures as I read about this some time ago.
[quote]U.S., Pakistan Deny Bin Laden Was Captured
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Pentagon and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan “a long time ago.”
The claim came as Pakistan’s army hunted terror suspects in a remote tribal region along the border, believed to be a possible hiding place for the al-Qaida’s leader.
The director of Iran radio’s Pashtun language service, Asheq Hossein, said the report was based on two sources - one of whom later told The Associated Press he was misquoted.
The report said bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but that President Bush was withholding any announcement until closer to November elections.
“Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,” the radio report said.[/quote]
Of course they deny it.
Sure, Tigerman is right as far as it being highly unlikely, but stranger things have been known to happen.
You will all be saying I was right when the O is “captured” just in time to boost the Bush campaign.
I don’t believe the Bush Administration would capture Bin Laden and then hide the fact until a politically opportune time. While often veering into heavy-handed political cynicism, I don’t think Bush and Co. are anywhere near that cynical.
I also think it’s highly unlikely Osama Bin Laden will be captured alive, unlike Saddam Hussein, because they really are fundamentally different creatures ideologically. Saddam is nothing more than a self-serving thug while Bin Laden is a committed religious extremist.
[quote]American and British forces have launched a dramatic new effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.
SAS detachments will join thousands of US troops - including a ‘super-secret’ special forces unit transferred from Iraq - and contingents of Afghan soldiers in a huge sweep of mountainous border areas where the terrorists are believed to be hiding.
The push will be the biggest such operation for 18 months. Attempts to find the fugitives last year were hindered by a lack of special forces soldiers - most of whom had been deployed in Iraq - and the failure of Pakistan to cut off escape routes by closing its border with Afghanistan. Harsh winter conditions in recent months have made movement in the high ground where bin Laden is thought to be hiding impossible.
Thousands of Pakistani troops and paramilitaries are preparing to move into positions along the 1,520-mile frontier to act as an ‘anvil’ against which the US-led ‘hammer’ can strike. Reports from an Iranian news agency yesterday that bin Laden has been captured proved false but Washington is confident the Saudi-born militant will be killed or captured within a year.
The operation will be led by the ultra-secret Task Force 121 - a unit of elite Navy SEALs and Delta Force soldiers led by top intelligence analysts that was formed by the Pentagon last year to head the hunt for Saddam Hussein.
[quote]NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States has struck a deal with Pakistan to allow U.S. troops to hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden this spring in an area of Pakistan where he is believed to be operating, the New Yorker magazine reported on Sunday.
Thousands of U.S. troops will be deployed in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan in return for Washington’s support of President Pervez Musharraf’s pardon of the Pakistani scientist who this month admitted leaking nuclear arms secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in the issue that goes on sale on Monday.
OK, so let’s assume that he has been captured or that we’re going to get him in the near future. If you could choose how to punish him (after an open and fair trial, of course ), how would you do it? My preferred method would be to drag him by a chain from the back of a hummer through lower Manhattan on September 11. We couldn’t drag him too close to the site of the trade center, though. I wouldn’t want his blood to taint the blood of the thousands of innocent people who died there. Any better ideas for how to punish him?
[quote=“Mike Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard, (pp. 264-5), in describing breaking on the wheel,”]…On the last day of January 1630, ‘Lieutenant-General’ Pietersz was taken out to be ‘broken from under upwards, and the body put upon a Wheel.’
Breaking on the wheel, as it was generally known, was the most painful and barbaric method of execution practised in the Dutch Republic and was, in effect, a form of crucifixation. In Pietersz’s case the condemned man, stripped to a pair of linen drawers, would have been led out to a scaffold on which had been assembled a huge cart wheel - still fitted with an axle - a bench, some ropes, and a thick iron bar. He would have been lashed, spread-eagled, to the bench and positioned so that the executioner had easy access to his limbs. Taking up the heavy bar, and with great concentration, this man would have proceeded to smash the bones in the prisoner’s arms and elgs, starting with the fingers and the toes and working slowly inward. The aim was to completely pulverise each limb, so that when Pietersz was lifted from the bench onto the wheel, his upper arms were broken in so many places that they could be twisted and bent to follow the circumference of the wheel, while his legs were wrenched backward from the thighs, forced right around the outer rim, and tied off with the heels touching the back of the head. The latter operation was difficult to complete without allowing the broken femurs to protrude, but a skilled executioner took pride not only in ensuring that his victim remained fully conscious throughout the operation, but also in crushing his bones so thoroughly that the skin remained intact. As a further refinement, it was common for the condemned man’s ribs to be stoved in with several further blows, so that every breath became an agony.
Once the grisly operation had been concluded, Pietersz’s wheel would have been hoisted upright and the axle thrust deep into the ground close by the scaffold so that the Stone-Cutter’s [Pietersz’s] final moments could be witnessed by the assembled crowd. Death - generally as the result of internal bleeding - might take hours; in a place such as Batavia [on Java], the dying man’s pain and distress would have been exacerbated by the cloying heat and the swarms of flies and mosquitoes that would have filled his eyes and mouth. The strongest men sometimes survived into a second day, and Pietersz, a brawny army veteran, may not have lapsed into unconsciousness until the early hours of February 1630…[/quote]
From Batavia’s Graveyard, by, and copyrighted by, Mike Dash, 2002, Phoenix - an imprint of Orion Books Ltd., Orion House, London, ISBN 0-75381-684-9
Now that’s what you call “a deterrent effect”! And you got your Old Testament, yer Crusades, yer Republicans, yer The Passion of Christ tie-in, everything, really. Who but an anti-American Leftist couldn’t love a little of this kind of spectacle?
Tempting, very tempting indeed but no thanks (even though I am sure you are joking). I think that our system of justice will handle Osama’s punishment adequately without the torture. But we still have to catch him first. Let’s worry about this when we actually have him. I am confident that one day we will but until then…
Perhaps not catching him alive would be better, but I think that there is a strong possibility that we might. Now we have three biggies to go on this, Osama, Zawahiri and Zarkawi. Soon… Soon… and with the right pressure on Iran, almost all the al Qaeda would be destroyed. Time to ratchet up the pressure on Iran to turn over everyone they have or we should let it be known that we will start sending people over to destabilize their regime and broadcast nonstop messages to encourage the people to rise up. We can detail the abuses of power and corruption and such and let the people of Iran ultimately put this worthless regime out of existence.
Personally, I favor amputating his right hand, pulling his teeth, and then turning him loose into the “general population” of one of the more violent prisons. I suppose giving him a tube of K-Y would temper justice with mercy.
"Bin Laden is said to have fled to China via the obscure Wakhan Corridor, a remote and mountainous finger of land, devised by the British to separate their empire from the Russian enemy. The corridor, sandwiched between Pakistan to the south and Tajikistan to the north, sweeps across the Pamir mountains before terminating in China’s restive Xinjiang province.
The road inside the corridor runs out at the small town of Panja. After that the route is only accessible by foot or on horseback."
This rumor has intrigued me for a couple of years and could explain how such a distinctive target could have so completely vanished in the face of the biggest manhunt in history over a relatively limited area. Chinese territory would be the safest place on earth for him.
), how would you do it? My preferred method would be to drag him by a chain from the back of a hummer through lower Manhattan on September 11. We couldn’t drag him too close to the site of the trade center, though. I wouldn’t want his blood to taint the blood of the thousands of innocent people who died there. Any better ideas for how to punish him?