I felt much like krby and Elessar posted... and I want to add my own particular disgust at a different group of people.

I am chest deep in Christian conservatism where I live. My Facebook is only comprised of my RL friends and associates, and after this news many of them felt the need to post on their Facebook statuses like, "Finally Obama will rot in hell! Praise God!" and "Now God will show him what it means to be judged," and "Osama bin Laden got the bigger shock when he got to the next life. No virgins like he was expecting, but the One judging the living & the dead is a Jew." followed by "hahahaha lololololol"

These are the followers of a God of love? A God that supposedly died to save all people, and not just people we like? A God that commanded you to LOVE your enemies? Maybe your version of the Bible has more to the verse... "unless he is a really bad man and hates America."

Then I saw the celebrating on the streets in front of the White House. All of this combined to sicken me.

From what is being reported I think you are giving him too little credit. The evidence was certainly circumstantial; nobody had laid eyes on bin Laden and making that call was pretty ballsy. Yes, others did the intelligence gathering. Yes, others planned the actual operation. But, consider for a moment what the consequences of it all going wrong could have been. He called for a military operation in a sovereign country without informing them. He sent in a team whose actions were a spectacular failure for another Democratic President (Carter). His call to "Go" was more than just "that's it". Considering his poll numbers on the economy/deficit he was risking alot politically.

That said, I will be watching tomorrow when he travels to NYC to see what tone he sets.

Obama did make the call, after taking with his staff, but it has not really been determined to what extent the Pakistan Government was involved or not, I have read several different news articles saying they were informed that the US was going to be in the Pakistan air space others saying that they were told after the CIA and SEALS left the area.
I would suspect that we will find out in about 10 to 15 years when this become declassified.

_________________
Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

What do you call someone who judges an entire group of people based on the actions of a few?

No need to answer that.

==

Obama deserves a lot of credit for this. A lot. I think he did make a gutsy call. I read an interview with Panetta that said the evidence was significant, but mostly circumstantial. It amounted to the best lead since Tora Bora. Obama showed he has some balls.

The only thing that bothers me in this entire process is the fact that the evidence was probably obtained through the same methods that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld instrumented years ago. Having said that, if Obama deserves credit for seeing it through, so do those guys for their efforts in the years leading up to it. Much as it pains me.

This part kind of weirds me out, tbh. Do we even declare war anymore? I feel like we just invade or bomb whoever we like with basically no regard for international sovereignty (or for congressional approval - isn't that supposed to be one of the fundamental checks and balances in our political system?).

Not saying the Osama extraction/execution was a bad call. More of a symbolic victory than anything, but considering its domestic impact I guess it was a win from a utilitarian standpoint. And I suppose the intel gathered on the scene could prove useful, and/or the removal of Osama's cash and connections (wishful thinking, for as organized a group as Al'Qaeda has proved to be over the years).

more typos... the 2nd was possibly on purpose since a quote itself..



I've heard & seen plenty of Conservatives give Obama the credit he deserves for this..

My group of people only consisted of the people I spoke of, and no more. If other conservative Christians did not react in this way, then obviously I wasn't referring to them.

They knew he was there in advance of the operation. Maybe they did not know if he was there at that moment, but they knew it was where he was staying. He had been living there for a while.

And what does "made it a priority" entail for Obama, exactly? I trust you're not suggesting that he was charging into cabinet meetings with a cape on, pulling up charts and dashing around with papers flying everywhere like in the movies.

Even judging from past Presidents' memoirs, I would say very little unless more is specifically done beyond setting the general "tone". Presidents tend to move the country in a general direction rather than take very specific actions, with the occasional exception of military action - but even with regard to military action it still has more to do with generic movement and orders than any serious involvement in planning or execution. This case, from initial reports, reeks of a few generals doing months and months of planning and finally coming to Obama and saying "Alright, we're ready". Obama is briefed by far more qualified individuals who actually know something about military tactics.

Now, Kula did bring up the usual point that this decision-making process in and of itself is a difficult process, and one wrong move turns the whole country against you. I wouldn't argue that. He did indeed take a risk, though I'm not convinced it was a particularly serious one, especially on the level of Carter's. As I said, this was likely a process of years of intelligence gathering and preparation. I would not be at all surprised if the difficult part was finding him(given the timespan), even though I'm sure trying to find workarounds in hiding it from the Pakistanis was no small feat, either. When did that search start? Certainly before Obama, and that's not to say Bush deserves much credit if any. It would've been stupid for Bush not to look for Osama, if for no other selfish reason than the political rewards are large among the masses even if often undeserved.

I'm going to assume this was done because we have knowledge that Bin Laden was paying off the Pakastani's to look the other way and that he had people on the inside that would have tipped him off the second we planned to move. They discovered he was all geared up to leave at a moment's notice and had money and phone numbers sewn into his clothes.

There is no way that this guy is gonna live in a giant rich guy compound a mile or two from a gigantic pakastani military base and not have a single person go "hmm I wonder who that is living inside that heavily guarded compound"....

At least Saddam was hiding in a tiny ass tunnel all scruffy and worn out. Bin Laden was living in utter comfort and luxury in plain sight of our "allies".

He was paying them off, plain and simple.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Doubt he was paying them as much as we have been... it can't be all about the money, or he'd have been given up much sooner if all they were caring about is money.

and to follow up on that;

What about the many others captured/killed inside Pakistan, who didn't have the funding Bin Laden had. The only people they want money from is us..

In a respect, you're right. But for another part, you also couldn't be more wrong. The tone is FAR FAR more important than you would believe it to be. And I don't mean just foreign policy. The folks assigned (and the leadership chain is often shorter than you think), especially in the intelligence circles, can (and I'll speak for my own experience, have) bring with them a SUBSTANTIAL amount of politics in an attempt to identify or validate a specific agenda or ideology, almost to the detriment of the reality on the ground. You cannot possibly fathom just how large an operation intelligence gathering really is. To ascertain truth from misdirection, human error to misinterpretation, is really just awesome to behold when it comes together. I mean that w/o any hyperbole. It truly is awesome, and you cannot comprehend it, even after you have an advanced understanding of how the different gears work. There's a lot of politics that can fog much of this up, even something that's as clearly "good and simple" as finding bin Laden. It takes a lot more than a nod to align everything for this to be pulled off. On that count, he's surprised and impressed me.

In this case, he's truly earned his due. At least for his role, which is bigger than many give credit for.

When they hit the towers I seen muslims all over North America dancing and celebrating, so I see no problem with people celebrating a little bit over the death of public enemy #1.

Too bad they dumped his rotten corpse in the sea, I am sure many would of loved the chance to line up and piss on his grave.

_________________
Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Well, as I said in both posts I think that intelligence gathering is a huge deal, but to the point of suggesting that Obama likely had little to do with it. I also agree that tone is substantially important, but I'm not convinced that it's important in the way that military advisors end up planning very SPECIFIC operations like this one. Only if it manages to get the ball rolling, and I'm again unconvinced that Obama did anything to start it given how long this search has been going on.

Even assuming everything you say is completely accurate, here are the big questions: Do we know that Obama did anything other than a nod? What's the reasoning for the assumption on Rugen's part and perhaps yours that he "truly earned his due" and had a "bigger" role in this specifically?

Or did he, as I suspect, give a fancy speech at a classy function stating matter-of-factly, "Hey guys, we're going to increase troops in Afghanistan and focus on the hunt for Osama" followed by a few trite remarks that don't mean a damned thing without evidence of action on HIS part.

I absolutely agree that it takes more than a nod on the leadership's part, but I doubt that leadership included Obama. I don't see any reason why a President couldn't give a simple nod and actually have underlings do everything. It's not like it hasn't been done in the past in any given position of leadership. Sure, more effective leadership happens when the leadership is actively involved, but it's not impossible to get things done without doing so, either.

When a person has to come out and say "look at what I did" or "this was my plan" there seems to be either an air of insecurity or wanting to claim a bigger part of something else.

I don't know, but that is what it seems like.

And the award for most ridiculous post in the thread goes to Krby. Tell him what he wins, Cak!

You can't be referring to Obama addressing the nation after this went down. There is no way you could be.

Well this just took an interesting turn.

All over North America? I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that one. I do remember seeing scenes of people in the streets -- in Indonesia. But to perpetuate the idea that American muslims, as a group, were in any way celebratory about the terrorist attack is just hatemongering. I don't remember any news about partying Mexican or Canadian muslims either.

Fairly successful troll. You got Leo, Fribur, Givin and Neesha. I award you 5 points.

Troll or not, somethings you just can't let stand unchallenged.

To borrow Fribur's excuse, I'm sure he just meant the 1 or 2 American Muslims who were.

I seriously doubt it was trolling, given his other posts in this thread. Of course, now he'll probably try to save a little face by saying it was.

Not all over America.., but there was in Jersey City, and possibly Michigan as well. For Jersey City it was being shown on local news, I've only read questionable reports about it in Michigan and don't live near there to know first-hand. As far as the sizes of the crowds no where near the size of what was going on elsewhere in the world. Many videos were Palestinians in East Israel and Indonesia.

To be fair... Muslims were outside mosques that same week attempting to raise money to help the families hurt from the attack. As well as five Israelis were arrested following 9/11 who happened to also be dancing.

Look... Joxur's still on my nuts!

I can't remember which US cities I seen ragheads all happy on the news, but I do remember the news with them in Calgary and Toronto, and was disgusted.

4-5 cities spread out is enough for me to say all over North America.

_________________
Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Calling people ragheads doesn't strengthen your argument.... that itself is pretty fucking disgusting...

Page 2: Why the world hates the USA.

_________________

I don't like bigots.

Why would anyone want to label them as Ragheads? ew.

_________________
"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Me neither, Jox. Me neither.

I got lost... or it could be the cold meds

To be fair, Jox, if you read his post honestly, you can clearly see that the "group" he's talking about is very clearly "the people that felt the need to celebrate/party over this", not some larger attribution to "all americans" or "all christians" (which I think is what you took exception to). Or to be more specific, the people he specifically encountered displaying the behavior. He didn't attribute their behavior to the larger group, he expressed disgust with THAT group of people.

_________________

I didn't see freedom mentioned anywhere.

Here is why you are either flat out lying or just plain wrong:

If you were right and muslims in american cities hit the streets partying on 9/11? Every single conservative republican would have used that footage as their argument for legal action against muslims in the US and to strengthen their christian base against muslims.

That didn't happen. And neither did what you claim.

Period.

_________________

Of course this assumes such a thing would have also happened.

I think you've forgotten much of the anti-muslim sentiment in the US for the years after 9/11. What happened was bad enough, can you imagine what would have happened if american muslims had been dancing in the streets? When I say legal action, I don't mean "camps". I just mean that much of what the republicans had tried would probably have succeeded because then they would have had ammo for their fear cannons.

In the end, it is moot. We all know what footage Miramicha is talking about, because we all saw it or heard reference to it. And it wasn't american muslims.

_________________

I remember see Muslims at the Minneapolis Airport Dancing and celebrating, also at coffee shops too. So that did happen, but just because they did it does not make it right that.

_________________
Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Then I think people have myopically forgotten that it was more than one party that contributed to the hysteria. If we're talking post-9/11 I think it's difficult to argue that both parties weren't traveling in lockstep.

What precisely was tried and failed to succeed?

Only one party made their campaign pledge Osama's desire for america to live in fear. The other party just lacked the balls to stop them.




The items I am thinking about that the conservative world tested the waters on was the hub bub over someone being sworn in using the Koran rather than the bible (died, no ultimate traction beyond fringe) and the immediate suspicion anyone "muslim" in public office received as "unamerican" right up to and including Obama (who isn't even a muslim). You're taking my comment about them (the conservative ship steerers) "trying" as "entering a law to be voted on", I am talking about social manipulation. They tested the waters on a lot of "fear" based things to try to drive the country and if they'd had footage or even news of american muslims dancing in celebration, they would have snapped that shit up and run with it.

And from Krby:


Sorry, but I seriously doubt this ever happened. For exactly the reasons I list. Fox News would never have shut up about it if it were true.

_________________

damn, not Krby, but devil. Sorry!

_________________

Well, I suppose that's a predictable way to interpret events. There's a difference between not having the balls to stop something, and standing on the floor of Congress in acceptance of it.

What I think is that if they had been dancing in the streets it's more than just one party that would have taken offense. Do you honestly believe that the only offended parties would have been FoxNews and the Republican party? That's pretty wild.

No, I think only one side of the equation would have run with attributing such a party to all muslims because it was politically in their gamebook and has been all along and despite it failing to work, it is exactly what they tried to do: Promote a fear of muslims. My point is that if such a party of american muslims HAD existed, they would have never shut up about it because it would have been their "ammo" or "proof" that their point was somehow valid and they would have been much more bold in their attempts.

Given how little "truth" they need currently to push an idea (OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST MUSLIM NOT BORN IN THE STATES!!OMG), I'm surprised they failed, to be honest, given the climate right after 9/11. Glad, but surprised.

_________________

Not only that, but the far right conservatives would have shot them dead in the streets in the days following 9/11.

The 5 top states listed for that year (2001) are also traditionally pretty liberal states, of course they also happen to be some of the more populated, Texas and Florida seem to missing off the list however.

Source - http://www.adl.org/Learn/hate_crimes_laws/HCSA_FBI.asp

The data you are ignoring is the muslim poplation numbers for the states:

State Muslim Population
(1,000) Percentage Total Muslim Population Percent of Total State Population
California 1,000 20.0 3.4
New York 800 16.0 4.7
Illinois 420 8.4 3.6
New Jersey 200 4.0 2.5
Indiana 180 3.6 3.2
Michigan 170 3.4 1.8
Virginia 150 3.0 2.4
Texas 140 2.8 0.7
Ohio 130 2.6 1.2
Maryland 70 1.4 1.4

Oh look, the top 5 were the top 5 % of population. How....surprising.

None of this negates what I am saying about the reprehensible way the republican party picked up this particular ball and ran with it, or the fact that if there had been parties of american muslims celebrating 9/11, FOX news and the republican party would have used that fact to "their advantage". Nice try, though.

_________________

No, I was pointing out that some people in liberal states were and are just as likely to commit hate crimes. If we use your simplistic, narrow-minded generalization it's only fair to call them all liberals then, while realistically also being untrue.

It is amusing how "you" run with an idea and call it "fact" for "your advantage". Look in the mirror if you want a good look at a real hate monger.

No problem with this.



And then you go and fuck it all up with this. A "hatemonger". Really? Because he stated that Fox News, a fairly partisan news org (and it is, and I won't exclude the others for their own bias), would have jumped all over the chance to shit on Muslims for a perceived anti-American sentiment? It's much like what Keith Olbermann, and some of the other MSNBC folks, would do while advocating something the Tea Party did. There's really no denying this. It happens on both sides and it's bad for this country.

Party lines fucking suck. It's two shitbags with bad ideas running for school president with one offering ice cream, the other brownies, screaming at each other while the real candidates get no notice because they're faggots with the smart elitist talk no one wants to hear.

When he makes a post that says;



Without ever mentioning Fox, yes, I stand by my claim.

being charged with a hate crime is subject to interpretation (hate crimes for the most part (dare I say always) are charged when a Caucasian does something to a different race, however when a different race does something to a Caucasian they are never changed with a hate crime).

Tuluvian, calling somebody a name is not a hate monger, that is freedom of speech, it may be rude and it may be offensive to some, but never the less it is nothing more then a word, making a big deal about that word gives it more power then it deserves. If you don't like it shrug your shoulders and walk away.

_________________
Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

and otherwise I completely agree with your statement

I think the context for hyperbole comes into play here. And I'm actually (technically speaking I suppose) one of those he's referring to. Despite the hyperbole, some of his point was valid.

Tuluvian:



The context makes it pretty apparent I was talking about politicians, not "every single republican in the United States". Perhaps you have missed the lock step dance of the republicans in this generation? Had such a video as claimed existed actually existed, those politicians would have gotten their memos and proceeded forward with their orders while Fox News pundits pounded the point home every day while showing the video over and over and over. Which is why I know such a video does not exist.

Simple enough? You don't have to like the fact that 2+2 = 4, but you can't change it.

_________________

Jesus, let it go already.

I know, just look at them legislating to ban profiled Muslims from riding trains... oh wait.

Sarissa, what exactly is it that you think I've said that is wrong? I don't even have to try very hard to find examples of what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ketron
In February 2011, Ketron and State Representative Judd Matheny introduced a bill that would make it illegal to follow Sharia law. Charles Haynes, a senior scholar of the First Amendment Center, criticized the law as unnecessary, discriminatory, and misguided.[11]



"Sharia Law" is an easy target for them right now, so they take the political pot shots at it, even thought it is a total non-issue and that's 10 years AFTER 9/11. Do you remember the climate right after 9/11? What do you think people like this would have done had american muslims been partying up after the towers collapsed? And in case you harbor any misconceptions about my impression of the dems... given how little backbone the dems showed during that time window... I find myself disgustedly believing that they would have found a way to justify it themselves. But republicans have led the charge on this one from the very beginning, with FoxNews saying the things they "can't" say, but want said.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable in what I think would have happened if such video existed, given what they did do and are still trying to do without it.

Gays are "out" this year (badump bump CHING!)....Islamophobia will be a big vote catcher for the Republicans in this election, because their entire model for years now is fear based and they've had it simmering/setting up with the "OBAMA IS A MUSLIM OMG THEY ARE TAKING OVER" stuff for years now. Perhaps I'm a little more sensitive to this than most..I've spent most of my life being a political football of the republican party. I know how it feels. Now that they've lost public support for us as enemy #1, they've stepped up Islam as the new target and I just got angry when I saw the "ragheads were dancing in america" lie. :p

_________________

Well, an interesting development within the Hasidic Jewish community may cause the Republicans to think twice before using Sharia law as their new "OMGZORS WE HAVE TO STOP THE LIBERALS FROM GIVING THE COUNTRY AWAY!" issue: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/for ... _blog.html.

A Hasidic newspaper editted out Hilary Clinton & Audrey Tomason from the photo of the situation room during the raid, citing 'modesty laws'. Given the power of the Jewish vote in our election process any attempt to push the panic button on sharia law might have more widespread reactions.

Is it time to outlaw organized religion and religion-based laws yet? please?

Can't outlaw organized religion, because that would be out right unconstitutional.

However religion-based laws, should have been removed a long time ago, you know separation of church and state

_________________
Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Outlaw organized religion - No

religion based laws - Yes, please.