Obama to speak at 10:45 EST

[lisarea]

Conservative Blog Creatures Accuse Obama of Destroying Ground Zero Flag

As we all know, Obama was not allowed to go to the part of New York where Ground Zero is until this week because he was “controversial.” But Obama was legally able to look at photos of Ground Zero, and once he saw there was a giant American flag there, he got angry and decided it had to come down. So Obama dug out bin Laden from where George W. Bush carefully packed him in a pile of Flintstones Push-Up Pops at the back of the White House freezer a decade ago, presented the corpse as new, and was given an all-access pass to Ground Zero. Once the magical gates opened to the terrorist attack wonderland, Obama made a beeline to the flag, ripped it down, and left, pushing crying 9/11 victim families out of the way, his objective finally accomplished.

And that’s our week in review of how conservatives managed to avoid their emotions for the man who is now empirically their greatest hero, President Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

wife-homicide by boat propeller blades.

You have an interesting life.

[Watser?]

Apparently the death of OBL is having an impact in Afghanistan:

There is evidence of a collapse of morale from Afghanistan. Pajhwok News Agency is reporting that in the wake of the death of Usama bin Laden at the hands of US Navy SEALs, Taliban guerrillas in the northeastern Afghan province of Qunduz are fleeing the province.

It appears that the Taliban were still linked to, and perhaps taking direction from, al-Qaeda, more than most analysts had suspected. It also appears that Bin Laden had more of an operational, strategizing role than we had thought.

If it is true that radicals are fleeing Qunduz, and indeed other provinces as well, and heading for safe havens in places like North Waziristan in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, it is likely primarily because they had direct contact with Usama Bin Laden and now fear that information about them is in American hands, since the SEALS captured his hard drives and thumb drives.

Taliban, al-Qaeda Flee N. Afghanistan as Morale Collapses with al-Qaeda admission of Bin Laden's Death | Informed Comment

[Watser?]

In other news:

Never to be outdone, Schlussel first argues that it’s no big deal, then calls for the mass murder of 1.8 billion Muslims.


Um, like, wow. It’s not often that someone of the Jewish faith calls for pogroms or a different sort of Holocaust altogether. Sounds like Schlussel is ready to fire up the ovens herself.

Debbie Schlussel Calls for Mass Slaughter of 1.8 Billion Muslims | loonwatch.com

[Qingdai]

Gawd, for a minute I was worried that D. Schlussel was in government or something, but she's just a hack.
I've never heard of her before.

[Watser?]

Yeah, she just a crazy as fuck pro-Israel blogger. But keep this in mind the next time that lot starts talking crap about how Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians have an inherently violent culture or some such crap.

[Stephen Maturin]

Seymour Hersch has written, and the London Review of Books has published, a lengthy article designed to show that the official story regarding the death of bin Laden is stuffed to the gills with bullshit. The article begins:

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election.

I was a big fan of Hersch and his repeated calling-out of the Bush administration's outright lies in the wake of 9/11. I practically stood up and cheered when co-architect of the neocon war in Iraq/grandstanding candy-ass Richard Perle called Hersch the journalistic equivalent of a terrorist and threatened to sue Hersch for libel (in England - lol libel tourism). However, I don't know how much deeper I want to delve into this latest article when the SECOND GODDAMN SENTENCE features not just one but two massive, steaming, exceptionally malodorous turds of falsehood.

First, the bin Laden thing wasn't even arguably "the high point of Obama's first term." That moniker belongs to passage of the Affordable Care Act. Say what you will about ACA (socialist government takeover of the entire health care system, sissified compromise that should have been a socialist takeover of the entire health care system, and all points in between), but for decades absolutely everyone believed that no form of federal health care access reform of any kind was even remotely possible. Sheparding that thing through Congress was a massively big deal.

Second, did ANYONE vote for a second Obama term because he got bin Laden? I know exactly no one for whom that was any factor at all, much less a "major factor." I voted for Obama because Rmoney was a roaring sociopath who was utterly consumed with outright contempt for almost every American.

So yeah. I've barely scratched the surface of Sy's latest article. Given that ghastly second sentence. I probably won't.

[chunksmediocrites]

Seymour Hersch's writing aside, the story itself and the reaction to it are worth mention.
Key revisions and arguments of his article:
-Osama bin Laden was basically a prisoner of the Pakistani ISI for years.
-Saudi Arabia was footing the bill for his detainment and medical care.
-The US only learned of this from a walk-in to a US embassy- i.e. not through CIA intelligence work and finding/ interrogating the courier.
-The Pakistani government/ ISI was informed ahead of time regarding the raid.
-There was no fire-fight; the Seal Team simply executed bin Laden.
-Because pilot error resulted in one of the helicopters being crippled and grounded (and subsequently blown up by the US at site to avoid leaving useful tech, gear, etc. behind), the agreed-upon story with the Pakistanis- that a week later the US would claim they had performed a drone strike in a mountain range, and then had determined through DNA examination that one of the killed targets was bin Laden- was scrapped by the US for a new narrative about a daring raid under the noses of the unaware Pakistan military.
-bin Laden was not buried at sea, but rather dismembered and the pieces tossed out from the helicopter while in transit.
Hersch is interviewed/grilled by Bob Garfield at On the Media.

One argument against Hersch is that his story is poorly sourced- it relies almost entirely on one identified source and one anonymous source. Hersch responds that this doesn't therefore mean his story is false- he also points to his previous investigative reporting and says My Lai, etc. was as thinly sourced.

It is worth questioning the idea that Osama bin Laden would be living so close to a number of Pakistani military sites and the Pakistan government or ISI was supposedly unaware.

Journalist Carlotta Gall also reported in the NYT that she also had been told by a source of the walk-in to a US embassy who had given the US the location of Osama bin Laden in return for the $25 million reward.