Osama bin Laden (OBL) is dead and gone. Time has passed and some people still care about what happened and the events that led up to his death. Seymour M. Hersh gets closer to the truth than the other accounts that I am aware of. No, he didn’t shoot bin Laden personally, but that’s not the whole story. In fact, that’s the smaller part of a very large story. Hindsight helps you do that. There were bits and pieces in motion and a lot of it was not information that nation-states such as Pakistan and the United States was willing to chat about.
The review of the book lays out the essential tenants and is worth reading even if you never buy the book.
I realize that there are people in USGOV who will take some issue with Mr. Hersh’s perspective, and it’s their right. There are always different perspectives. The book is clearly not pro-American. Hersh has options that clash with mine when it comes to the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques. He thinks that the Obama overtures to Iran are noble. I think that since Iran likely has two or three nuclear weapons in their inventory that the premise is deceptive in the extreme. Sure, we don’t want them to build more – but we don’t talk about what they have. Do we? Hersh writes about the “secret prisons”, or black sites, and cites Diego Garcia (leased from the UK). There may be one there now. I don’t know, but there wasn’t one when Obama took office…
Still, the book is worth the read.
The Killing of Osama bin Laden, by Seymour M. Hersh
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. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.
And the truth lies somewhere in between all the rhetoric, as we know… I've got to side with you on most of it. DG a black site??? YGTBSM!
The Government lied? What? I'm confused.
I think that Hersh is throwing spaghetti against the wall when it comes to DG. It was not a black site during the Bush Administration.
As to the rest of the story, sometimes it comes down to semantics. I mean that fairly, too. The problem with the ObamaNaiton is that it takes SO many liberties with the truth so much of the time, that I have difficulty believing anything that they come out with.
You need to go to the White House and perform an exorcism…now.
There is really nothing that comes out of the White House that has any credibility whatsoever. Have they told us the truth about ANYTHING yet?
No. Which does make them predictable (looking for the bright side).
Gone is Osama ben Redux. Not missed.
I don't know where they dumped the carcass. Don't care.
Good advice. I'm thinking multiple exorcisms. It's a deep-seated demon.
Pitch a tent in the Rose Garden, bring a camp stove and a sleeping bag. You're going to be there for a while.
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