 |
| No game, L to R: Biden, Obama, Clinton, Gates |
Update: {7.5.11} Alexander Cockburn reporting at Firstpost says the picture at right is phony. US Person has relied on Cockburn's reporting in the past because of his apparent dedication to ferreting out the truth, but Cockburn is no admirer of the Obamatron. Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA said, according to Cockburn's version, the real time video link failed before the SEALs got into the compound. Who to believe, given Obamatron's refusal to publicly confirm the death of OBL with a picture, and the changing details of the raid itself?* After all, releasing a post mortem picture of the wanted man is a practice that has a time honored tradition in this country. (See, Dilinger, Parker & Barrow, the Daltons, the McLaurys, Che Guevara, Uday & Qusay Hussein etc.). Reports are Navy medical technicians cleaned the body of OBL before committing it to the Arabian Sea. Surely, a discreet photograph of the cleaned up body in the Vinson's sick bay could be shown just to keep the historical record strait. Cockburn also says that Obama--whose eyes are also unwavering from the 2012 election--is "burying himself in a volcano of lies" about the raid. The British reporter who lives in the US says, based on information contained in Wikileaks cables, the fortified compound that housed OBL and his family was known to US intelligence since 2005. Uploading of unredacted cables by Wikileaks may have prompted the Obamatron to finally act as his reelection campaign gets underway and before Al Qaeda discovered their icon's location was known to US intelligence. If the picture above is staged, it makes the assembled audience look pretty good at dissimulation (perhaps the Secretary of State is only stifling a yawn). But after all, they are Washington politicians. Apologies to PNG readers IF Cockburn is correct.
*a critical detail subjected to revision is whether an unarmed OBL was shot dead on sight, or shot while attempting to resist capture. The rules of war prohibit the summary execution of a captured combatant. During the raid, the SEALs lost a top secret stealth Blackhawk to overheating. The helicopter had to be blown up by Team Six. In this video from ABC, neighborhood children can be seen collecting pieces of the secret fabric used to obscure radar signals. The stealth helicopter may explain why residents did not hear the approach of the aircraft which is normally loud, and why the Pakistani military did not see the aircraft on radar. There are also indications the US commandos used an electromagnetic pulse device that temporarily disrupted electrical and signals service during the raid. Ordinary Blackhawks have a fully equipped troop capacity of 11. If one was destroyed on the ground logic dictates at least 3 choppers--one apparently a larger Chinook--were used in the raid in order to extract 25 commandos, their bomb sniffing dog, captured intelligence, and the body of OBL.
{5.3.11}A surreal, even gruesome detail has emerged from the continuing media coverage of the US special forces operation to kill Osama Bin Laden: the Obamatron and his advisors watched a live military satellite feed of the terrorist leader's execution in his bedroom, half a world away [photo]. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, can be seen gasping at the moment of death in a photograph of the official audience viewing a monitor. The President's grim intensity and the satisfaction of Secretary of Defense Gates are particularly evident. One of the members of secret SEAL Team Six acting under direct presidential order was wearing a helmet equipped with a mini cam. A SEAL commando shot Bin Laden in the eye as he reportedly tried to resist, and then he was shot again in the chest. The code word, "Geronimo" was spoken to indicate the world's most wanted terrorist was at last a casualty of modern warfare.{"Geronimo}