Post: #1

This came out a few days ago.

The most respected journalist in America says that Obama lied about the exact circumstances of Bin Laden's death. And the media are too craven to challenge him.

Quote:Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-b...ican-media

Would be interesting to know more about what details Seymour Hersh thinks are incorrect. He has a book coming out which has a chapter on it - so I will look into it then.

Post: #2

Bin Laden died a long time ago. Likely in the Tora Bora mountains - he suffered from kidney disease and Marfan's sundrome.

-no access to dialysis.

The whole "Seal Team Six" - narrative is a lie.

hence, the "secret" burial at sea and the convenient fact that the Seal team that did the mission died a week or two later on a mission -

the helicopter exploded/crashed.

Post: #3

Yeah - my understanding is that Seymour Hersh doesn't go as far as that. But I think he is of the belief that if we saw photos of Bin Laden's corpse there would be evidence that the way he died is inconsistent with the facts given by Obama.

As for the Seal Team Six - have you got any sources that they died? I am sure that would have been a massive story in its own right. So I am very curious about that claim.

Post: #4

Heard on the radio an hour ago that Seal Team Six were involved in a raid yesterday to capture one of the Al-Shabab leaders responsible for the recent attacks in Kenya.

I do recall something about a helicopter crash- if memory serves it was not the whole team.

Post: #5

http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/seal-team-6-f...govt-grow/

Post: #6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinoo...fghanistan

Quote:Of the Navy SEALs that were killed 15 were members of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), also known as SEAL Team Six. This unit is also known for having carried out the Operation Neptune Spear, which resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden; however, none of the SEALs killed participated in the operation.

I remember that attack. But quickly forgot about it - I never knew until now that it was Seal Team 6 which was attacked. Remarkable.

Post: #7

I am amazed this didn't become a bigger issue. This is an issue which should have blown up bigger than Watergate.

Quote:After the leaking of their identity by Biden, members of SEAL Team 6 became concerned for their safety and the safety of their family members.

Aaron Vaughn, a member of the team who would eventually be killed on that Aug. 6, warned his mother to delete every reference to SEAL Team 6 from her Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“I never heard Aaron this concerned and worried in his entire life,” Mrs. Vaughn said in an interview. “He called me and said, ‘Mom, you and Dad have to take everything down. Biden has just put a huge target on everybody.’”

Charles Strange said his son Michael, a Special Forces serviceman with the unit, also had premonitions about his impending death after Biden’s leak of their identity.

“Michael was home in June, and he talked to us, saying he was worried and felt he needed to update his will,” Strange said. “My son already had a will that was filled out long before this, so why would he suddenly bring it up again? It was almost as if he knew something was going to happen to him. They labeled those men; the question is, why did they do it?”

Several circumstances surrounding the crash also have raised disturbing questions for the family members.

Among their questions are why seven Afghan commandos on the flight suddenly were replaced just before takeoff. The seven individuals, who also died in the attack, are not listed in the flight manifest. This has caused some of the family members to speculate that they may have been suicide bombers or may have tipped off the Taliban.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/seal-team-6-f...govt-grow/

Post: #8

Why hasn't any of the major news organisations run with this story?

Post: #9

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the reason why the Obama Admin was so eager to provide "details" to Bigelow for her Zero Dark Thirty film.

Instill it into the mainstream that what happened in the film was the entire truth.

I still liked the movie though

Post: #10

Cardguy,

The website you linked to is WorldNetDaily, which is kind of the tabloid magazine of new organizations. They are the ones who raised a huge stink about Obama not being an American citizen, and being a Muslim.

So, I tend to discard most of what they say. There are far better places to get news from.

Post: #11

The Washington Times have repeated the exact same story as well:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013...al-team-6/

Post: #12

I'm going to stay cynical and point out that Hersh is about to release a book. His sudden interest in "the truth" is likely not coincidental.

Post: #13

Somalians are no joke. They have a well-known reputation in the Horn of Africa and even in their diaspora communities (London, Minneapolis, etc) as being extremely tough people. They have some of the most hardened and intractable warriors on the planet. There's really no parallel. Even Afghans, who also have been great warriors historically, have been managed under the rule of the Taliban. Somalia has been a failed state forever with many warring clans competing for power and control and unable to form a viable state.

As sick as Seal Team Six is, I doubt any operation will successfully root out terrorism from Somalia, even if they somehow kill a top leader which is far from easy.

Looks like yesterday's mission in Somalia was unsuccessful. Good thing the Seals made it out alive.

The US used Ethiopia's army as a proxy to root out Al-Shabbab a few years ago but that, too, was unsuccessful.

Post: #14

^I think the US military strategy for fleshing out terrorism is vastly different now a days then it was back in '93 - "Black Hawk Down". If the full weight of the US military was brought to bore against the clans in Somalia, I think the operation would be successful - but only in the interim. To fix Somalia requires so much more than kicking down a few doors and killing a few leaders.

The people in Somalia are stuck in the Dark Ages, and I'm not just talking about the technology there. The populace is so incredibly uneducated, and the local culture is ass backwards. For example, genital mutilation is still a routine practice over there. I believe its close to 90% of the girls there undergo the process when they are about 8 years old. When you are dealing with people like that, its easier to write them off then to try and change anything.

Post: #15

(10-06-2013 01:22 PM)MHaes Wrote:  ^I think the US military strategy for fleshing out terrorism is vastly different now a days then it was back in '93 - "Black Hawk Down". If the full weight of the US military was brought to bore against the clans in Somalia, I think the operation would be successful - but only in the interim. To fix Somalia requires so much more than kicking down a few doors and killing a few leaders.

I don't think a conventional military operation would really do much good in Somalia. The people just have a mentality of resistance to being ruled over by anyone.

The Ethiopian invasion was a good test. Contrary to what one may assume, Ethiopia has a pretty disciplined army. It's the largest in Africa and heavily funded and supported by the US. Their forces had pretty sophisticated weaponry (even drones) when they invaded Somalia but they still couldn't root out Al-Shabbab. There were even US military advisers on the ground providing tactical expertise.

There is somewhat of a viable state right now under Somalia's new president. Some foreigners are pumping up his government with millions of dollars in new investment. But consider Somaliland in the north which is an autonomously ruled state that does not consider itself part of Somalia (Ethiopia is the only country that even recognizes it). They want no part in Somalia's future.

The US has tried many different ideas to bringing order to Somalia but nothing has worked. There was also a covert Seals operation just a few years ago that didn't result in any sort of progress.

Post: #16

kdolo Wrote:and the convenient fact that the Seal team that did the mission died a week or two later on a mission -

the helicopter exploded/crashed.

Wow, that is really shocking. I had no idea this had happened. Holy fuck.

http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/05/30/w...al-of-all/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/...6-members/

This news being so little reported really does smell like a conspiracy theory. However, I have found no flaws with this explanation:

Quote:http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread917873/pg1
Red Squadron= Operation Neptune Spear May 1 2011

Gold Squadron = Chinook helicopter crash August 6 2011 (15 DEVGRU dead)

So different Squadrons different guys none of the men that took part in the raid to kill Bin Laden were on that helicopter. In other words the government didn’t kill those men on the helicopter to cover up anything relating to operation Neptune Spear because the guys on that helicopter had nothing to do with the raid that killed Bin Laden.

If this isn’t enough for you then I would also like to point out that there is no literature that supports the idea that any of the men on that helicopter took part in the Bin Laden raid and they all headed back to the states shortly afterword’s so where not even in Afghanistan when the operation took part also although 22 members of NSW where on that helicopter only 15 were members of DEVGRU so why did they not kill the other 9 members who took part in the Bin Laden raid, not to mention the pilots of the helicopters, the CIA operatives and the support staff.

Post: #17

Apparently there is some new info about the raid and how he was tracked by the CIA was inaccurate. So it wasn't some amazing super power female CIA analyst like in Zero Dark Thirty.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakist...es-n357306

Pakistanis Knew Where Bin Laden Was, Say US Sources

Quote:Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a "walk in" asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding - and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency's operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin Laden's presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

While NBC News has long been pursuing leads about a "walk in" and about what Pakistani intelligence knew, both assertions were made public in a London Review of Books article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Hersh's story, published over the weekend, raises numerous questions about the White House account of the SEAL operation. It has been strongly disputed both on and off the record by the Obama administration and current and former national security officials.

The Hersh story says that the "walk in," a Pakistani intelligence official, contacted U.S. authorities in 2010, that elements of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, knew of bin Laden's whereabouts, and that the U.S. told the Pakistanis about the bin Laden raid before it launched. The U.S. has maintained that it did not tell the Pakistani government about the raid before it launched.

On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren called Hersh's piece "largely a fabrication" and said there were "too many inaccuracies" to detail each one. Col Warren said the raid to kill bin Laden was a "unilateral action." Both the National Security Council and the Pentagon denied that Pakistan had played any role in the raid.

Pakistani media personnel and local residents gather outside the hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan after the U.S. raid that killed him.

"The notion that the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden was anything but a unilateral U.S. mission is patently false," said NSC spokesman Ned Price. "As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior U.S. officials."

The administration's responses do not address the specific allegations in the Hersh article, including the existence of the "walk in" asset.

Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, dismissed Hersh's account. "I simply have never heard of anything like this and I've been briefed several times," said McCain, R.-Arizona. "This was a great success on the part of the administration and something that we all admire the president's decision to do. "

The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence official became a "walk in" asset include the special operations officer and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI's awareness, saying twice, "They knew."

Another top official acknowledged to NBC News that the U.S. government had long harbored "deep suspicions" that ISI and al Qaeda were "cooperating." And a book by former acting CIA director Mike Morrell that will be published tomorrow says that U.S. officials could not dismiss the possibility of such cooperation.

None of the sources characterized how high up in ISI the knowledge might have gone. Said one former senior official, "We were suspicious that someone inside ISI … knew where bin Laden was, but we did not have intelligence about specific individuals having specific knowledge."

Multiple U.S. officials, however, denied or cast doubt on the assertion that the U.S. told the Pakistanis about the bin Laden raid ahead of time.

Post: #18

This story is sourced to a single, anonymous source on the US side, which is really weak. He has a few other sources on the Pakistani side, but their accounts are very self-serving.

Remember, two SEALS have published first-hand memoirs on the raid and their versions more-or-less corraborate this adminstration's account of the raid. They don't mention any Pakistani involvement. The detail that the back-up Chinooks landed at a Pakistani military base or that they faced no armed resistance are particularly refuted by their accounts.

Post: #19

There was a big reward on Bin Lden's head. to admit at all there was a Pakistani source would greatly endanger every relative of the person that thankfully ratted the piece of shit out.

IF there was a local source, the US had the obligation in my opinion to form a cover story for that person so they could enjoy their riskily earned reward money.

It was bad enough he survived years after 9/11; anyone who fucks with any country like he did with us has to die for the country to have any semblance of military credibility.

Post: #20

Sources are not exactly strong, but Seymour Hersh is certainly known and respected. Interesting.

Post: #21

Just one of thousands of people who believe its a lie.... Just because he is an "investigative" journalist he thinks that the world will believe him.

Why would he even publish an article with this "evidence"?!

Post: #22

(05-12-2015 03:23 AM)spalex Wrote:  Just one of thousands of people who believe its a lie.... Just because he is an "investigative" journalist he thinks that the world will believe him.

Why would he even publish an article with this "evidence"?!

He works for New Yorker magazine, but apparently his own magazine declined to publish it, forcing him to shop around for another publication. I don't think this article is going to do his career much good.

Post: #23

Guys come on you really think the ISI, DIDN'T know where Bin Laden was ?

He was in the heart of Pakistan's military establishment and retirement center.

Even if the US caught Pakistan red handed harboring Bin Laden, they would still work together to form a cover story.

Post: #24

(05-12-2015 11:10 AM)kaotic Wrote:  Guys come on you really think the ISI, DIDN'T know where Bin Laden was ?

He was in the heart of Pakistan's military establishment and retirement center.

Even if the US caught Pakistan red handed harboring Bin Laden, they would still work together to form a cover story.

Some people knew where he was. Watch this video from 2008 where Christiane Amanapour said that a woman in American intelligence told her he was living in a villa:





Here’s some background about where Amanpour got the info:

How Amanpour knew where Osama bin Laden was

Post: #25

I saw a video online somewhere where Benazir (spelling?) Bhutto was saying that Bin Laden was killed in 2001.

The fact that they didn't release a gory picture of Bin Laden's body is more than enough proof for me. I've seen a ton of photographs of the Boston Bomber's shot up body and the brother beaten to a pulp.

I don't trust anything out of the government.