What Do We Really Know About Osama Bin Laden’s Death?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?_r=0

by kareemm • 11 years ago

135 111 11 years ago

danso• 11 years ago

Sorry to derail the discussion but a possible word of warning: whatever is going on in the OP's page and code, it's causing the tab Safari on my iPad (Air 2) to completely freeze. Not bad enough that I have to do a hard reboot, but enough that the entire page is completely unresponsive. This is the first time this is happened to me on a NYT story page.

jzwinck• 11 years ago

Same thing in Google Chrome on Android. I can only scroll until the page finishes loading (ads?), then the font size gets rather large, a menu bar appears at the top of the page, and it can no longer scroll. Like you I have never seen this before on NYT.

mirceal• 11 years ago

by the time you guys figure out what's going on, you're going to be left with a broken blown-up black hawk in your browser tab

ern3• 11 years ago

Same thing happened on Safari on my iPad 2. Putting the page into reading mode solved the problem.

api• 11 years ago

It sounds like what really happened was that Pakistan (or elements therein) was protecting him, sold him out (or someone did for money), and the US just went in and mopped him up... and then sexed up the story to help re-elect Obama and probably to cover for the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program.

I suppose it's also possible that there is some alternative narrative that's being covered up, such as the CIA actually keeping him alive (or telling Pakistan to do so) as "bait" to catch other members of his network or for some sort of propaganda or psyops purpose. Maybe we'll know in 25 years.

Patient0• 11 years ago

I don't find his cover up story at all credible - Pakistan knew where Bin Laden was the whole time and kept it a secret from the U.S.? For what possible gain?

nly• 11 years ago

In case they needed a trump card to make nice?

CDRdude• 11 years ago

There has been a good amount of U.S. aid money going to Pakistan since the war on terror. Pakistan would have the incentive to prolong the war on terror, may have reasoned that a living Bin Laden was a cash cow.

RaleyField• 11 years ago

Or could risk total embargo from every NATO country and every country that can be coerced to enforce embargo. They could find themselves in situation way worse than that of North Korea.

hugh4• 11 years ago

The same possible gain that motivates people to blow themselves up and crash planes into buildings and burn churches and synagogues.

That is, no possible gain that a rational person would understand. But Islam is not a rational memeplex.

dang• 11 years ago

Please don't start religious flamewars on HN.

nyolfen• 11 years ago

an ace in the hole, as well as a lot of saudi money (as reported by hersh)

toyg• 11 years ago

Pakistani rulers play on different tables, not unlike the Saudis (and the US). They used Islamic extremists in Kashmir and in Afghanistan to pursue their own goals, so they wouldn't just drop them like a hat the day the US came knocking. There is ample literature on the mutual distrust between US and Pakistani security services during the "war on terror".

In many ways, Pakistan is like Saudi Arabia or Turkey: countries the US cannot afford not to be allies, but with very different strategic interests, often conflicting with US ones. I don't find at all strange that they might have harbored Osama all along, just as another bit of leverage in the eternal game of foreign policy.

littletimmy3• 11 years ago

I don't think you quite understanding how institutionalized statecraft works. Think of it in this way "Pakistan knew where OBL was and told the US - for what gain?"

vidoc4• 11 years ago

The official accounts of its killing strongly reminded me of the way the 'link' between 9/11 and Al Qaeda was made.

The passport found by a cop, a few days later near ground zero :P

vidoc4• 11 years ago

for the downvoter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satam_al-Suqami#Passport_disco...

meowface• 11 years ago

It wasn't a cop who found it.

Suqami's passport was found by a passerby (identity unknown), reportedly in the vicinity of Vesey Street, before the towers collapsed.

scintill76• 11 years ago

The discovery: " This is the passport of Satam al Suqami. A passerby picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed."

... Two of the passports that have survived, those of Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari, were clearly doctored. To avoid getting into classified detail, we will just state that these [passports] were manipulated in a fraudulent manner in ways that have been associated with al Qaeda. ...

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing7/9-11Comm...

Surrounding statements seem to contradict that, such as "And yet between 1992 and September 11th, 2001 we have not found any signs that intelligence, law enforcement or border inspection services sought to acquire, develop or disseminate systematic information about al Qaeda's or other terrorist groups travel and passport practices." How did they know the manipulations were al Qaeda's if nobody had been tracking their techniques for years? I guess it can be squared by presuming they cataloged some information post-9/11 (possibly including "training manuals recovered in the mid 1990s") that had been available before but not closely examined. I wonder if the determination of what al Qaeda passport techniques look like was a bit circularly-defined or sloppy, since they had little information to start with and concluded the investigation quickly.

pvg• 11 years ago

The link between Al Qaeda and 9/11 is an actual link, not a 'link' nor was it made solely or even primarily on the basis of the passport. If the passport hadn't been found, we'd still know who was responsible for the attack.

vidoc4• 11 years ago

That's right, the actual link - Understand proof, evidence: was the Jalalabad tape.

Hint: if you do understand arabic, just compare what you hear to the translation spread in the western medias ;)

suprgeek• 11 years ago

So we are supposed to believe that:

1) There are super secret helicopters that allowed the US Seals to fly over Pakistan to Abbotabad (which is nearer to India than to Afghanistan) without the Pakistani military which is always paranoid about Indian aircraft/drones knowing about it.

2) Despite one of the Helicopters CRASHING & BURNING and some guy Tweeting about it, there was no police, no military response in Abbotabad, a Garrison City where you literally cannot throw a rock and not hit a Military person

3) The US Seals faced no resistance while entering the compound, and OBL had no guards on the perimeter

4) No single image of OBL's body is in the public domain

5) the Seals flew out to Abbotabad, were on the scene for an hour, flew back (about ~3 hours) of elapsed time - never once were the Pakistani's any wiser? No military, no police no official response?

These are only some of the major flaws but if you think about this for sometime the whole thing totally strains belief.

Maybe Seymor Hersh's tale is not the truth but the official version is certainly pure fantasy.

res0nat0r2• 11 years ago

Most of your bullet points as you've described didn't actually happen they way you've outlined. The only thing listed remotely accurate is that there is no official picture of OBL dead with a bullet in his head, and it has been purposefully kept that way to keep it from being used as further propaganda.

mcantelon• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what propaganda value there is in noone knowing if the US actually killed Bin Laden.

Benazir Bhutto said, a month before she was assassinated, that Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2001 by Omar Sheikh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MBTd5QNGB0

revelation• 11 years ago

There was an actual person there live-tweeting the thing.

Of course pakistan knew perfectly well.

unclebucknasty3• 11 years ago

Not really sure why so many accept that explanation at face value. The biggest single victory in the so-called WoT and it is handled with a quick, quiet, burial at sea with absolutely no evidence because, what, a photo would make terrorists even angrier?

No third-party corroboration. No photos. Nothing but a story.

That is supremely ridiculous.

cmdkeen3• 11 years ago

1. If Pakistan is paranoid about India then it will have concentrated its air defences facing India, not Afghanistan. The USA also has the resources to know the location of Pakistani radar sites and thus plan routes to avoid them. 1&2. Just because it is a garrison city, and if the Pakistani air defence noticed, this is not going to be a situation in the playbook. The local watch officer doesn't have a set of standing orders to deal with this, which means people need waking up. A full on invasion has plans and procedures, two helicopters don't constitute that and there will be rules of engagement etc. Especially in a country with a history of military coups you don't delegate to local forces the sort of decision making process to go and deal with a situation like this. Plus the state within a state aspect of ISI cuts both ways, the local army's reaction can also be explained as "I want nothing to do with whatever secret stuff is happening over there".

3. I can absolutely believe that. Guards attract attention and are a massive risk in terms of extra low level people having information that they may accidentally leak. He was the most wanted man in the world, how would guards have helped? He was facing nation states not gangs. He survived all those years because he kept a low profile with a tiny number of people knowing his location.

4. Why would it be released? It isn't like anyone is claiming he is still alive.

5. See 1. But also bear in mind that many of the options available to Pakistan would have had severe repercussions. If they knew (or heavily suspected) it was a US raid then they were hardly going to shoot it down. It could have taken a decent amount of time just to run down the "are you sure this isn't us?" line, proving a negative takes time. Once the information necessary to make a decision was received it is entirely possible someone senior made the deliberate call to be deescalatory and deal with the situation diplomatically - which is arguably the right call. As for the police why would they interfere in what is clearly (someone's) military operation, something which is likely to be a career or life ending move.

You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

tptacek• 11 years ago

There is also the real risk/reward involved. Pakistan is an ally, is dependent on the US for aid, and even if it wasn't, absolutely cannot afford a military confrontation with the US.

So, game it out: if the mission fails, and the SEALs are stranded in Abbotabad, then what happens? Probably nothing, other than some embarrassment for the administration. The SEALs could probably fly back commercial if they had to.

This isn't a midnight raid into North Korea we're talking about.

Tloewald3• 11 years ago

I see you conspicuously do not address point 2 (which, by the way, is also buttressed by eyewitness testimony that Pakistani plain-clothes security showed up before the raid and told people to keep clear, etc.)

Your suggestion that all the radar was merely pointed in the wrong direction is ridiculous.

"You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence"

But this is specifically addressed in the article. The Pakistanis frequently explain inconvenient facts as incompetence.

dennisgorelik6• 11 years ago

Why would it be released? It isn't like anyone is claiming he is still alive.

I'm claiming that Bin Laden may still be alive.

Or, quite the opposite, he might have been killed long time ago.

Without body, Obama's claims about Navy Seals killing Osama Bin Laden in 2011 are unsubstantiated.

Theodores• 11 years ago

It isn't the near universal belief in the government's version of the OBL saga that concerns me. What I find more worrying is that the moral framework is believed in. In former times we had things like 'innocent until proven guilty' - a moral code. Then some office blocks get brought down by some crazy civilians on some civilian airliners in a couple of the larger U.S. cities and then, as if by magic, quaint ideas like 'innocent until proven guilty' get to be completely forgotten. Recently some Labour politician was 'lynched' by the media for suggesting that OBL deserved a fair trial. A fair trial - e.g. court of law rather than government assassination - should be de-facto, yet it isn't, and anyone who steps out of line with that might as well write 'terrorist' on their forehead.

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

That was the real effect of 9/11 attacks, and this is the goal of actual terrorism. The Two Towers were only a tool, the death toll was so small it doesn't really matter. The US gets several WTC worth of deaths anually in traffic accidents alone.

What the 9/11 attack did is damage the core of Western principles and send the entire population of US into state of paranoia. The massive overreaction of US killed orders of magnitude more people than died in the attack and it is us, not terrorists, who are danger to our own freedoms.

hackinthebochs• 11 years ago

Innocent until proven guilty is for accused citizens acting and bound by an existing legal framework. It does't extend to anyone who may pick up arms against you. You don't set up a trial for every enemy soldier on the battlefield just to make sure he's really the one that shot your comrade and tried to shoot you; you kill them first. Assassinations against military leaders engaged in active war is an extension in time and space of this concept.

BURIEDatSEA2• 11 years ago

Don't forget the cuckoo clock perpetually parroting the line:

  > ...bin Laden’s burial at sea 
    (carried out in accordance with "Islamic custom"!)

Yes! Yes! Of course! Naval traditions are the first thing that springs to mind, about a religion born of a region mostly known for its deserts, and not very much at all for naval conquest.

But go ahead, someone correct me, with some obscure technicality about the ways of Islam and The Sea. What do I know, land lubber that I am?

chobo• 11 years ago

The most populous Islamic nation on earth is a massive archipelago, land lubber.

gaius• 11 years ago

Muslims have been sailing the Red Sea and the Mediterranean for a loooooooong time.

bahmboo• 11 years ago

We actually know quite a bit, author of book on the subject defending his account against Hersh's:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden...

tylerkahn• 11 years ago

Can anyone explain what is meant by this:

During the Iraq war, reporters informed us that a mob of jubilant Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Never mind that there were so few local people trying to pull the statue down that they needed the help of a U.S. military crane.

Here's an (edited) video of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snyz8sn2-z4

I'm 90% certain I watched this live at home in the morning when I was home sick from school. There were a smattering of people trying to bring it down and then the crowd got bigger and then the U.S. crane came in and helped. This happened over the course of an hour or two. I remember thinking it was cool that U.S. military helped out.

Where does this claim of the false narrative come in?

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

"Mob" != "smattering", perhaps. It makes it seem like there was more Iraqi popular opposition than was actually occurring.

jbattle• 11 years ago

I don't remember 100% clearly but I think photos published of the event were carefully framed to make it look like a huge crowd of Iraqis and few if any Americans

tripzilch2• 11 years ago

Yup, that's what I remember too. Seeing the uncropped version of the photo a few days later and thinking "huh wow, propaganda much?" :)

Tloewald3• 11 years ago

Even the idea that Iraqis tried to topple the statue at all (and then the US "helped") is highly controversial. (That's how CNN portrayed it at the time.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firdos_Square_statue_destructi...

If you look how the image is framed (especially in the Fox coverage) the framing cuts out or de-emphasizes the vehicle while emphasizing the (quite small) Iraqi crowd. The accompanying commentary is all about the crowd throwing stuff (they seem to be standing around, mostly). And the later coverage definitely emphasized the Iraqis pulling down the status with US help, not (say) the US pulling down the statue while Iraqi's mostly watched.

dennisgorelik6• 11 years ago

-- it was an unnamed Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians who had decided to topple the statue; and that a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team then used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist and made it all appear spontaneous and Iraqi-inspired --

The propaganda machine around this event is disgusting.

Take down Saddam's stature by all means, but do not fake it, especially to your own electorate.

snissn• 11 years ago

This is Hersh's publication: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-...

n0us• 11 years ago

Sounds more likely to me that some people within the Pakistani intelligence knew Bin Laden was in the country, similarly individuals within the US intelligence community knew and had known for a while that he was in Pakistan if not specifically where/how to get him out. The idea that someone sold him out is certainly plausible.

The idea that there has to be some black and white distinction between the US cooperating with Pakistani authorities to enter the country and kill him vs the idea that they had no knowledge at all I think is probably not accurate. It sounds possible that US authorities alerted Pakistani authorities that they were going to be conducting a raid and Pakistan could comply or face much bigger problems. Since they didn't want to be portrayed internationally as being complicit in housing a well known terrorist, they ignored the radar signatures of the helicopters just long enough for the raid to happen.

It's too bad they didn't bring the body back to the US. I wouldn't consider Bin Laden to be a Muslim and therefore not deserving of a proper Muslim burial. I see no reason they should have disposed of him and prevented some sort of public verification.

mmanfrin• 11 years ago

It's too bad they didn't bring the body back to the US. I wouldn't consider Bin Laden to be a Muslim and therefore not deserving of a proper Muslim burial. I see no reason they should have disposed of him and prevented some sort of public verification.

They did not want the body to become a shrine to those who followed the ideology of Bin Laden, and they similarly did not want the picture(s) of his body to be iconography for that ideology. I know a lot of people disagree, but I can see very valid reasoning behind how they disposed of his body.

67726e• 11 years ago

Similar reasoning to the Soviet's disposal of Hitler's corpse. So I guess we have a lot of conspiracies on the History Channel to look forward to.

ern3• 11 years ago

Bin Laden was a Wahhabi, as are the Saudi governing elite. Wahhabis are vehmently, even violently, opposed to any kind of "grave worship". As far as I know, even the kings of Saudi Arabia are buried in unmarked graves, and the Saudis would demolish the structure over Mohamed's grave if they had the chance. It is therefore extremely unlikely that Bin Laden's grave would have become a shrine if his corpse was returned to Saudi Arabia, which was the initial excuse given for the burial at sea.

spacehome• 11 years ago

I wouldn't consider Bin Laden to be a Muslim

He wasn't a Scotsman, either.

bmmayer1• 11 years ago

I wish I could double upvote this comment.

daenz• 11 years ago

Just spelling it out for people who might not get it: parent post is referring to the "No true Scotsman" fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

jcranmer• 11 years ago

I consider it virtually certain that Pakistani intelligence at some level was specifically hiding bin Laden and probable that the highest levels of government/army either knew or suspected (I personally suspect the latter) that this was the case. Given the instability of the Pakistani state and ISI's known prior flirting with extremists, I find it hard to believe that he was sold out by the government. Said information being inadvertently leaked to a low-level, non-ideologically-aligned functionary is possible, but I don't know the state of affairs in ISI/Pakistan's military well enough to judge its plausibility.

As for cooperation: it's extremely plausible for anyone who is aware of where bin Laden was hiding to choose to do absolutely nothing (and to try to refrain those who aren't aware of that fact to stay the hell away until the dust settles). It's reasonable to infer that various people in the military figured out that the US was going after bin Laden sometime during the raid and decided to pretend nothing was going on. Again, given what's been known about Pakistan's cooperation with terrorists in the past, I'd be more surprised if the US was open to even limited people in Pakistan about what it was about to do--in a choice between "piss off Pakistan" versus "risk bin Laden getting away," the former would be my personal vote and probably those of most US politicians.

Ultimately, that's the problem I have with Hersh's version: it assumes that Pakistan suddenly deciding that bedding with terrorists is too risky is a more likely scenario than Pakistan being too incompetent (or merely unwilling) to stand up against the US making the raid it's been wanting to make for a decade.

dogma1138• 11 years ago

What kind of public acknowledgement you would expect them hanging him off the Washington monument?

venomsnake• 11 years ago

I wouldn't consider Bin Laden to be a Muslim and therefore not deserving of a proper Muslim burial.

Sorry but he was a Muslim. You may not like his interpretation of Islam, but he was one.

Now of course he didn't deserve proper Muslim burial provided by the US Gov. Because it is not a state's job to provide such. The state job is to treat everyone equally.

raverbashing• 11 years ago

Oh look, one prophet follower thinking that their BS interpretation of an old fairy tale is better than the other

And of course they will fight for the death for it, then flee somewhere else because of "persecution"

You can think whatever you want of Bin Laden, but it's the bleeding obvious that a lot of people consider him a muslim

Simulacra• 11 years ago

...That he's dead? Do we really need to know more than that?

transfire• 11 years ago

I go by the King's rules: No head? Then he ain't dead.

chejazi• 11 years ago

tl;dr:

Hersh’s most consequential claim was about how bin Laden was found in the first place. It was not years of painstaking intelligence-gathering, he wrote, that led the United States to the courier and, ultimately, to bin Laden. Instead, the location was revealed by a ‘‘walk-in’’ — a retired Pakistani intelligence officer who was after the $25 million reward that the United States had promised anyone who helped locate him. For that matter, bin Laden was hardly ‘‘in hiding’’ at all; his compound in Abbottabad was actually a safe house, maintained by the Pakistani intelligence service. When the United States confronted Pakistani intelligence officials with this information, Hersh wrote, they eventually acknowledged it was true and even conceded to provide a DNA sample to prove it.

crapshoot1012• 11 years ago

One big danger is assuming that the Pakistani state is some sort of monolithic entity - it isn't. The ISI is a state within the state, and there are significant sectarian movements and tribal loyalties on top of it, and that's without even getting into the nature of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the governing apparatus across the country (ie, one big movement calls for working with the TTP, or the Pakistani Taliban).

In other words, is it possible that elements in the Pakistani state (read: ISI cells / divisions) and some personnel knew that Bin Laden was in Pakistan? Almost certainly yes.

Is it probable that it was known widely by the governing apparatus as a sort of defacto knowledge discussed at say, the cabinel level? I'd say that's unlikely.

crapshoot1012• 11 years ago

Btw, Mark Bowden, the author of the story that's cited as the "official" version, makes his case here.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden...

spoiledtechie• 11 years ago

While we are on the subject, has anyone else really looked at the image of Obama in the situation room looking intently at the TV? The picture the Whitehouse put out looks like they put Obama's head on another persons body. Seriously, I'm not trying to change subjects, but there is a white collar that sort of appears behind and over his next, but doesn't actually fit with his head and body. I would love to know if anyone else bas noticed this?

AJ007• 11 years ago

It is criminal to make unauthorized disclosures of classified material. The numerous conflicts in the story suddenly make a lot more sense after taking that in to consideration.

This particular piece gives the Obama administration a tremendous pass by failing to mention what the made up narrative did to the Pakistani vaccination program.

littletimmy3• 11 years ago

I trust Seymour Hersh on this.

If my only choices are either believing what the government says, or believing what a decorated investigative journalist says, I'm going with the investigative journalist. The government simply has too much of an incentive to lie about something like this.

tacos4• 11 years ago

Hersh is a hero of mine but -- and I hate to play the age card -- he is getting a little wackier as he ages. I'm not sure why he rushed to print this story. There's nothing time-critical here.

Also it's not a question of accepting Hersh vs the government. It's a matter of balancing Hersh's investigative reporting with the details provided by other investigative reporters.

Seems like he's onto something but, like he was told when his story was rejected, I don't think he has it all figured out yet.

EDIT: These two sentences in particular are very un-Hirsch: "(The informant and his family were smuggled out of Pakistan and relocated in the Washington area. He is now a consultant for the CIA.)" Doesn't name the informant (who would obviously be in a protection program) but gives the city and employer? Why? It's unrelated to the story. If it's only important enough to be in parenthesis, probably shouldn't risk putting a man and his family's life at risk over the disclosure.

chillwaves• 11 years ago

There are over 6 million people in the Washington metro. I think he'll be OK.

dennisgorelik6• 11 years ago

There's nothing time-critical here.

The sooner truth comes out - the faster we learn from our mistakes.

Zelphyr• 11 years ago

On an unrelated note; what's with the over use of the word "narrative" in this article? It seems to be a fad lately for people to use it to sound smart (I guess) but you'd think the editor of the NY Times would've told the guy, "try picking a different word for once, eh?" It's used so much it's almost distracting.

burnte• 11 years ago

It's a fancier way to say "story" and it's really grating. It's similar to how "looks" and "appearance" became "optics" ("this looks bad/this has a bad appearance" is now "these are bad optics") and "math" or "algebra" became "calculus" (what's the political math/algebra here?" is "what's the political calculus?"). It's the dumbing down of content disguised by fancier words.

gozo• 11 years ago

Narrative can mean story as in "a spoken or written account of connected events", but in can also have further meaning as in "a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values". So the governments recollection of how they killed Osama bin Laden is to some extent a story, but it's also part of the narrative of e.g. the "war on terror".

I'm not sure it's so much dumbing down as careless use of word. Before you teach something you often have to unlearn the things you learned as part of learning. Overuse of certain words or concepts are quite common in technology too. Though we also often make the somewhat different mistake of being too specific.

charlesism• 11 years ago

Yes, such a word is "problematic"

unclebucknasty3• 11 years ago

And, yet, the biggest questionable detail of all goes virtually unchallenged.

coldcode• 11 years ago

I still have my doubts he actually was alive when he was "killed".

DGAP• 11 years ago

Tell the story you want them to believe.

I can speak from first-hand experience that this is exactly how matters of this nature are handled. The general account of Bin Laden's death may be true, but the government chose which details they wanted to drive the narrative and selectively released those. i.e. the heroism of the SEALS vs that our "ally" was hiding a terrorist.

bardworx3• 11 years ago

I can speak from first-hand experience that this is exactly how matters of this nature are handled.
i.e. the heroism of the SEALS vs that our "ally" was hiding a terrorist.

Perhaps I'm a jaded New Yorker with a family member having, at one time, a "high title" in an international news corporation. They worked for many companies, this isn't a liberal/conservative or democrat/republican comment.

I do not trust what our politicians or news corporations say at face value. Nor am I naive to believe that US "allies" would tell "the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Every story is laced with certain amount of spice - this goes for news, company lines, startup elevator pitches, etc.

I'm not sure how you are framing your initial sentence: are you being fastidious or attempting to be cordial in calling straight bullshit. However, why is anyone surprised? Everyone spins the truth to their benefit.

The most eye opening experience I've ever had was being in a news room, reading a live report from Baghdad reporter while listening to an anchor a few feet away. The disparity between the two was so staggering that I renounced all news instantly and felt disgusted. I understand news companies have to make money but what they say isn't "news". In my opinion, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and TMZ are all flavors of the same marketing machine.

News/Politicians = Convenient truth which sells ads.

edit: spelling, clarity.

parm2892• 11 years ago

Your comment was enlightening and compels me to ask: where can the public get access to live field reports such as the one you mention? If news companies transform these reports into faux-news, I'd like to bypass them directly and read/watch directly from the source. Are there any publicly-accessible resources that provide access to field reports or "real" news?

squozzer• 11 years ago

The logic behind keeping OBL's death a secret has some facets worth examining.

Most reasons given mention OBL's propaganda value - but was he really that popular? Did he have t-shirts or something similar a la Che Guevara? Would stronger proof of his death have attracted more people to his cause?

Could not mystique in the end prove stronger than martyrdom? At least a couple of religions describe the return of a prophet.

Isn't it also possible to have very good reasons for either releasing photos of his death or not killing him? The kind of terrorist who might emulate OBL would probably prefer death on the battlefield to capture or execution. So it's not clear what kind of deterrent effect all the secrecy has delivered.

I can however think of a few reasons to kill him quickly and release as few details as possible. Independent verification of anything might produce inconvenient facts, that would cast doubt on all other claims. A commenter said Pakistan does not act as a single entity, which is true, but neither does the US. So who knows what a debriefing might have revealed?

ryanx435• 11 years ago

reading all of these comments reminds me, welcomingly, that most commentators on HN don't know shit: they are just really good at sounding like they know what they are talking about.

interestingly this is only ever apparent when a topic comes up that I am an expert in.

derefr• 11 years ago

I think this sort of topic seems more-inviting-than-usual to those without expert knowledge. An average thread here about e.g. the BEAM VM (something I have expertise on) is usually very well-thought-out and fact-based, because enthusiasm to talk about it usually goes up with experience.

In politics, meanwhile, the true experts are more-often-than-not the people who left the room early before the shouting began. ;)

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

pg has a good essay on it, "Keep Your Identity Small" [0].

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

laichzeit0• 11 years ago

I suspect this is some variant of Parkinson's law combined with Dunning-Kruger effect.

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

A valid complaint, but it's bad to stop just there. Could you enlighten us all and share some of your expert knowledge on the topic?

confluence• 11 years ago

It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

bootload• 11 years ago

"interestingly this is only ever apparent when a topic comes up that I am an expert in."

Which topic?

JshWright• 11 years ago

interestingly this is only ever apparent when a topic comes up that I am an expert in.

What other circumstances would you expect it in?

jokoon• 11 years ago

So if he is not dead, it was either:

* A move to push OBL to come out of the bushes to denounce its fake death, and get an opportunity to catch him this way ?

* A move to get Obama reelected ?

What else could be seen as foul ? I mean it's a war against Islamic terrorism, I'd understand if some plays were little lies. Manipulating the public can be okay if it's not for risky purposes.

peter303• 11 years ago

The main whitewashing Ive heard was he and some of his family were shot in cold blood, i.e. Weaponless and without provocation. I am guessing due to the tight constraints of the operation and the difficultly of a high profile prisoner. I dont know why some thought they had to whitewash the story, because most people would understand the necesity.

dennisgorelik6• 11 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520984

tripzilch2• 11 years ago

Not a word about the vaccination program?

It was reported both in the mainstream media at the time, as well as featuring in Hersh's version of events. They (of course) don't quite match up, but the vaccination program definitely played a role in both versions.

It's a bit weird to leave it out. Not like the reporter wouldn't have come across it, and the repercussions are quite real.

What Do We Really Know About Osama Bin Laden’s Death?

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