cman: Frederick: cman: Osama is dead. He was killed in May of last year. How do I know that? Because no one in their right farking mind would commit such an easily refutable case of fraud. Hell, even Al Qeada admitted it.

How is it easily refutable?

Because if he was still alive all he would have to do is release a tape

A lot of people -especially mid-east people- believe he's been dead a long time. To them how could you refute he was killed in May of last year?

thedoorhinge: Can you provide a source or poll or anything that shows most people accepted his death in 2006?

It is difficult to find in Western or English media because it wasnt believed or reported in those venues, but here are some indications of how some of the rest of the world thought about it:

Link (new window)

Link (new window)

Different groups have different motivations for OBL being alive or dead. The truth is really questionable. One way to absolutely put an end to the debate is a body with DNA -which could have been provided, but wasnt (which also raises questions -or should). The simple fact is there is no way to know.

Now it is simply a matter of who are people willing to believe in the absence of proof.

Frederick: A lot of people -especially mid-east people- believe he's been dead a long time. To them how could you refute he was killed in May of last year?

Well, hell, there's a lot of "mid-east people" who believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion isn't a hoax, and I bet there's a lot overlap with your "bin Laden died in 2006" people, too. I'm not going to lose much sleep over my inability to convince the hypothetical Middle Eastern "man in the street" of OBL's death last year, especially when full color video of the raid and a death certificate personally signed by the head of ISI likely wouldn't do the trick, much less a handful of still photos.

JustTheTip: LOL. I can't tell if you are serious. But just in case, I'd like to point out that if the president cannot successfully keep an oval office BJ covered up, how in the world would they keep something like that under wraps? It would involve the cooperation and perpetual silence of a great many people...

I find this argument against conspiracy theories the funniest. Because often times people "in-the-know" do come forward with information. Sometimes those people die mysteriously. Sometimes they are just dismissed as having a vendetta. Sometime they wait until they are on their death bed.

People are going to believe what they want; maybe in spite of evidence, maybe to be a part of the popular consensus, or for no rational reason what so ever.

It is in examining what people are willing to believe (or dismiss) about a conspiracy that I find interesting.

Vodka Zombie: Dammit. And here I was just writing a story for WND about how bin Laden is actually alive, in American custody, and in a cell deep inside Cheyenne Mountain. He's receiving free medical care, but the US is torturing him like crazy. They just wanted Al Qaeda to think he was killed, but he's spilling the beans on his old buddies so Obama can make huge advances in the war on terror to keep people from looking into his birth certificate.

Releasing the pictures is going to make things a little difficult.

If they had picture of his birth certificate, I'm quite sure The Hillary Block would had released them long ago. And besides, digital cameras were not allowed into Kenya until 2003.

No actually they don't. Believe it or not, the caselaw is nice and clear on this point that the government can withhold these photos under a number of exemptions, without ever even needing to play the National Security trump card (which they also have)

Exemption B(6) exempts release of anything that would cause an invasion of the subject's privacy. Death photos are explicitly protected under this exemption.

Several of the B(7) exemptions come into play here as the government could easily say that release of the photos could reveals "sources and methods" connected to the raid, or the identities of those involved in carrying it out

B(1) applies because the material is no doubt classified.


Judicial Watch is nothing more then a bunch of professional gadflies. They file hundreds of FOIA requests a year, not because they give a shiat about the information, but because they hope that the responding agency will commit some technical violation of the statute so they can sue them (the statute provides that the government has to pay your attorney's fees in such situations)

hbk72777: Gulper Eel: The CIA has argued that such a disclosure would "trigger violence" around the globe

Whatever. A cartoon sets off the nutters, too. A slab of bacon, an uncovered leg, a song...shiat, I hope the whole world not only sees the corpse, but also finds out that SEAL who plugged Crazy Sammy is as gay as an Easter bonnet at an Erasure show in Provincetown on Oscar Wilde's birthday.

Exactly, there are no eggshells to be walked upon around these nuts, they'd act like savages just watching Strawberry Shortcake while eating fruit rollups.

At least until 10am, when Strawberry Shortcake is over and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comes on. That'll calm them down.

/Fluttershy is best pony

Weve seen photos of people jumping off the world trade center, weve seend photos of dead children in Iraq and Afghanistan, weve seen photos of Abu Ghraib, weve seen photos of naked burnt Americans hung off a bridge.