Gulper Eel: as gay as an Easter bonnet at an Erasure show in Provincetown on Oscar Wilde's birthday.

I wish I could steal that, but no one would ever believe I came up with it. Well done sir.

While there may have been a few odd circumstances surrounding his death, none of them are unexplainable and I think him being dead is far more likely then any of the alternatives.

1. He was already dead and al-Qaeda has been fabricating videos of him ever since. In which case, why would they stop fabricating videos just because America claimed to have killed him?

2. He is still alive. In which case, why would al-Qaeda claim he was dead simply because America did so?

3. al-Qaeda itself is under the direct control of the US government. Even if there were elements in the government technically capable of pulling off such a ruse, why would they take the risk? If they lid was ever blown it could mean the near instantaneous end of the American government.

seventypercent: Oh, Christ.

Just stop. Stop. Nothing good can come of this. Just stop.

↑

Guess they have had plenty of time to photoshop them at this point, just like the birth certificate. Getting quicker. . . .

Kittypie070: THIS.

Is the only pic.

I will ever need.

High five. High paw? High something. Right on, fellow weirdo.

dittybopper: To put it in another context, do you think the release of Abu Ghraib pictures was a "gratuitous exposure of materials we know to exist but don't need to see"? Why or why not?

Those pictures had the face blurred and we don't know who it was. Those pictures proved something that some people were denying.

Not the case for Osama pictures.

intelligent comment below: Coincidence?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44982618/ns/us_news/t/us-navy-discharging - sailors-drug-use/

Wow, I'd never seen that. If it walks like a ducks, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck - some Farkers would still say it's a platypus!

SAN DIEGO - The U.S. Navy said Thursday it was discharging 64 sailors, 49 of them from the aircraft carrier that buried Osama bin Laden at sea, for using or distributing drugs.

[snip]

Bin Laden was buried at sea from the Carl Vinson in May after the al Qaeda leader was killed in a raid by U.S. Navy Seals on his Pakistan hide-out.

[snip]

"No criminal charges have been issued, but some may face court-martial depending on the violations they are accused of," he said. (Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Cooney)

Link (new window)

Why do the Judicial Watch people want to rock the boat? Releasing those pictures is like preaching to the choir. In this case, the convinced will stay convinced and nonbelievers are just going to run around, squawking about pixels and photoshop. Oh, and you get to piss off the potentially volatile neighbors. Yup, this whole idea just screams upside.

Marcintosh: The son of a weathy Saudi construction magnate, Bin Laden formed Al Qaeda and oversaw a campaign of terror that included the 9/11 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Thanks, nearly forgot . . .
.

Didn't Dead-Eye Dick Cheney say Bin Laden wasn't involved in 9/11? Not that he wouldn't lie at the drop of a hat to make a bloody buck, but you'd think Cheney would continue to implicate Osama at all costs.

Tentacle: Yet we still don't know for sure who killed JFK.

Whoa, too soon, bro.

AverageAmericanGuy: Obama has shown no compunction in using the military to stage elaborate attention diverting operations at politically expedient times.

Hey, did you ever notice how the Terrorist Color Chart Code went from Yellow to Orange every time Bush had a political crisis or a reelection to worry about? Was that just my imagination? What do you think about that?

Yes, but is he most sincerely dead?

Why do people want to see OBL's death photos anyway? What's the point? Is there any good reason other than just morbid curiosity? It's not "to convince people he's really dead." People who don't have chosen to believe he's really dead will just say they're faked.

Ack, typo, I meant not really dead

YEAH - AND WHEN THEY RELEASE THE PHOTOS THEY SHOULD BE PRINTED DOUBLE SIDED ON COPIES OF OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!

/Hurrrr
//Durrrrrr
///Derp

dittybopper:
People are denying that we killed Osama. Why not release them? Because they are "icky"? We're adults, I think that those with an interest in verifying that he's dead* can handle it. It's not like there isn't precedent for doing that sort of thing:
.

Because it won't convince the conspiracy freaks, it's not needed by rational people, so releasing the photos would essentially be just pornography.

I_C_Weener: Resident Muslim: I'm not saying I'm with desecrating a corpse, but I would have understood if his body ended up at ground zero in kryptonite like Han Solo.

With a statue of Obama standing next to him in a Starfleet uniform.

Heh.
So who's going to play Jabba?

translation: its taken this long to create fakes that people won't instantly be able to see through.

brought to you by the ghosts of seal team 6.

A couple will be leaked in late October. And it will be hilarious to see the GOP whining about it.

Non-evil Monkey: While there may have been a few odd circumstances surrounding his death, none of them are unexplainable and I think him being dead is far more likely then any of the alternatives.

1. He was already dead and al-Qaeda has been fabricating videos of him ever since. In which case, why would they stop fabricating videos just because America claimed to have killed him?

2. He is still alive. In which case, why would al-Qaeda claim he was dead simply because America did so?

3. al-Qaeda itself is under the direct control of the US government. Even if there were elements in the government technically capable of pulling off such a ruse, why would they take the risk? If they lid was ever blown it could mean the near instantaneous end of the American government.

It's like the moon landings and 9/11 - the conspiracy theories are far more complicated than the official stories. Occam's Razor and all that. Plus the risks of the Soviets exposing the fake landings and Al Qaeda trotting Bin Laden out for a press conference far outweigh the P/R benefits of faking them.

Also, remember all the "If Obama releases his long-form birth certificate, this will all go away" promises? Yeah, the birthers weren't checking pixels immediately and broadcasting that it was faked.

If they do release the Bin Laden pics, it will just result in people "proving" that they're fake ("See, an actual gunshot wound has a particular pattern - this is 'shopped") or some shiat. It won't convince the mentally unbalanced theorists and the rest of us already believe that he's dead.

Oznog: LordJiro: HappyTheDog: I think it's a good thing to have a healthy dose of paranoia when it comes to Government.

And believing that Osama bin Laden wasn't killed in May, or that Bush did 9/11, or that the moon landing was faked requires an *un*heathy dose of paranoia.

If it was fake, why would Obama have done it in May, rather than waiting til sometime in 2012? If Osama was dead before 2006, why did Bush not take credit? If Osama's still alive, where is he, and why would he not seek to discredit America by revealing that he's not dead?

Faking the killing of Osama makes NO. GODDAMN. SENSE. Period.

Actually we killed him for real in 2005, but Bush realized he needed a boogieman and didn't think he'd be able to create a new one, so they covered up his death and hired an imposter to play him. That's why he had to retreat to seclusion, to avoid people who might recognize the difference. Obama didn't want to maintain that facade but waited until a politically effective moment to fake the imposter's death.

The "fake" bin Laden death photos were actually the real ones prepared by the CIA for deliberate leaking. However, after being released, people pointed out enough logical problems with the photos that they disavowed any association with the fakes they'd created. The reason they won't release more photos? They don't HAVE more photos. That was it, and it got shot down.

That's an episode of "Lost" right there, or something.

rufus-t-firefly: A couple will be leaked in late October. And it will be hilarious to see the GOP whining about it.

I've been assured by the people on Daily Paul that we'll all be in FEMA death camps by October.

They'll be released sometime around mid October...

I_C_Weener: Ricardo Klement: Couldn't get Dale Earnhardt's pics. I wouldn't bet on it.

Which SEAL team killed Dale?

SEAL Team Sterlin'.

dittybopper: liam76:
I don't think there is a precedent for releasing pictures of killed individuals.

I just *SHOWED* you one. That was Jesse James' corpse, btw. There are many, many other examples, too numerous to list It was especially prevalent back when proof of death of a famous person was harder to come by, and in unique circumstances like this one, it may still have it's place.

Pic didn't load on my computer.

The thing is in this day and age a picture doesn't really mean proof of death.

And as a few others have pointed out in this case the people who have made up their minds won't be swayed.

I don't need pics of OBL's corpse to know that he's dead. Then again, I haven't lived my life in fear of a man who was for all intents and purposes a dragon, terrorizing his people into submission for decades. If I had, then I suppose I too might want some more proof that the dragon is dead.

What would this conversation look like in 2006? If Bush said we killed OBL and dropped him in the ocean, trust me. Would people stand for it? I don't get why Obama gets off so easily on this. He lies just as often, albeit on less important issues.

I fully believe the story, just surprised there's so little questioning of it

We released the Abu Graib pix, these should be released too.

rorypk: I fully believe the story, just surprised there's so little questioning of it

Oh, I dunno, scuttling a multi-million dollar, super-secret stealth helicopter just isn't the sort of thing that's done fer shiates-n-giggles.

Then there's the whole international turmoil, the internal disruption of the standing political system within Pakistan (that whole "sovereignty" thing) and her admission that yep, he was there...

Sure. All that collateral effect for an event that didn't happen, because surely it's in the Pakistani ruling class's interest to maintain the story.

But yeah, it's just so "questionable".

It's a conspiracy by the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires!

Paris1127: Right Wing response to pics not being released:
What are you hiding? Why don't you want us to see bin Laden after death? Is he really dead? Why do you hate America?

Right Wing response to pics being released:
Why the hell did you release those? Now you're enabling our enemies! You've handed them new membership on a silver platter! Those photos are gruesome, what if a child saw that?!?! Won't somebody please think of the children? Why do you hate America?

Leaving satisfied....

Scorpinock: They should have put his bullet ridden corpse on display at ground zero.

...Thank you for proving exactly why no one should release those photographs, ever.

/Yes, he was a rabid animal, but glorying in the death of another human being, even one who was severely mentally ill, makes you worse.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: 'Government transparency' doesn't mean 'give away all state secrets and make everything available to the public'.


Nor does it mean to hide behind 'state secrets' in the name of national security, and to simply use the term as lip service in an election year.

Considering your disdain for the American public, as you think of them as stupid livestock. I can only assume, that you think the gubmint will always have your best interests in mind?
If history has taught us anything - it's to never trust your Government, give them an inch and they'll be sure to take a mile. Question everything, and buck authority lest you become a victim.

If you get in the habit of being complacent you're most at risk of having your rights stripped away from you.

Resident Muslim: Scorpinock: They should have put his bullet ridden corpse on display at ground zero.

I'm not saying I'm with desecrating a corpse, but I would have understood if his body ended up at ground zero in kryptonite like Han Solo.


Also guessing whatever 'evidence' there was ended up in the downed chopper right after this happened.

Huuuurgg.... dammit. I can't resist. IT'S CARBONITE, YOU MORON!

I'm not at all saying this means anything, but why wouldn't the judical watch website (new window) issue their own press release on the subject? I would think getting their motivations out there could be nothing but advantageous to them, and could garner LOTS of visibility for the organization.

dittybopper: Sylvia_Bandersnatch: 'Government transparency' doesn't mean 'give away all state secrets and make everything available to the public'. The 'transparency' that Obama referred to was about the regular mechanisms, budgets, and internal workings of government. And I agree that his administration has not been as good about this as he seemed to promise. But it shouldn't be confused with the vital function of keeping real state secrets, almost all of which are related to national security, or of avoiding gratuitous exposure of materials we know to exist but don't need to see.

I've worked with real state secrets relating to national security. In fact, it was part of my job description. You can't claim a national security exception for the photographs of a corpse. There is no possible state secret that can be revealed by showing a dead body.

Arguing against gratuitous exposure of materials in the same breath is a clever way to associate the two, but they are completely different, and should be handled differently. Not releasing something because it is a legitimate state secret is fine, and I fully support that. Not releasing something because it is merely inflammatory, but doesn't actually contain any legitimate secrets, is wrong.

To put it in another context, do you think the release of Abu Ghraib pictures was a "gratuitous exposure of materials we know to exist but don't need to see"? Why or why not?

I beg to differ. The body CAN show state secrets relating to what was used to make the kill. Let's say (hypothetically) that the seals are field testing a portable directed energy weapon. The body could show this by not having bullet holes, and having burns instead. just sayin'...

PsiChick: Scorpinock: They should have put his bullet ridden corpse on display at ground zero.

...Thank you for proving exactly why no one should release those photographs, ever.

/Yes, he was a rabid animal, but glorying in the death of another human being, even one who was severely mentally ill, makes you worse.

No, it doesn't. Who told you that?

Inflatable Rhetoric: PsiChick: Scorpinock: They should have put his bullet ridden corpse on display at ground zero.

...Thank you for proving exactly why no one should release those photographs, ever.

/Yes, he was a rabid animal, but glorying in the death of another human being, even one who was severely mentally ill, makes you worse.

No, it doesn't. Who told you that?

Osama was, very clearly, a fundamentally broken person. Normal people are pretty much incapable of that level of batshiat-insanity. Honestly, that wasn't his fault, and shouldn't be treated as such. As sad as it is, that happens sometimes. It's why we lock up sociopaths who think Dexter is a how-to guide.

But normal people are not fundamentally broken. We have a choice in our morality. And we can stop, think about it, and say "hey, someone died here, and the only purpose to releasing photographs of any given corpse is to satisfy our very base urge for disgusting revenge".

We have choice. When we choose to do something wrong, that's worse than the person who never had a choice to begin with.

/I am obviously not a doctor or diagnostician and do not know if OBL had any diagnosed mental illnesses, but I'm going off the assumption that people who want, literally, to see the death of everyone unlike them and consistently work to make that happen are not mentally healthy.

cman: It wont matter.

Those Conspiracy theorists will claim the pictures are doctored in every way.

There is no winning these paranoid idiots over.

/off the wall

So that reminds me of a GITS SAC episode where a reporter says something along the lines of "Film eh, he probably didn't trust digital images because of how easy they are to manipulate. Very few people have the equipment for film anymore."

And it occurred to me... that is our world now. No one believes images anymore, especially if they are outrageous or contentious. We even have entire countries faking images and video for propaganda.

Which begs the question... did seal team 6 use FILM or digital capture?