Osama bin Laden has been killed

[Maets]

Osama bin Laden has been killed

[Dr. Madd]

It was not our president who did it.. It was not any politician who did it.. It was our soldiers, our men in uniform who did it.

[Ms. Elisabeth Collins]

It was not our president who did it.. It was not any politician who did it.. It was our soldiers, our men in uniform who did it.

Amen, brother.

[The Corsair]

Without Osama there's finally the possibility that Al Qaeda will simply break down. It is however similarly possible that someone else assumes leadership of the organisation.

[Count Alexander]

It was not our president who did it.. It was not any politician who did it.. It was our soldiers, our men in uniform who did it.

x2

[LizerSparkes]

Without Osama there's finally the possibility that Al Qaeda will simply break down. It is however similarly possible that someone else assumes leadership of the organisation.

And that is exactly what worries me...

[Major Wolfram Quicksilver]

Mark Twain said it best, "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure".

[Siliconous Skumins]

Not sure how I feel about this one - on one hand I'm glad they finally got the fucker.... and on the other, I'm left wondering what is going to be the next move / retaliation by al-Qaeda. 

Not afraid of terrorism. Just aware that we just upped the stakes a little.


In related news, the News channels are all banging on about the picture that is supposed to be of Osama's body.  Took me seconds to find it, several seconds longer to satisfy myself that it's a photoshop - and a poor one at that. Looks to be several years old too.

SS

[rovingjack]

I would have rather seen him humiliated and shown for his cowardice in hiding in caves convincing young muslim boys to die for him while he hasn't got the _ to commit himself to the same degree.

Instead he gets to go down fighting (none of his victims got the chance) while watching finatically loyal servants die to protect him... In a mansion, in a wealthy part of a city.

I'm not one to be hateful but I believe an eye for an eye when possible, and reap what you sow. With it made clear that I respect the muslims deeply (Jabir ibn Hayyan stands on even ground with Leonardo Da Vinci with me), I say bury the turd in a hole lined with bacon.

Sorry if that offends, but hate mongers and those that preach clensing of the others deserve only disrespect.

[The Corsair]

Without Osama there's finally the possibility that Al Qaeda will simply break down. It is however similarly possible that someone else assumes leadership of the organisation.

And that is exactly what worries me...

Exactly. However, it's fair enough to say that had there been someone more powerful than Osama within the organisation, they would've taken it over already. Whoever is in next is likely to be weak and the military is now better equipped to take them down.

[LizerSparkes]

My main hope is that this sets the wheels into motion that power the return of our troops.

[Reverend Panic]

Well, they killed one guy. A guy at the top, maybe.

You ever hit a wasps nest with a rock?

Wouldn't surprise me if this spurred them into further action.

[Honeythorn]

I can pretty much garauntee you there's a good few million who will be desperate to take his place. Not nessecarily in his area, just in another Al Quaeda blister somewhere else in the world. One or more of those offshoot groups is going to claim revenge for it .

It's a highly organised fanatical religious group with global connections ( a fair few in high places I don't doubt )  you don't have a hope in hell of being correct about them being in any way disorganised or poorly managed . They're not just going to shrug and say "Oh well he's dead we may as well give up now lads"

If anything I would suggest that his death will simply make them worse. As Roving Jack say's, he died fighting with his men around him. He's become a martyr to his cause and will be considered a hero for it. It's simply going to fuel the fire.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have been removed, but it's not going to make any dent in their fanatiscism or cause them any real blow. He'll have had deputies and right/left hand men ready to assume his position for years.  

[James Harrison]

Without Osama there's finally the possibility that Al Qaeda will simply break down. It is however similarly possible that someone else assumes leadership of the organisation.

I would say that may have happened sometime ago.  That it had been a few years since his last tape or broadcast and that he was found in a mansion rather than a cave somewhat suggests that he may have handed over the reins to a deputy and been 'in retirement', so to speak.  Al- Qaeda's lost a father figure but it will take more than that to wipe them out, sorry to say.   

[rovingjack]

Actually I'm thinking that they are so meglomaniacle (and not in the good way  ) that they are likely to have a bunch of people think the next leader should be them. They spend so much time arguing and distract each other from the original focus of the group , as always seems to happen after the founder of a movement dies, that they become inneffectual and shattered.

Mix that with the rest of the islamic middle east trying to be done with oppressors and have a bit of what good the democratic republics have:

Maybe just maybe we have the right mixture to pull the rug out from under a movement that was seeming to want to become an Us vs them, turning it into something that allows for the quality of life to improve for all.

[Manix]

The problem is that Al-Qaeda is more of an idea than a group (yes Nikolas, this is your line), a way of getting back at countries like the US and UK if you decide you have some grudge against them. Most of the groups, "cells" likely never took orders from Osama and worked on their own projects. So though this may give us all a bit of a moral boost (and more so for our boys Im sure) the rest of Al Qaeda will go on  unaffected and like one guy before me said "rock at a wasps nest" I dont dare guess at whats next.

[Professor Jacobs]

I think that, unfortunately, this is less cutting off the head of a snake and more cutting off the head of a hydra. I wish we'd been able to capture him and let him live out his last few years of life in a clean, humane jail cell to prove that we are better than him. The combination of him going down in a last stand shootout and the open celebration I've seen by a lot of my countrymen today is probably going to give him the martyr status he so desired and give AQ an "excuse" to up their recruitment and look into retaliatory attacks.

That said, while I'm not going to celebrate the death of an elderly man on dialysis killed 10 years after he drew our wrath, I'm glad it gives some closure to the families of those he killed. Or as the great Mark Twain so delicately put it, ‎"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

[LukeHogbin]

Amazing what people can do when PSN is down...

On a more serious note... I think this was just a huge poke into a wasp nest with too short a stick and walls all around you...

[JennyWren]

Saddam Hussain was found in a hole with only his pants on, discredited

very hard to discredit a dead man, ask the romans

[jringling]

It was not our president who did it.. It was not any politician who did it.. It was our soldiers, our men in uniform who did it.

x2

X3

[Sir Nikolas of Vendigroth]

You can't kill the hydra by cutting off its head...

[Duellist]

I have to agree that they have created a martyr rather than killing the organisation.  Oh it is a brilliant PR move, full of 'feel-good' decisive action and a 'sense of closure', but it is not a solution to the radical branches of Islam that are cropping up.  (on a related note, judging Islam by the actions of Al Qaeda is like judging Christianity by the Westboro Baptist Church)

The terrorism is a symptom of a large problem, but the cause is left un-addressed.  

Consider the possibility that 9/11 was an isolated event.  A small group of nutters managed to pull off a big token gesture and a few people who hated the US gave them a metaphorical pat on the back.  

Next thing you know, we have a lot of idiots attacking Islam (both verbally and physically) because the attackers were Muslims.  I saw police vans outside mosques for the first few weeks after the attacks (and again after 7/7) just to protect them.  I have known loads of Muslims who were thoroughly nice people, but none who ever expressed extremist beliefs.  The Muslims, unsurprisingly, will start to feel just a little resentful.  They are being picked on by racists who call them terrorists, which is never nice.

One symptom of this resentment is the rise in the number of fundamentalists.  Still not terrorists, we are just talking about people going to the temple more often, maybe wearing the headscarf.  Of course, the rise in attendance means that the mosques get overcrowded and so they want to build new ones.  The racist idiots see the increased number of headscarves and applications for planning permission to convert a building to a mosque, then scream that it is an invasion.  

Public opinion (or at least that fed to them by the Daily Mail and the Sun) leads to pressure on local government to deny planning permission to mosques and to ban the headscarf on (usually, but not universally) pretty flimsy ground.  For some reason, Muslims start to get upset that they are not allowed to dress as they want or build mosques that they are willing to pay for out of their own pocket.

How surprised can anyone be that some Muslims feel like they are under attack?  
The majority might just feel put upon and do nothing, but how surprised should we be to learn that some (a smaller number) believe that they need to fight back?
Even if the majority of these opt for political pressure and public debate, should we be surprised that a tiny number turn to terrorism?

[Captain Lyerly]

The burial at sea was a brilliant stroke; the fact that it was done so quickly and efficiently leads me to believe that the plan has been sitting in a folder for several years now, waiting the opportunity.  There will be no grave site to attract jihadi pilgrims.

Duellist, the parallel you mention about Al Qaeda and Westboro is spot on. 

But this has been growing for a long time.  To blame the rise of Muslim terrorism on our reaction to Muslim terrorism sounds a bit off to me.  If you go back to the 1973 Olympics, when Muslim terrorists invaded the world's display of peaceful international competition and murdered people for being Jewish, and follow that forward through hijackings, murders, kidnappings, Achille Lauro, bombs in clubs in Berlin, the first attempt on the WTC, murdering civilians in the Tube, blowing up pizza parlors, targeting playgrounds and school buses...  No, we take no blame for this. 

Sorry.



Chas.

[Jupiter Harsh]

Although I don't usually support conspiration theories, I'm afraid to say that I find the whole thing a bit fishy, especially the fact that they lobbed him in the sea before anyone outside the mission could identify him.
But that's just my opinion, I guess we'll never know for sure.

[Rockula]

Although I don't usually support conspiration theories, I'm afraid to say that I find the whole thing a bit fishy, especially the fact that they lobbed him in the sea before anyone outside the mission could identify him.
But that's just my opinion, I guess we'll never know for sure.

They were trying to return his body to Saudi but the Saudi's didn't want him. So they tossed the garbage over the side.

It's only one terrorist leader...but it's a start.