After the bin Laden Raid

Shuja Nawaz | June 27, 2011
For the second time in the life of the current government a parliamentary session has produced a unanimous “feel good” resolution, after what must have been serious prodding by the military.
Private discussions again leaked badly to the media, making it difficult to ascertain what was really said, given that we cannot judge the motivations of the leakers. If the past is any guide, nothing substantive will result from this exercise as individual political parties go their own ways and there is no cohesive action by parliament or the government to follow up on the main points of the resolution.

Cross post from German Marshall Fund Pakistan’s China card

Posted on 28 June 2011.
Andrew Small is a Brussels-based Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program.
ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan— For at least a handful of Chinese soldiers, the television footage of Abbottabad around the Osama bin Laden raid was familiar. In December 2006, the city was the site of an extensive set of joint Sino-Pakistani counterterrorism exercises. The “large-scale intelligence gathering,” “ambushes,” and “search and destroy missions” unfortunately failed to get anywhere near the world’s most wanted terrorist, who is believed to have set up house in this Pakistani garrison town earlier that year.

Calling America’s bluff

By Kurt Jacobsen and Sayeed Hassan Khan

Published in Dawn

HAS Obama unwittingly called his own bluff? The spooky so-called mastermind Osama Bin Laden is rubbed out, courtesy a Hollywood-style hit squad operation. What more is there to say?

Everything, actually. But nervous authorities want to curb jubilation so as not to give the exasperated American public any funny ideas about pulling their stupendously expensive military apparatus out of battered Afghanistan.

Killing of Osama and its Implications for Islamic World

Asghar Ali Engineer

(Secular Perspective May 16-31, 2011)

The United States has claimed, through its own President Barak Obama that Osama  bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, was killed on 1^st May 2011 at the dead of night in his hiding place in Abbotabad, near Islamabad, Pakistan’s own capital. This news has been broadcast, telecast or published all over the world. However, the President also claimed that as per Islamic rites we buried him in the sea without loss of time as in Islam it is not allowed to keep the body for long. He also claimed that his photographs (with disfigured face) were not shown as it would not satisfy the skeptics and instead, would incite feelings among radicals.

Now That Bin Laden Is Dead, Can We Have Our Freedoms Back?

AlterNet.org

Let’s remember once again who we are, and begin to rebuild our confidence in ourselves – starting with our system of justice.

Osama bin Laden’s death removes the single focal point that has dominated American foreign affairs – and much of American politics at home – for a decade. And certainly, the United States and the world can breathe a sigh of relief that a dreaded enemy no longer needs to be countered. But the removal of bin Laden also opens up some space for thinking – not just for perpetual reaction, which has been the singular characteristic of the American version of the “war on terror”.

Obama snatches defeat from jaws of victory

By Yvonne Ridley

As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death filtered out onto the streets of America it triggered unsightly scenes of undiluted hysteria, chest-thumping and back-slapping which has sadly become a trademark of the vengeful ‘hang’em high’ lobby that emerged from the rubble of 9/11.

7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration

This week we are going to publish a series of articles written by Americans themselves  about Bin Laden’s death. Bloody shame on those servile bleeding heart complexed Pakistanis who dare not raise a finger or a question.

As the week wore on, many of the details of the historic raid were “revised.”

May 5, 2011

The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that’s par for the course: “the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.”

Osama Bin Laden: Alternative views

This week we are going to publish a series of articles written by Americans themselves  about Bin Laden’s death. Bloody shame on those servile bleeding heart complexed Pakistanis who dare not raise a finger or a question.

[Awaam]

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

By Noam Chomsky

May 07, 2011

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them.

Post Morterm of Osama

Scientific American tells us: How Do You ID a Dead Osama?

By Christie Wilcox | May 2, 2011

Osama Bin Laden is dead. At least, that’s what we’ve been told, and I tend to believe such things.

But how do they know it’s him? Well, they have the visual evidence and the body, for one. But to be certain it’s not a look-a-like, the government has taken steps above and beyond to make sure they’ve got who they think they have: DNA analysis.

Bin Laden: An alternative view from America

We present two articles from United States that present views that are not part of mainstream media. A little realism rather than triumphalism.

Bin Laden’s Dead, But Our Long National Nightmare is Not Over

By Steven D. | Sourced from Booman Tribune  Posted on  May 2, 2011, 5:59 am

Ding-Dong the Witch is dead!

Well, that’s nice, I suppose. But after ten years of wars that we paid for on the National credit card, one of them (Iraq) clearly and unquestionably unnecessary, after trillions of dollars wasted killing hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and destroying the lives of millions more, we still ain’t back in Kansas, Dorothy.