Death of Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D)

Twatty AfDers.

I'm surprised that "Osama bin Laden's death conspiracy theories" isn't up yet. I mean, it's about time!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...Osama_bin_Laden

The nominator was arguing that the information on OBL's death should be merged to his biography, not deleted.

What's the saying? "Get your facts straight first, then distort them as you please."

The good news though is that OBL's biography is no longer under BLP protection now. Unleash the vandals!

Ugh, stupid IP addresses keep putting stupid stuff in the article and the talk page. Nothing new there, but there's way more than i've ever seen.

It appears the article was protected from exactly that shortly before you posted this.

I dunno, I guess if someone's death is a Really Big Hairy Deal™ like this one is, then they might as well have a separate article, though it does seem a little... inelegant, such that it could conceivably be interpreted as a clearly US/UK-dominated group of "internet people" just gloating. Not that anyone is likely to care...

Still, if you look at other examples, they're either not much help or somewhat contradictory. For instance, Death of a Salesman (T-H-L-K-D) is a highly extensive article, but Salesman is nothing but a redirect. Likewise, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (T-H-L-K-D) is also extensive, whereas Ivan Ilyich is actually a redirect to the very same article.

I suppose a better comparison might be made to the Death of John Lennon (T-H-L-K-D), which is about half as long as the article on Lennon himself... except John Lennon wasn't the leader of a massive international terrorist network. Luigi Galleani (T-H-L-K-D) was the leader of such a network, but there's no separate article on his death - but that's probably because he died of a heart attack. Andreas Baader (T-H-L-K-D) was an international terrorist, but he wasn't really the leader of a massive network... but he committed suicide in prison to avoid execution, so that's probably not too encyclopedic. If he'd committed suicide in prison to avoid watching Doctor Who reruns, then maybe...

Anyway, I guess it really doesn't matter in the end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=427024621

Sigh... no one bothers to read the news and understand that the man died a week ago... NOT on May 2 (today)!

Not a week ago, but April 29th in the morning, apparently.

Ahhh, so it was his ghost I saw in the wee-hours while I was taking a shower! Well, now I know why he looked so pissed off.

There will surely be enough info on the operation itself to merit an article. Hell, there will be books about it, because it was a tough 10 year operation, and the endgame was 8 months.

The article on the death of JFK itself has subarticles. Bin Laden won't get that much.

Did he look like Akmed, the Dead Terrorist?

April 29th was when Obama decided to go ahead with the operation. It actually happened on May 1st.

From the BBC:

Or to paraphrase Lou Costello, Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Abbottabad!

Yeah, I figured that out. Of course, the Death article didn't state that at the time, I had to look within the reference about April 29th.

Now, the issue is whether we're going to say May 1st or May 2nd. I would say 1st, since that was the day over here, while it was May 2nd over there. And this is English Wikipedia and not the Arabic version.

You should have it say "April 31st," just to add to the confusion.

Besides, what's wrong with UTC? It's Universal, remember? And if you don't use that, you're supposed to use the local time - there are rules for this sort of thing, though I suspect most people on Wikipedia don't know about things like that.

Speaking of magic bullets, why not Frank Costello (the 54th anniversary of whose assassination attempt it now happens to be)?

Also speaking of anniversaries, see [1].

I believe that English is the language used and has no bearing on time issues.

You could try making the case for all dates and times to be recorded in UTC to avoid confusion, but I'm sure that would cause no end of argument about how it would just confuse people. And some really entertaining discussions about UTC versus GMT and why each is best.

That's the first thing I thought when I saw the spelling of the location this morning, and the second thing I thought was, "Horsey's definitely going to make a joke about that on WR."

Yes, there is no article on the Death of Lee Harvey Oswald.

It's interesting to note that a mention of the killing of bin Laden now appears in Barack Obama (T-H-L-K-D), immediately prior to the sentence about Obama announcing his re-election campaign. U-S-A! U-S-A!

This is rather a sad thing, but this is the second Important World News Item that I first heard from Wikipedia Review.

I'll see if I can do something about that.

No edit war to rename the article [[Assassination of Osama bin Laden]]?

On a more serious note, where did the "week ago" rumor come from? I heard that too, but apparently it was false?

Some early reports were saying that, I think because there was news that a DNA test was being performed to confirm it was bin Laden and it was taking a while.

(So) now that Obama has found Bin Laden do you think he'll also be able to find WMDs in Iraq?

Dick Cheney congratulates Obama.

One campaign promise down, 39 to go.

EDIT: Okay, it's not quite that bad...

Hearing a lot of blather on the BBC right now about people doubting Obama's statement because no photographs of bin Laden's corpse have been released. A "deather" conspiracy theory seems to be forming.

I wonder if the US Navy releases long form death certificates?

The thing is, if it's a hoax, then Osama will just end up releasing a video saying, "Hey, i'm still alive". So, I don't see why Obama would take such an obvious risk by lying.

Regardless of the fact that the Taliban spokesman has already confirmed that Osama is dead and has vowed revenge.

I called that first. See my comment at the AN/I thread. Hell, it was my second thought when they interrupted Monk and told me Obama was going to make a speech.

I don't see why the only two options are "bin Laden is dead" and "bin Laden has not been captured". A far better (and more likely) scenario is that bin Laden was captured in the raid and is currently in a US black site prison where he will be subject to illegal coercive methods in case he has any information that he is willing to give up. After all, why would the US give up a potential intelligence asset like that? Buried at sea? How convenient...

Good point. That wouldn't really surprise me either.

But I don't believe that people should be starting such conspiracy theories without any real evidence for such as of yet. If inconsistencies start cropping up, then sure, but I don't see any reason to believe that version just yet.

Of course it was a conspiracy. It was a desperate conspiracy aimed at removing the stupid British Royal Wedding from my TV. The conspiracy just locked up my vote for Obama.

Getting the Royal Wedding off television is definitely the highlight of his presidency, for sure.

And the CIA will "prove" that the video is a fake.



So without any real evidence we should just believe whatever our fearless leader tells us to believe?

I don't think it really much matters if bin Laden is dead or not. He hasn't really done anything in about a decade. What really matters is whether or not the US government is going to act as though he's dead.

Nah, the man's good, but he's not THAT good.

The WMDs are in Dick Cheney's Imaginationland. To get there, I don't know what you have to do. Perhaps be able to look out of Cheney's eyes like in Being John Malkovich, only it would be Being Dick Cheney. Might look like the intro to one of those Bond movies where you start out looking at the world, down a rifled gun barrel. Or perhaps in Cheney's case, an unrifled shotgun barrel. Who knows? If you're going to be that surreal you might as well try LSD.

The years 2001-2008 may yet go down as the craziest, wackiest years in US history since 1968-73. Maybe since the civil war. I still don't quite believe any of it.

It ain't over yet.

That horse is already out of the barn. The evidence that bin Laden was a significant figure in the 911 attacks is sketchy or "classified." He initially denied involvement, but later claimed responsibility, whether because he thought he could become a Jihadist superstar, or for other, more complicated reasons.

Your question is appropriate, but the time frame is misplaced. Bin Laden was an intelligence asset beginning in 1979. With any intelligence asset, it's very difficult to determine when one stops being one. Sometimes one is more of an asset dead than alive.

It appears that the Pakistani ISI has known bin Laden's whereabouts for some time. The decision to whack him probably earned them some big reward bucks. However, the timing raises many questions. It coincides with the decision to shut down the NYC trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which could have been embarrassing for many reasons.

And of course the English Wikipedia is only for Americans so should only consider American time zones. Let's ignore the many English-speaking contributors in for example South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In fact, bin Laden was in Pakistan, not an Arabic-speaking country. While many Pakistanis will know some Arabic for religious reasons, I'd bet that more of them contribute to the English WP than the Arabic one.



For a start, it's chronologically the wrong order.

Indeed, most of us here in the United States probably think "Urdu" is an SMS abbreviation used to refer to another person's hairstyle or soft drink.

What was the first?

Tsunami I think.

I'm guessing the death of Tedward Kennedy doesn't rise to that level.

The US government is now admitting that bin Laden was unarmed. Presumably his wife was unarmed, too, when she was shot while "rushing the assault team." She must have looked pretty scary.

Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D) does not acknowledge any of this. It says that "Bin Laden, three other men, and a woman were killed in a firefight in which U.S. forces did not experience any injuries or casualties." Well, Duh.

Death of Osama bin Laden (T-H-L-K-D) says that "According to U.S. officials, Bin Laden resisted the American special operation team. He was unarmed when he was shot." Since apparently he was not "rushing the assault team" along with his wife, exactly how was he resisting? Flipping the bird?

This looks like a summary execution, and I don't think it is going to help Obama's popularity all that much. I don't think even Dubya would have done this.

I'm a flaming liberal on most issues, but not on this one.



for that fuckead. End of story.

Wow, LessHeard vanU in a gif!

I think it's going to be the best boost for Obama so far. He's already pissed off the civil rights mavens by refusing to shut down Gitmo and not stopping the military tribunals but that's not a demographic that will decide 2012. Even Wassila AL could vote for the man who killed bin Laden.

Osama is not the first unarmed enemy combatant killed in the field by the U.S., just the only one people've noticed. I don't think it was a violation of international law or the US rules of engagement but, frankly, nothing would happen if it were.

Don't kid yourself. The lunatic right is still trying to attack him.

For example: Breitbart is doing his best to spread a conspiracy plot.

But kidding myself is what gets me through the day

Maybe Barry should have just taken Cheney's advice and used the nationally televised "Running Man" scenario Dick had planned. Or at least put up a Youtube video of Condi Rice eating Bin Laden.

This isn't an issue of "liberal" etc. It's called "common sense", and you and the elements of the US government that ordered the hit are not evidencing any.

The options were:

1) ignore the man -- for all intents and purposes he has been dead for almost a decade.

2) capture, followed by kangaroo court

3) kill while attempting to capture

4) extrajudicial execution

(3) is much worse than (2), and (2) is massively, incredibly, worse than (1). That what went down was clearly option (4) ("take no prisoners"), is easily the worst thing imaginable from almost any rational perspective. What a complete mess! Someone clearly thought they could manage the situation, and now all we have are backpedaling on mission details and concerns about "inflaming the situation"(!!!).

Rah rah, though. Have your party, or whatever it takes to keep the smile on your face during your next anal probe at the airport. Think of it has OBL reaching out from the grave: praise be to Allah! Or whatever bin Laden would say.

You have it backwards. It's that picture in my mind of bin Laden with a couple of bullets through the eye, Moe Green/Bugsy Siegal/Goldfinger style, that will get me through my next airport experience. He got us first, but we got him last.


One good skullfuck deserves another.
-- Not M.K. Gandhi

Nobody would believe it, since Condi probably has yet to eat any man.

However, if you slathered bin Laden's corpse with bacon fat, I'll bet you could have gotten Andrew Zimmern to take at least two tastes. They missed thinking of that, and it would have made GREAT network TV. And serve a great many appetites all at once, while sending a message. I'd watch it.