UPDATED: HELENA COBBAN HAS SOME QUESTIONS

UPDATE BELOW

Source: JUST WORLD NEWS with Helena Cobban

'I am still thinking hard about the U.S. decision-making during the time of the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbotabad. Was there really a firefight, or resistance? Though the compound had high walls as defenses, it did not seem to have many internal armaments, such as would be required in any serious "firefight" against a presumably very well-armed U.S. attack force. Bin Laden's concealment strategy seemed to be centered overwhelmingly around the approach of "hiding in plain sight" near a large Pakistani military cantonment; and that strategy would depend for its success on not attracting attention by hauling large amounts of weapons into the compound.

'Did the U.S. assailants indeed have a meaningful plan for "capture" and subsequent trial of their target? I hope so. But given the eagerness of the U.S. military to undertake extra-judicial executions against figures of far less renown and far less apparent culpability-- in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere-- I have many serious doubts that they did.

'I hate the serious undermining of not only the letter of international law that EJE's represent, but also the undermining of the whole idea of the rule of law that they represent. Anonymous bureaucrats sitting in offices 10,000 miles away get to consider a compilation of "evidence" against a suspect that is ever tested in an open court and that may consist of large amounts of hearsay, malice from jealous opponents, and/or mistaken identity; and they get to say "Kill this one; don't kill that one; kill that one... "

'What kind of a system, what kind of a world is that?'


UPDATE at 12:45 PM
Was it Bin Laden's double who was killed? The particulars about the death over the weekend keep changing.

The announcement by Obama is the third or fourth time we've learned of Bin Laden's death. I think he has been dead for years and the US just took him out of the icebox before the elections start to heat up.

If it's all true this time about the death of Bin Laden, Dennis Perrin's reaction is spot on.

For a Global Terrorist Mastermind, Osama bin Laden seemed fairly unproductive and quiet for the better part of a decade. If he was indeed the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, then he got in one lucky deadly shot at the infidels. Attacks like that are rare simply because they're nearly impossible to succeed. Calling bin Laden a Mastermind is hyperbole. It gives him too much credit. Of course, it does help keep powerless consumers afraid and prepped for vengeance. For this, large, inflated monsters are necessary.