osama bin laden – Page 2

BREAKING: ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

Legal Insurrection tipped me to this one: apparently, ThinkProgress (link available via Legal Insurrection) got itself in a bit of a tizzy over a story in the Mexican press that one of the Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden was the son of Mexican immigrants, which apparently means (according to TP) that we need to pass the DREAM Act* and that the military is by the way keeping Latinos down. Now, let’s establish something right off of the bat; I don’t know who was on that SEAL team, and it would not surprise me in the slightest to hear that one or more of them were of Latino ancestry. Or any other ancestry, frankly. That’s not the point: the point is that when you’re a hardcore partisan ideologue using a story for agitprop, you should probably check the story first to make sure that you don’t get burned.

ThinkProgress did not check the story first.

Quick: read this sentence (from the original Mexican newspaper article that sent TP into a tizzy) and tell me what’s wrong with it. It’s OK if you don’t speak Spanish: neither do I, really – and I still can pick out the howler, so you should be able to, too.

El soldado Rubén Mejía, nacido en este país y de padres guanajuatenses, ha sido ascendido a sargento por el operativo en que un equipo enfrentó y dio muerte a Bin Laden.

“Sargento.”

Continue reading BREAKING: ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’

Pajamas Media took a survey of various European media sources and their evolving reaction to the Osama bin Laden excision. It will not surprise anyone in the slightest to hear that the level of disapproval has been increasing all week, with many an envious sneer along the way. The German response is particularly telling (they’re usually a leading indicator of Left-wing antiwar thinking*): even the center-right (hah!) magazines want international tribunals and investigations and whatnot. So we should probably see the first calls for that over here in about… a week or so. Probably followed with the leaking of the SEAL team’s names by some fellow-traveler in the Executive Branch with a grudge against the military and an iPad, so I hope that the SEALs are taking my advice and getting a lawyer now.

I’m also going to give some free advice to the White House: and I actually hope that they’ll take it, because this is an American issue, not a Right/Left, Republican/Democrat, or Competent/Incompetent one. Let’s just say that I don’t really care what’s on the tapes that we’re suddenly now saying that we don’t actually have. This is because I’m reasonably sure that there’s nothing drastically awful on them, given that they weren’t suppressed from the get-go: so there’s nothing like an actual noncombatant being molested or shot out of hand or anything like that. If there is something like that on them then I would have to wonder why the administration didn’t react with horror at the time, but never mind that right now: the point is, I expect that the video record doesn’t show an actual atrocity. Continue reading Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’

#rsrh My advice to the Osama SEAL team.

And I cannot BELIEVE that this is even remotely necessary advice:

Now that you’re back?

Get a lawyer.

Because I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this, that’s why.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, of course I’d love to be wrong about this.

#rsrh I started to read this Philip Klein…

…article about how the President wasn’t going to release the Osama bin Laden death photos, and started muttering something to the effect of The decision is probably not going to be left up to the White House – and then I noted that Philip made the same observation at the end.

I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds and Stephen Green: the political side of the bin Laden excision has been… poorly executed. Much worse than the military side, which I suspect was the aspect of the original mission that worried the White House most.

Good post here from Academic Elephant…

…over what the whole thing means. Read it. Personally, I’m just going to put up two things about Osama bin Laden, and then hopefully go back to my life:

First: This is going around the VRWC, mostly because we don’t care who you are, it’s as funny as hell:

…Yeah. Nothing personal, Donald, but that was what the folks in the carny trade call a ‘blow-off.’ I don’t think that you’re going to be able to trump that one.

Continue reading Good post here from Academic Elephant…

#rsrh bin Laden dead.

And we have the body.

Good. Now bury the corpse in an unmarked grave and let us go on with our lives under the open sky. That man has already had far too much of a say in our affairs as it is.