The only theoretical way that motivation could be there were if they knew he was already dead, and wanted to make it into... This. But the benefits of that entirely elude me, and for reasons TonyMontana very aptly summarised earlier, it seems even more unlikely than 9/11 being an inside job.

Osama: Yes, you finally caught me. But I won't stay long. My brothers in arms will come and get me.
Obama: ;)
Osama: Why are you laughing so strangely?
Obama: I just announced your death. Your body was buried in the sea. Also, I just won the next election.
Osama: Pardon? - I'm alive! You're a liar!
Obama: So, they will not find you. In fact, no one will even look for you. You are ours now, friendo!
Osama: I will not tell you anything. My mouth is sealed with Allah's own and holy clothespin.
Obama: I imagined you would say that. Have you heard of waterboarding?

Whats the point in showing him death?
Those who want to believe will say "Ah yes he is death"
the other side will say "THATS A FAKE!!!"

I enjoyed this.

It's just morbid curiosity disguised as intellectual need.

Perhaps Eagle would be interested in spinning-off an all Argos forum from WOKJ.

Interesting point from a comment on BoingBoing:

Germany is talking about that on television.

What really bothers me are the people who will try and use this as justification for the war on terror in the first place. Just because we killed the bastard doesn't make it right that we killed many, many more people than Osama bin Laden ever did just to greedily invade countries and steal their resources. What's worse, people are also spinning this as why it's okay that we used "enhanced interrogation techniques" and threw away civil rights like habeas corpus. The atrocities on 9/11 were only matched by further atrocities by the United States, and the fact that we're not any closer to ending our wars in three different countries (and, for admittedly different reasons, are now engaged in war with a fourth) makes it very creepy that Americans are only using the event as a symbol of national pride, rather than a deeper reflection on what came out of 9/11 in the first place.

I love how the invasion of Afghanistan led to so many resources such as nothing and perhaps drug crops. Iraq at least has resources, but we are getting shit out of it compared to the massive amount of fisc. spent on it.

The atrocities of 9/11 were not matched by further atrocities. Further, stop blaming America for all ills.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world ... erals.html You can choose to believe this is just a happy accident. I'm not so sure.

Of course we're losing money on these trillion dollar wars. But as far as I can tell, the biggest reason we went to war with Iraq was, and still is, it's oil. There was an immense amount of propagana that told American citizens to hate other countries like France that doubted the existence of weapons of mass destruction. And call me crazy, but I think that the death of at least 4,452 American soldiers in Iraq is an atrocity. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/177982.html
The killing of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians over a war waged under false pretenses, a war that was started thanks to propaganda and an attitude that was created by our response to 9/11, is an atrocity.

To be clear, I don't want to imply that our soldiers are the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. What he did was mass murder on a terrible scale. But I take issue with the idea that the lives of America intrinsically carry so much more value than the lives of others. And no matter how you slice it, the amount of people killed on both sides of Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, dwarfs those who died on 9/11.

Assassination is not really an appropriate term for this situation. Assassination applies to leaders who are elected or have significant global sanction as leader. It doesn't really apply to terrorists, war criminals, gang leaders, etc.

And frankly it's not as if Pakistan has the most solid capabilities or trustworthiness to get the job done and share all the documentation in the compound, etc. Of all US military operations I've heard of that have occurred in my lifetime, this has to be the most successful and easiest to support.

Execution, then.

So, you'd be cool with the Chinese scenario?

as·sas·si·nate  –verb (used with object), -nat·ed, -nat·ing.
1. to kill suddenly or secretively, especially a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/assassinate

There's a simple explanation and I'll bet FILMO knows what it is.

There's a lot variables to address there. The analogy is really poor to me - it assumes an individual wanted by most of the world has been living here, we didn't know about it and the Chinese did, and China would have good reason not to trust us to take care of the person ourselves and share any intelligence found, etc. There would be much more reason for outrage in that scenario. Also my history is weak but aren't there UN treaties that address these issues too?

I didn't see it, but Morgan Spurlock's 2008 documentary Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden? didn't exactly get glowing reviews - - I wonder how it'll play now (and whether he'll get asked about it while out promoting his latest movie The Greatest Movie Ever Sold opening this week)?

Ha, yeah I'm sure Spurlock is getting deluged with questions daily. I saw it about a year ago or so. I liked it for what it was, and I think it would be good to revisit. He made a real effort to learn what it was like to be Islamic on a daily basis and integrated into the culture a bit, and also learned about the military effort in Afghanistan. It was a pretty good effort on his part. Eventually he had to stop because there was a real danger in continuing. What timing for him with a new film promotion!

It was partially filmed in Pakistan - - imagine if the bin Laden's mansion in Abbottabad happened to be visible in the background of one of his shots.

Apples to apples comparison... if we were housing a mass murder of 3,000 innocent Chinese people, and our government was too imcompetent to find this person - or be trusted to bring this killer in - then I'd be MUCH more upset (and embarrassed) with my own incompetent government than the Chinese for taking care of a problem we should have long ago.

How could I feel good about my government when they either knowingly harbored this bastard, or were too imcompetent to find him in a million dollar mansion/fortress in our own backyard? Now let's say the Chinese gave us billions of dollars in free aid every year on top of that. I'd say we'd owe the Chinese an explanation at the least.

You packed a huge assortment of major issues in a single paragraph. Some I agree with, some off base.

"War on terror" is a broad concept. In this area, I think some US actions were fully justified (Afghanistan, Bin Laden), some were highly questionable (Iraq, torture). But, I have no problem with the basic concept of the war on terror, and the Bin Laden capture definitely proved some methods in place work (especially the good old fashioned CIA leg work).

I definitely don't see it as "creepy" that people have pride in their country over the Bin Laden killing. I was proud that the government brought a killer on the level of Hitler to justice, and proud that they did it in what appears to be a well executed plan. I see no reason to feel creepy over feeling pride over that event or its execution.

I'd also highly disagree with any comparison of terror attacks and the people that commit them, that intentionally kill innocent civilians, to deaths in a military conflict. There is a massive difference in my mind.

My problem with the war on terror is its vagueness. Trying to fight terror is like trying to take down the man. We can go after terrorists anywhere in the world, and anyone can be a terrorist if they hate American and preferably are Muslim. I've already spent half of my life watching America fight in multiple wars it cannot afford, and I don't want us to be at war with anti-Americanism abroad. That's just not sustainable. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/28-12

To clarify, what's creepy to me isn't so much that we're celebrating a national catharsis over his death as much as the notion that it makes everything we did these past ten years okay. In particular, we never declared we were at war in Pakistan, yet we've been routinely bombing their people. Sure, we were going after terrorists, but drone strikes aren't always so precise. We cannot imagine how someone whose never stepped into an airport would feel knowing that American robotic planes blew up their relative. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm worried that America played into Bin Laden's hands by invading multiple Muslim countries, and that we've only created more terrorists who will continue to haunt us.

Honestly, I think comparing Bin Laden to Hitler shows how distorted this is. Hitler systematically killed people in an unprecedented way. Bin Laden pulled off the largest terrorist attack in the world, but 3,000 people pales to six million people of one race, not to mention the countless millions more killed.

I often defend Israel's military actions against the terrorists who hide behind cilvilians, so I see where you're coming from. People don't credit how hard it is to fight people who use people as human shields as a fundamental battle strategy. That said, while there's a big difference in morals, at the end of the day the blood has still been shed, and who are we to say that every reported terrorist killed deserved to die? Those people had families, and if we celebrate vengeance then we should acknowledge the possibility that the enormous amount of dead and displaced may one day lead to further vengeance against us too.