The President: Who ever thinks Osama shouldn't have been taken out needs there head EXAMINED!!

[bigdarryl]

Well I guess Beck,Micheal Moore,and some other right wing nuts out there are guilty of this.Nice quote Mr. President

[xchrom]

1. Any one who thinks America is a nation of laws needs to have their heads examined.

[quaker bill]

2. We have been sending

seals teams, special forces units, predator drones, tomahawk cruise missles, smart bombs, dumb bombs, a-10s, f-16s, b-52s, tanks, ac-130s and apaches with DU rounds, basically everything short of nukes, for 10 years, with the express purpose of killing people. We have quite successfully killed folks in large numbers. Why is this one event special?

[demosincebirth]

29. I think they should have shot him in the knee caps first. Let him squirm a little.

[PaulaFarrell]

48. yes indeed

torture's only wrong when bush does it

[TheWraith]

3. DU is a case in point of the President's statement.

I have yet to see anyone explain how, even in the heartland of the US, even with civilian law enforcement, even with a regular non-infamous dangerous fugitive, violently resisting arrest and going for a weapon will not get you killed.

[Enrique]

9. what if they didn't try to arrest him?

what if their orders were to kill him, not capture him?

[Honeycombe8]

31. So? What if? nt

[sofa king]

36. Did we try to capture Yamamoto Isoroku?

Hell no, we killed him first chance we got because he was a military commander and an enemy combatant.

So was OBL. We killed OBL in his very headquarters. All those women and children were just so much window dressing for him--if he cared at all for their welfare he would have moved them elsewhere.

But much more importantly, capturing bin Laden would have automatically led to the captivity and death of many, many innocent people, as every group affiliated with bin Laden would have taken hostages to try to secure his release.

His life was not worth that of one more innocent person.

Aside from ignoring the ugly reality that many more people would die had OBL lived, there are many people here who seem to be pursuing a law-enforcement theory of anti-terrorism over a military one. That would be fine, were it not evident that the law-enforcement angle had totally failed, because the guy was living under obvious house arrest and under the protection of another country that clearly had no intention of releasing him to us.

So, would you feel better if twenty more people had to die to put OBL on trial? Two hundred? Two thousand? Would you feel better if we broke a dozen Pakistani laws and our own treaties so that we could put OBL on trial in a kangaroo court? Should we have started another war with Pakistan, just like we did with Afghanistan, because they too would not release the guy to us?

The answer of course is, "no," when the more expedient option of killing him and avoiding all that trouble exists.

[leveymg]

46. Yamamoto is not really a good analogy. He was riding in a transport plane.

We couldn't have just grabbed the Admiral out of the plane and transferred him to a helicopter. It's very unlikely the Japanese pilots were going to just give up and try to land the plane on a desert island.

However, I can guarantee you, if US commandos had somehow managed to capture Yamamoto alive, they would have been delighted to make him a long-time guest of Naval Intelligence with lots of time for cigarettes and chats about the challenges of commanding forces in the Pacific theater.

[PaulaFarrell]

49. people are going to die because he was assassinated

i guarantee you that. no lives were saved by this.

[sofa king]

51. Yes, there will be reprisals.

But nobody is going to hold innocent people hostage until we return OBL from the ocean. Fewer hostage rescue teams will have to be created and diverted from the real task of finding those people and shutting them down before they have a chance to execute their operations.

And that's another point worth making. Logically, when the boss gets bagged (dead or alive), the thing to do is to run every operation you have on the books immediately. The window of opportunity for that is a week at the outside. After that, our guys start kicking in their doors and it's too late.

The only reprisal so far is that the Pakistanis outed a CIA station chief, which suggests that our "ally" is compromised from within, which in turn suggests that had we captured him, some Pakistanis would have hit on the idea of a hostage exchange with their puppets as the kidnappers and with themselves as the false intermediary, with all the loss of life and tragedy that entails. An obvious first kidnapping target would have been the very same CIA station chief.

But with Osama sleeping with the fishes, one of our guys gets to take a vacation instead.

[JuniperLea]

53. Doraldina! I've been looking for you!

No one can read a crystal ball like you!

.

[mkultra]

38. In our next war well just try to arrest all of the enemies.

Will give your idea a shot.

[Enrique]

43. why do you have a Noam Chomsky avatar?

just messing with us?

[mkultra]

44. Because i like him

and i like his skepticism and rationalism but i dislike lunacy. Its important to know the difference. While i agree with him that Bush handled things poorly and refused to accept a hand over by the Taliban, i disagree with him in this topic on a few points. I don't need to agree with everything Chomsky thinks in order to appreciate him. Im not sure why you think that is necessary.

Particularly his view on the Bin Ladens guilt and the proper means to bring him to justice. I have considered the evidence(albeit limited) regarding bin laden and i have concluded that there is enough to make his guilt plausible if not then his complicity. With that conclusion, i consider the recent methods. I believe a good portion of Pakistan's government knew he was there. I believe that our relationship with Pakistan is tenuous in that they play both sides of the fence with us in order to stay out of the heat. Their true interests do not lie with turning over Bin Laden or any other Sharia oriented member as should be clear to anyone who understands the events that surrounded Benazir Bhutto and Pakistans response to that event.

In total, We are engaged in a conflict of our own making driven by anger in us that is deserved. But I have come to the conclusion that there is a group of people who want to continue doing us harm. Conservatives overtly mishandle foreign policy to drive a neo-con ideology and the result is backlash. I'm not willing to die for that. The only way out at this point is Kill them and stop electing neo-cons.

I understand that some people feel it is moral to risk their own life instead of killing another. I respect that sentiment deeply as an expression of moral belief that I do not posses.

If Iraqi commandos had landed, shot Bush in the head and dumped his body in the see, my outrage would not be great.

[Raine1967]

35. Your seem to be too pragmatic for some,

I happen to agree with you. The dude had 10 years to surrender.

It's not like he was a head of state... Actually he wasn't, he was a man who declared war on this (our) country.

The United States should be allowed to defend itself. It did.

[qazplm]

6. Where in Common Article 3 or

the Law of Armed Conflict did we violate the law?

You should actually know the law first.

[Peregrine Took]

8. Excellent comment. n/t

[dkf]

10. Better what we did than go to war with Pakistan for aiding and abetting terrorism.

We aren't dealing with a country that would have allowed us to get Bin Laden legally.

[jefferson_dem]

13. Damn you Navy Seals!

They forgot to mirandize bin Laden.

[ZombieHorde]

14. Laws are nothing more than useful illusions. nt

[bbinacan]

19. Are you even serious

or the joke I think you are.

[dionysus]

25. .

:cry:

[Honeycombe8]

28. It's legal to take out a fugitive on the run who doesn't turn himself in.

A la Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, and others.

[Recursion]

41. What law do you think was violated? (nt)

[Raine]

4. I agree with President Obama nt

:thumbsup:

[Honeycombe8]

30. Me, too. nt

[Enrique]

5. not exactly

he said that about anyone who thinks bin Laden didn't deserve it. Big difference.

Regarding the decision to take bin Laden out, I believe him when he says he didn't lose sleep over it. But I'm sure he didn't take it totally lightly. I'm sure he consulted with lawyers about it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined

[Puglover]

7. I totally agree with the President's decision

to take out the SOB. What I cannot fathom is why on earth you are starting threads like this a week after the fact. :eyes:

[Joe the Revelator]

33. Because the 60 min interview the quote is from occurred tonight.

[Puglover]

37. Got it.

Unfortunately the OP neither used quotation marks nor did he specify when it was said. Typical. My reaction is still a big meh.

[Joe the Revelator]

42. agreed

[KurtNYC]

11. what is the exact quote?

got a link

[jefferson_dem]

12. Here:

:patriot:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20060530-10391709.html#ixzz1LoFWqleC

[NYC_SKP]

34. I agree with the President.

There aren't laws written for every single situation that can be relied upon to provide guidance.

He did the right thing here.

[Nancy Waterman]

15. This will be the take away line of the night

Expect to see it all week.

[jefferson_dem]

16. I hope so.

It's only the truth... And it's a line that will only help Americans better appreciate the man's dedication and character.

[Enrique]

20. he didn't say it n/t

[jefferson_dem]

21. I know exactly what he said...

And I stand by my comment. :hi:

[MadBadger]

17. Thats not what he said

He said that anybody who doesnt think he deserved his fate needs to have their heads examined. There is a difference

[RichGirl]

18. Odd to see Beck and Michael Moore in the same sentende.

One is a lying piece of sh*t who has not morals...one is too obessed with morals.

[bbinacan]

22. Which is which?

:evilgrin:

[JoePhilly]

23. Obama got that right too.

[Codeine]

24. Except he probably would have spelled it correctly. nt

[Honeycombe8]

32. LOL! I noticed that, too. nt

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

26. someone had his cajones bronzed last week

:)

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

27. So you got the actual quote and still went with "there".

:rofl:

[rug]

39. Would that statement have been deleted if it wasn't made by Obama?

[AtomicKitten]

40. .

.

[leveymg]

45. The question isn't to kill or capture him just because we could, it's what information did he have

that we never will because -- when we had the chance -- we killed him without interrogating him, instead.

Think about that.

BTW: The President didn't say "people who say UBL shouldn't have been taken out need their heads examined". He said, "And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined." - President Obama on 60 minutes 5/8/2011

Barack Obama said that those who question the ethics of killing UBL, a mass murderer, need "to have their head examined." That's very different from saying those who question the wisdom of killing him as and when we did, foregoing forever the opportunity to interrogate him and compare his statements with other sources, should have their heads examined.

[Phx_Dem]

47. He's talking to you, Michael Moore!

[Johnny2X2X]

50. They were right...

if you went by what Bush said, Osama was no threat and not a priority and we shouldn't waste any time on him.

What is being lost in all of this is another huge Bush Admin. lie. The lie that Osama was not a threat and that he was marginalized in a cave some where. The mountain of intelligence found with him proves he still had command and control of Al Qaeda. Bush botched Tora Bora so they then set about convincing America that Bin Laden didn't matter and he wasn't a threat. Well, we now know he was still the head of Al Qaeda and the most dangerous and biggest threat to our Country. The guy was found with a treasure trove of Intel., including plans for future attacks.

[Enrique]

52. misquotes of prominent democrats are very popular on DU

this one is definitely a misquote, and the John Kerry one is probably a misinterpretation. He couldn't really have meant that people questioning the government's action should "shut up". Could he have meant that?

[swishyfeet]

54. We've killed many thousands BECAUSE of him

The least we could do is kill that motherfucker too.