The news tonight also puts a different light on some of the reshuffling of major posts. The move of Panetta from CIA to Defense makes more sense. If this was an intelligence victory, as seems to be the case, then moving the person in charge of that to head up the remaining operations in the area offers continuity.
Petraeus in at CIA strikes me more as trying to keep him out of the upcoming presidential contest than anything else, though, again, this takes some rethinking. It may be that the general understood he would not be able to contest once OBL had been disposed of as this will be the horse BHO rides to victory next year, and is content to bide his time for 2016.
But the interesting story to tease out of here is what was Panetta's involvement in this operation and why is this leading to him going to replace Gates at Defense rather than have him remain at the CIA?
Anglachel
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Bin Laden Dead - Updated
I've already read cynical responses from the anti-Obama contigent (left & right wings) and I think they are missing the real point.
Osama bin Laden is someone who declared war on the rest of humanity and has engaged in the butchery of thousands of people across four continents (North America, Europe, Africa and Asia) for more than two decades. Any justification for his violence was long ago vitiated by the purposeful targeting of ordinary civilians. It matters not that Bush & Cheney and their neocon crew used him as an excuse to engage in their own butchery. In the attack on the World Trade Center, he was attacking the world, not just the US, and everything that modernity stands for, particularly what is best about it - secularism, equal rights, equality before a rational rule of law, and the undermining of fundamentalist power structures.
Will this event be used in opportunistic ways by every political operator under the sun? Duh, and irrelevant.
This person did not care to share the world with the rest of humanity, wishing to arrogate to himself the power of life and death over all others. It is right and just that the world decline to share the world with him.
Anglachel
UPDATE - Interesting news snippet I have only seen in my local fish-wrap:
"An American official says Osama bin Laden was killed in a mansion close to the Pakistani capital.
A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that the al-Qaida leader had been killed in Pakistan. "
This news intimates that he has been living in Pakistan under the protection of someone influential for some time. Time to be following some money.
Osama bin Laden is someone who declared war on the rest of humanity and has engaged in the butchery of thousands of people across four continents (North America, Europe, Africa and Asia) for more than two decades. Any justification for his violence was long ago vitiated by the purposeful targeting of ordinary civilians. It matters not that Bush & Cheney and their neocon crew used him as an excuse to engage in their own butchery. In the attack on the World Trade Center, he was attacking the world, not just the US, and everything that modernity stands for, particularly what is best about it - secularism, equal rights, equality before a rational rule of law, and the undermining of fundamentalist power structures.
Will this event be used in opportunistic ways by every political operator under the sun? Duh, and irrelevant.
This person did not care to share the world with the rest of humanity, wishing to arrogate to himself the power of life and death over all others. It is right and just that the world decline to share the world with him.
Anglachel
UPDATE - Interesting news snippet I have only seen in my local fish-wrap:
"An American official says Osama bin Laden was killed in a mansion close to the Pakistani capital.
A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that the al-Qaida leader had been killed in Pakistan. "
This news intimates that he has been living in Pakistan under the protection of someone influential for some time. Time to be following some money.
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