The conspiracy game!

[ydoaPs]

This is a game where we try to predict conspiracy theories. Since Osama Bin Laden just died, let's start there. I'll go first.

 

He's actually still alive because:

• Obama would never allow the assassination of a fellow Muslim.
  
• No long form death certificate was shown.
  
• Bush couldn't do it, so there's no way Obama could.
  
• Obama took too long to do it.
  
• They dumped the body too quickly.
  
• Obama/Biden sounds too much like Osama Bin Laden.
  
• Sarah Palin and/or Michelle Bachmann and/or Donald Trump and/or Glenn Beck told me so.
  

[John Cuthber]

Osama bin Laden never existed. He was an invention of the CIA/ MiB. This was about to become public so they "killed" him. The "burial at sea" ensures there's no body to examine.

[keelanz]

• Sarah Palin and/or Michelle Bachmann and/or Donald Trump and/or Glenn Beck told me so.

 

Ill call your bluff, Ron Paul told me never to believe Donald Trump

 

Also capn is part of it all, osama is chillin with capn because he knew before the news, infact he knew before OBAMA himself that osama was dead....tellin yah man watch that capn guy he knows more than hes letting on (i know this for a fact because he told me on chat)

Edited May 2, 2011 by keelanz

[hypervalent_iodine]

I considered cheating and going over to above top secret to find out what they were thinking. But I didn't.

 

You can almost guarantee that there will be a few saying they are lying about the whole thing. They never found let alone killed Osama and are only saying so to make the 'sheepies' think the government (read: NWO/illuminati/reptilians) is actually doing something. Probably there will be a few saying it's a distraction and that something non-descript but certainly 'BIG' is about to happen. Following that, a few survivalist threads will pop up. More threads about how it all ties back to the Illuminati and a few about reptilians. Mostly all doom and gloom.

 

Then you'll get the obligatory 9/11 conspiracies flaring back up until someone remembers Japan or Trump claims that Obama's parents weren't from Kenya at all, but are in fact the former leaders of a rebel army in the Republic of Congo and spent their time kidnapping children from their homes and turning them into soldiers. He will then demand birth certificates from both as well as a letter from Kenya confirming their birth.

 

And this is why I should stop reading conspiracy sites.

[CaptainPanic]

It is the official story that (1) Osama is dead and (2) his body was left at sea.

 

Under Bush's Patriot Act of 2001 it is not allowed to disagree with official government lies. Those who disagree are probably terrorists or communists themselves.

You aren't siding with the terrorists or the communists, are you? Are you?

[john5746]

It's all about the birth certificate! Obama is actually Osama! They exchanged faces and cleaned up the paperwork trail of the "real" Obama and now the exchange is complete. The ex-CIA agent is the President. God save us.

[rigney]

The demise of Osama Bin Laden

Unlike my normal hate for sick murderers, as much as I despise them; would have been nice to lock this guy away in Leavenworth, Kansas for the rest of his un-natural life.

Took a while, but looks like this military team finally got done what we have been trying to do for years. I just can't think of a more demeaning place for his burial than in a cold, wet "SEA", as alien to him and those of his kind, as far away Mars might be. Poetic justice you might say?.

Edited May 2, 2011 by rigney

[Doc. Josh]

I love conspiracy's however i belive this one to be true. And if it is true Obama had a pretty elite team to do it. Go Seals!

[lemur]

Campaign strategists brainstorming in a think tank:

participant 1: Come on, people, what other kinds of government successes could win votes for an incumbent candidate?

participant 2: making gas $1/gallon?

participate 1: ok, anything ACHIEVABLE?

participant 3: what about creating world peace by eliminating all national security and secret police globally?

participant 4: wouldn't that put us out of a job?

participant 3: oh yeah, never mind

participant 2: oh, I know, what about assassinating Bin Laden?

participant 4: but Bin Laden doesn't actually exist

participant 1: but he does in the mind of the public . . .

participant 5: ok, good job people; now the question is whether we need to pay Trump anymore or do we have the harassment-victim sympathy vote covered?

[Marat]

The fundamental basis for establishing the justification of the state to hold anyone in prison to face a criminal charge is known as the 'habeas corpus' principle. 'Habeas corpus' means 'you should have the body,' referring to the fact that being able to display the physical corpse of the person killed is the very essence of establishing that someone is guilty of murder. Indeed, it is extremely rare to be able to convict anyone of murder in a common law jurisdiction unless the state can actually physically produce the corpse to establish that a person really has been murdered, rather than is just not able to be found.

 

The proof of death becomes especially difficult in the case of someone who has been in hiding for a long period of time and who is trying to keep his existence a secret. If I were to have claimed in 1972 that I had murdered the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, a higher standard of proof would have justifiably been required of me to establish that I had indeed killed someone who normally seemed non-existent even without being killed. This same reasoning applies to the case of Osama bin Laden, who hasn't even appeared on video since 2007.

 

So what has the U.S. now done? Rather than presenting the body of bin Laden to a neutral official, such as a respected Swiss pathologist, for example, and performing a DNA analysis and facial recognition test before that witness before disposing of the body, they instead immediately disposed of the body in a place where it can never be recovered for inspection by a neutral observer. The only witnesses to the verification process establishing that the U.S. ever had the body of bin Laden were extremely prejudiced observers, the U.S. military and CIA, who of course would have lied to support some official story that bin Laden was dead even if he were not dead. And rather than burying the objective evidence to clarify the issue in some undisclosed location on dry land, which would also have avoided the burial place ever becoming a shrine, the U.S. has buried it at sea, so the objectivity of bin Laden's death can never be established.

 

In this case the U.S. has at every step behaved exactly as it would have had the entire death of bin Laden been faked. Its excuse that it had to act this way to preserve the Islamic requirement that bin Laden be buried quickly has been undermined by Islamic clerics who have asserted that burial at sea is a worse offense than delayed burial. Its excuse that showing the body would inflame public passions in the Islamic world is undermined by the fact that it displayed the corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons after killing them.

 

I'm not saying that I either think that bin Laden is still alive or not. It actually doesn't much matter, since the death of a single terrorist makes absolutely no difference to the war on the general terrorist movement, which consists of hundreds if not thousands of enemies of Western interests. Rather, I am saying that the whole mission has been handled with gross incompetence by the U.S., since burying bin Laden at sea will ensure that conspiracy theories relating to his (purported) death can never be settled, like Friedrich Barbarossa supposedly going to the mountains after his death to await the reunification of Germany.

[lemur]

The only witnesses to the verification process establishing that the U.S. ever had the body of bin Laden were extremely prejudiced observers, the U.S. military and CIA, who of course would have lied to support some official story that bin Laden was dead even if he were not dead. And rather than burying the objective evidence to clarify the issue in some undisclosed location on dry land, which would also have avoided the burial place ever becoming a shrine, the U.S. has buried it at sea, so the objectivity of bin Laden's death can never be established.

The irritating thing about conspiracy theory is arguing over whether something is real/true or not without sufficient evidence. The interesting thing about them is thinking about how the interest of believing or disbelieving will play out in political discourse. I expect people who have been complaining about global military intervention since before the war on terror began will be using the death of bin Laden as reason to assert the war on terror is over and to "bring home the troops" and divert military spending to domestic recipients. Since there is no reason to equate bin Laden's death with an end to terrorism generally, I don't see what interest anyone would have in insisting that his death was faked in order to assert that he's still alive somewhere. The really interesting thing is what happens now to the discourse that bin Laden is purely a figure of propaganda used to give a face to terrorism? Does that conspiracy theory get laid to rest because it no longer makes sense to argue about the non-existence of an imaginary figure reported as being dead? Finally, whose face will replace bin Ladin's as the godfather of all terrorism? Will people start resisting terrorism without a scapegoat or is that too advanced for global civilization at this point in history still?

[John Cuthber]

"The fundamental basis for establishing the justification of the state to hold anyone in prison to face a criminal charge is known as the 'habeas corpus' principle. 'Habeas corpus' means 'you should have the body,' referring to the fact that being able to display the physical corpse of the person killed is the very essence of establishing that someone is guilty of murder."

 

Bollocks.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

 

Anyway, who cares?

If Bin Laden wasn't killed then I don't think it will be long before he posts a video of himself reading a copy of the Times with the headline about his death.

If he was killed then the question is was that killing lawful?

that's a more difficult question.

Was it an execution by the US without trial? If so that's very naughty- especially since it was on someone else's territory.

If it was a serious attempt to capture him for due process but, unfortunately, he refused to surrender, pulled a gun and was shot by, in effect, police acting in self defence that's another story.

What are the chances of us ever being certain about the truth?

Practically nil.

 

Do I care?

Not a lot. I think it would have been better if he had been tried then dumped in jail for ever.

However, I accept that would be impractical. Too many people would be prepared to put too much effort into getting him out and an equally big mob would want to break in to kill him.

I don't believe in capital punishment because I don't want to be thought of as sinking to the level of being a cold blooded killer myself (even by proxy).

Of all the possible outcomes I think this is one of the least bad.

 

Of course, for OBL's followers it's not a bad outcome either. He is now in heaven enjoying the rewards of martyrdom.

[Moontanman]

Good ones lemur and john, I heard they attached his body to a 500 pound bomb set to go off when it hit the bottom, lol Finding his body is conceivable, in the deep cold ocean a bottom dragging fishing trawl could find him reasonably fast ( I mean he is dead so there is no rush) if you knew the general area where he was dumped, if it's deep enough his body would survive relatively intact for months at least maybe years.

Edited May 3, 2011 by Moontanman

[Marat]

The preliminary investigation by a court to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence to require someone to answer the state's accusation that he has committed a crime is called a habeas corpus hearing in every common law jurisdiction I know, and that term comes from the Latin subjunction for 'you should have the body' or 'you must have the body,' which is a phrase projecting by metonomy from the case of murder to all criminal cases to indicate that some substantive evidence is required to support the state's accusation. In this case as well, to prove that bin Laden was indeed killed, the body should be produced. Nothing else, not even a photograph which could be photoshopped, will resolve the issue perfectly. The statement by bin Laden's close relatives, who were present at his killing, may be a good second for establishing the truth of the matter, but it is still not the best evidence possible.

 

Statements by the U.S. about bin Laden's death are especially suspect, given their manifold lies at the press conference given yesterday. We hear a long, highly cinematic, rhetorically inflated diatribe about how the craven bin Laden hid behind a woman he was holding up as a human shield as he attempted to fire his weapon at the brave Amercian heroes, who of course fired on him in self-defense with perfect self-justification. A great story, only it now turns out that not only was bin Laden completely unarmed, but that he was not holding a human shield to protect himself. Instead, the U.S. 'accidentally' murdered an innocent by-stander, a female, in the room, after killing an unarmed bin Laden. The press conference spokesperson also sought to paint bin Laden as living in luxury in a mansion while he expected his followers to sacrifice their lives in the War on Terrorism, but now we discover that he was crowded into his residence with his own family plus two others, giving him the 'luxurious lifestyle' of a tenement dweller. A further lie was the misrepresentation of the downed helicopter in the mission as having had 'mechanical trouble,' even though films today show that its propellar blade clumsily collided with the wall of the compound. I guess 'mechanical trouble' sounds more heroic.

 

International law allows the arrest of criminals who are accused of being hostis humani generis,' the enemies of all mankind,' by their wanton acts of destruction, so the arrest of bin Laden by the U.S. was legally sound. But since state immunity at international law does not extend to immunity from criminal acts, the U.S. in arresting bin Laden was obligated to arrest him by the usual standards of domestic criminal law, which I would guess, given the ultimate root of Pakistan's legal system in the common law. In a case where a group of Navy Seals, armed to the teeth, are attempting to arrest an unarmed man in his fifties with a few supportive women in the room, it is utterly beyond any conceivable legal use of force to shoot him in the face because he is 'resisting' arrest. Thus once again, just as in Libya where civilians are being killed by the West's intervention, which is itself only authorized to protect civilians, the U.S. makes itself a criminal state at international law.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The preliminary investigation by a court to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence to require someone to answer the state's accusation that he has committed a crime is called a habeas corpus hearing in every common law jurisdiction I know, and that term comes from the Latin subjunction for 'you should have the body' or 'you must have the body,' which is a phrase projecting by metonomy from the case of murder to all criminal cases to indicate that some substantive evidence is required to support the state's accusation.

You are mistaken. The Oxford English Dictionary:

 

A writ issuing out of a court of justice, or awarded by a judge in vacation, requiring the body of a person to be brought before the judge or into the court for the purpose specified in the writ; spec. the prerogative writ habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, requiring the body of a person restrained of liberty to be brought before the judge or into court, that the lawfulness of the restraint may be investigated and determined.

 

Habeas corpus hearing generally refer to a hearing undertaken to determine whether a prisoner's current imprisonment is lawful, not to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to arrest or charge a suspect.

 

The etymology in the OED has nothing to do with murder cases and everything to do with having the body of the accused brought before the court.

 

What you refer to is generally undertaken before a grand jury or in a preliminary hearing, and is not a habeas corpus order.

[lemur]

Marat, what data are you relying on for the details of what actually happened? You say the US military data is biased and therefore suspect, and that is undebatable, but why then would any other data be less biased? Supposedly there is video footage of the event. Presumably that will at least be presented to some relatively neutral third parties for review. What if it is invented footage, though? What basis is there for establishing facts one way or the other? The thing I worry about from your post is that you (and maybe others) are reacting to the jingoism that is expressed in the story. If this is propaganda portraying bin Laden as using women as human shields to validate the 'heroism' of the soldiers, then it would be valid to point that out, but how can there be a basis for that suspicion except the assumption that it makes for hollywood-quality propaganda? Furthermore if propagandists were willing to go so far as to re-present an assassination as an armed skirmish with someone using human shields, then why would it be any less possible that the whole thing is a hoax? He could even have been held in custody secretly for some time until someone decided to use him for a political agenda. What constrains the possibilities of conspiracy theories?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

In this case the U.S. has at every step behaved exactly as it would have had the entire death of bin Laden been faked.

Presumably the continued existence of bin Laden would make short work of this.

 

There are also statements from Al-Qaeda members who confirm that bin Laden is dead:

 

1107 GMT: A member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Osama bin Laden's network in Yemen, said he had confirmed the news of the killing, calling it a "catastrophe.""This news has been a catastrophe for us. At first we did not believe it, but we got in touch with our brothers in Pakistan who have confirmed it," a member reached by telephone told an AFP correspondent in Yemen.

http://www.google.co...c913bc2a4047.01

 

The Taliban also claims it is working to confirm his death, so their angry statements in the next week or so should shed light on the issue.

 

Its excuse that showing the body would inflame public passions in the Islamic world is undermined by the fact that it displayed the corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons after killing them.

Different administration, different approach. Surprised?

 

Rather, I am saying that the whole mission has been handled with gross incompetence by the U.S., since burying bin Laden at sea will ensure that conspiracy theories relating to his (purported) death can never be settled, like Friedrich Barbarossa supposedly going to the mountains after his death to await the reunification of Germany.

Question: Why should the United States care about the conspiracy theories that surround it, so long as a potential terrorist leader (or at least spiritual inspiration) has been eliminated?

 

So what has the U.S. now done? Rather than presenting the body of bin Laden to a neutral official, such as a respected Swiss pathologist, for example, and performing a DNA analysis and facial recognition test before that witness before disposing of the body, they instead immediately disposed of the body in a place where it can never be recovered for inspection by a neutral observer. The only witnesses to the verification process establishing that the U.S. ever had the body of bin Laden were extremely prejudiced observers, the U.S. military and CIA, who of course would have lied to support some official story that bin Laden was dead even if he were not dead. And rather than burying the objective evidence to clarify the issue in some undisclosed location on dry land, which would also have avoided the burial place ever becoming a shrine, the U.S. has buried it at sea, so the objectivity of bin Laden's death can never be established.

If the US has taken blood and tissue samples, as it claims, and has photographs and videos, as it claims, independent verification could easily still take place.

 

Also worth noting that Pakistan now has Osama's alleged wife, who was apparently in the room when he was killed, in custody -- the failure of the American helicopter meant she couldn't be taken out with the American teams. Should Pakistan allow her to speak out, the American account can be independently verified.

[mississippichem]

Aliens killed Osama bin Laden! I saw it on the history channel so it has to be true right!?

[Marat]

Since the world does not know anything about the nature of the blood and tissue characteristics of the real Osama bin Laden, there is no way that displaying those samples now, in isolation from the body, could in any way establish that he was killed. The only way to put his death beyond question is to display his body, which is exactly what the American action in burying the body immediately at sea ensured could never be settled.

 

Another possibility is that the U.S. forces executed bin Laden at close range, perhaps with a bullet to the head, and a forensic examination would be able to establish that fact and further expose the illegality of the American use of force in subduing him. International law allows states to arrest international criminals characterized as hostis humani generis, but not to excute them if they can be subdued by less violent means. Since it is surrealistic to suppose that a team of armed Navy Seals could not subdue an unarmed 55 year old bin Laden without having to kill him first, this has to count as yet another crime against international law by the U.S. But what is so surprising is that for all the commentary about the event, no one seems to notice its illegality -- other than Professor Alan Dershowitz speaking to Pears Morgan last night. Leon Panetta today seemed to assume that because this illegal murder was committed 'as part of the mission authorization' everything is fine -- as though U.S. mission authorizations determine international law.

[rigney]

Since the world does not know anything about the nature of the blood and tissue characteristics of the real Osama bin Laden, there is no way that displaying those samples now, in isolation from the body, could in any way establish that he was killed. The only way to put his death beyond question is to display his body, which is exactly what the American action in burying the body immediately at sea ensured could never be settled.

 

Another possibility is that the U.S. forces executed bin Laden at close range, perhaps with a bullet to the head, and a forensic examination would be able to establish that fact and further expose the illegality of the American use of force in subduing him. International law allows states to arrest international criminals characterized as hostis humani generis, but not to excute them if they can be subdued by less violent means. Since it is surrealistic to suppose that a team of armed Navy Seals could not subdue an unarmed 55 year old bin Laden without having to kill him first, this has to count as yet another crime against international law by the U.S. But what is so surprising is that for all the commentary about the event, no one seems to notice its illegality -- other than Professor Alan Dershowitz speaking to Pears Morgan last night. Leon Panetta today seemed to assume that because this illegal murder was committed 'as part of the mission authorization' everything is fine -- as though U.S. mission authorizations determine international law.

Excuse me for being so up front and blunt Marat, but "you're full of it". This son of a bitch and scum of a camels dung, was responsible for the death of thousands and yet you make like he should be honored, and those who "offed" the bastard are guilty of murder? As gently as I dare to be and without malice, I want to repeat "You're full of shit", Marat. Quote and unquote. Edited May 4, 2011 by rigney

[John Cuthber]

Marat,

The case of John Haigh is probably the most famous one where no body was found but the guy was found guilty.

In his case he misunderstood a different bit of legal Latin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_delicti

 

Lets be clear about this.

Habeas corpus doesn't refer to the body of a victim.

Nor does Corpus Delicti.

 

Given your understanding of the law, perhaps you should let others speak on issues like "Since it is surrealistic to suppose that a team of armed Navy Seals could not subdue an unarmed 55 year old bin Laden without having to kill him first, this has to count as yet another crime against international law by the U.S. ".

In particular, if they believed that he had a bomb they would have been acting in self defence and in the defence of innocent bystanders if they shot him to prevent him triggering it.

That would have been lawful.

(OK, I rather doubt it's true but if I were the shooter it's what I would be saying very loudly to anyone who would listen)

[Moontanman]

Excuse me for being so up front and blunt Marat, but "you're full of it". This son of a bitch and scum of a camels dung, was responsible for the death of thousands and yet you make like he should be honored, and those who "offed" the bastard are guilty of murder? As gently as I dare to be and without malice, I want to repeat "You're full of shit", Marat. Quote and unquote.[/b]

 

 

Come on Rigney, Marat is no more full of shit than you are, he has some good points, one thing for sure lopping off a head of state in a war is often a mistake and makes the war bloodier and longer. Personally I'd like to have seen him rot in a dank hand dug pit covered with concrete so he would never seen the sun, feed him nothing but pork and give him leprosy infected armadillos to play with but thats just me. I have say that second guessing these navy seals is just Monday morning quarter backing by people who have no clue how to play the game. They were there, not us, they had to make a life or death decision in hostile territory under fire, can any of us even imagine what that was like? I think not, but if any one "needed killing" it was him but even in the south you can't use that excuse in court any longer....

Edited May 4, 2011 by Moontanman

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Since the world does not know anything about the nature of the blood and tissue characteristics of the real Osama bin Laden, there is no way that displaying those samples now, in isolation from the body, could in any way establish that he was killed. The only way to put his death beyond question is to display his body, which is exactly what the American action in burying the body immediately at sea ensured could never be settled.

I'm still curious why the US should find it necessary to put his death beyond question. So long as Al-Qaeda acknowledges his death (which is convincing evidence by itself) and bin Laden is not around to lead a new generation of terrorist recruits, does it matter if Joe Schmoe believes he was killed?

 

International law allows states to arrest international criminals characterized as hostis humani generis, but not to excute them if they can be subdued by less violent means. Since it is surrealistic to suppose that a team of armed Navy Seals could not subdue an unarmed 55 year old bin Laden without having to kill him first, this has to count as yet another crime against international law by the U.S.

Without knowledge of the raid, this is speculation. Presumably the unarmed bin Laden could have been reaching for weapons or otherwise posing a threat. We simply don't know.

[rigney]

I'm still curious why the US should find it necessary to put his death beyond question. So long as Al-Qaeda acknowledges his death (which is convincing evidence by itself) and bin Laden is not around to lead a new generation of terrorist recruits, does it matter if Joe Schmoe believes he was killed?

Without knowledge of the raid, this is speculation. Presumably the unarmed bin Laden could have been reaching for weapons or otherwise posing a threat. We simply don't know.

 

Unless this is a left wing "bleeding hearts" scenario, other than conjecture; who really gives a "RATS ASS"? Anyway, don't you like spooky movies? Hey! one of his younger wives was there. Maybe he was reaching for a "condom'? Edited May 4, 2011 by rigney

[mooeypoo]

Excuse me for being so up front and blunt Marat, but "you're full of it". This son of a bitch and scum of a camels dung, was responsible for the death of thousands and yet you make like he should be honored, and those who "offed" the bastard are guilty of murder? As gently as I dare to be and without malice, I want to repeat "You're full of shit", Marat. Quote and unquote.

!

Moderator Note

Personal attacks will not help your argument, and are unacceptable in these forums - "Politics" included.

 

Rigney, I'm quite sure you can phrase your opinions and disagreement without resorting to this type of terminology or attitude.