The US uses Seal Team VI to go into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. They fly in with stealth helicopters, storm the compound and find Osama watching TV and kill him. That's their story and they're sticking to it.
There are pictures of some guy with his back to you placidly watching TV, probably American Idol. The guy in the pic seems to be the same photo double they used a couple of years ago to impersonate bin Laden. Not many people believe the picture was of him then and don't now.
And many believe that if they did get bin Laden in a sneaky raid there would be hundreds of pictures to document the operation. Pictures of the dead terrorist, the house, other rooms with communications tech from what is said to be a Command Center. Maybe even a pic of some of the medical equipment he needed to enable his regular dialysis.
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| bin Laden or been wrong again? |
Seal Team VI is celebrated, along with President Obama, for getting the world's most wanted terrorist. Mission accomplished, to use a familiar Presidential line.
Except, that a lot of folks believe President Clinton had already killed Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora several years ago when he sent cruise missiles into the caves the Saudi Prince was supposedly hiding in!
No one heard or saw a reliable sign of bin Laden since that targeted raid. In spite of the picture of that fat-head guy posing as Osama a few years later when the need to keep the bogey man alive became evident and they tried to make a credible video.
So now come the revelations about NSA snooping. And we have one family who had a son on Seal Team VI. This family says they criticized the military for the loss of 38 lives and Seal Team VI soldiers (including their son) in a very suspicious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. That criticism resulted in them being targeted and surveilled by NSA. So they are suing the US Government.
The alleged surveillance violated the plaintiffs' right of freedom of association by making them and others weary and fearful of contacting other persons and entities via cell phone out of fear of the misuse of government power and retaliation against these persons and entities who challenge the misuse of government power. To paraphrase the reasons for their lawsuit.
Remember that only your telephone communications need a court order, the Patriot Act already covers your email and other internet activities, without a court order, and in its wisdom, forbids your ISP to even TELL you you have been scrutinized by the NSA, under penalty of law. So Verizon, for instance, HAS to give out information about you while keeping the very inquiry secret from you.
So haven't we seen this scenario in TV gangster movies hundreds of times? The bad guys get other bad guys to kill someone, then we learn they never trusted the perpetrator bad guys not to eventually talk and so they engineer their deaths too.
Neat and tidy, dead men don't talk. Or point fingers. Or write books. Or whistleblow. Or testify.
The trouble is they're all supposed to be the good guys!
