Bin Laden Dead- And It Was Live Tweeted
Keith's take on the death of Osama Bin Laden brings up twitter, torture, Palin and Fox.
The Fok News DKOS Group publishes a diary summary of Keith's opinion blog Fok News.
Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
That, for Sohaib Athar of Abbottabad, Pakistan (@ReallyVirtual) was when it started, around 4 PM Eastern time.....
(so begins a fascinating transcripts of tweets with Keith's summation)
Mr. Athar is, for now at least, The Most Interesting Tweeter In The World.
- Mr. Athar’s life now begins to resemble Wilmer McLean, on whose property the first major battle (Bull Run) of the Civil War was fought. Athar advises he relocated from Lahore to get “some peace and quiet.” This was why McLean left his farm and moved to Appomattox Courthouse, where four years later his house was used for Lee’s surrender to Grant.
Keith makes several other very interesting observations about the political and strategic implications of Bin Laden's death.
The Bush era abuses of the intelligence system were ineffective. Our success in killing Bin Laden happened only wen the old rules were restored.
It is fascinating that after a decade of breaking all of our traditions of spycraft and not torturing so we wouldn’t get bad intelligence and not starting wars that don’t have anything to do with the matter at hand, it only took two years, three months, and eleven days after reverting to the ordinary old hard slog of human intelligence, the target was eliminated. In fact, based on the skeletal timeline the President gave, the target was located only 19 months after the old rules were restored. Remember: the professionals always say spying and intelligence (military intelligence included) resembles not Ian Fleming’s James Bond, but John LeCarre’s George Smiley.
Obama's stature on national security is now huge. The GOP frame of a weak Obama is toast.
- You can say all you want about unity and non-politicization of this event, but that ship sailed – and in the other direction – in 2002 and 2004. The GOP claimed all the credit in the world for anything that happened and anything that didn’t. President Obama was attacked before during and after his election for supposedly “weak” national security credentials. In point of fact, as of tonight his national security/counter-terrorism credentials probably jumped to Number 4 on the all-time Presidential list, just behind Lincoln, FDR, and Madison.
Sarah Palin is toast.
- To that end, please join us in saying goodbye to Sarah Palin, whose career ended tonight. She sealed it by tweeting congratulations only to the military. Not a word about Intelligence personnel, and certainly not a word about Obama.
More below the fold...
The spin from the right is that Obama was only continuing in the footsteps of Bush, but to do that they need a selective memory.
- The primary “respectable” meme from the Right will be that this was merely the culmination of the search begun under President Bush. You know: the parallel to the sense that Harry Truman was only a steward completing the World War II tasks of FDR.
In point of fact, Mr. Bush personally de-prioritized the hunt for bin Laden said himself he didn’t worry about him. There will be a lot of Sour Grapes on the right – it sucks being them right now.
The threat from Al-Qaeda should not be discounted but is probably not imminent.
The President is right to raise security levels at US installations and bases. However, remember the premise of Al-Qaeda is the long-planned, meticulously-choreographed “spectacular.” While an attempt at vengeance should not be discounted, it should be pointed out that what we would call in normal-human speak ‘a quick turnaround’ is not their forte. A terrorist in a hurry is a terrorist who drops the backpack bomb when he gets chased out of the subway.
Bin Laden as a martyr may be more dangerous that Bin Laden the fugitive.
There is no reason to assume Al-Qaeda dries up and blows away. It is in fact plausible to consider that since (as Al-Jazeera pointed out) Bin Laden was no longer even connected to actual terrorist operations, he may prove to be more valuable to terrorists as an inspirational martyr than he was as a perpetual target.
As for Fox News- A screenshot of their broadcast from a Sacramento affiliate is worth a 1000 words. They're at it again.