Facty Facts And The Facters That Fact Them
by lizard
It’s only Tuesday, not even 48 hours after the breaking news of Osama’s death, and there is so much crap swirling around it’s dizzying.
Unfortunately it pays to be suspicious of those often unreliable initial reports. The nature of the 24 hour news cycle and the competition between networks to take any tidbit of info and run with it means our MSM is prone to misinformation.
What I find troubling about the misinformation coming from government sources is intent is basically impossible to discern. Us lowly citizens aren’t privy to the provenance of those first reports that Osama was armed and a woman was used as a human shield. But the impact of those initial reports, while we are experiencing a sort of collective shock, can set the emotional tone for how we experience such major news events. And I’m afraid the fact those reports weren’t true matters less and less these days.
Osama bin Laden wasn’t armed when U.S. forces hunted him down and killed him, the chief White House spokesman said Tuesday.
That was but one of several details that press secretary Jay Carney corrected in the public account of Monday’s breathtaking raid on a compound in Pakistan where the long-sought leader of the terrorist group al-Qaida was hiding.
The fact that the facts are still “evolving”, and that the body was so quickly dumped in the sea, ensures the conspiratorial speculation will run rampant. But as some fragile-minded people begin their smearing of anyone who dares to be skeptical about what went down, and why, it should be noted that entertaining the idea that Osama had been dead for awhile isn’t moon-landing fringe. Here is some report from Fox news the day after Christmas, 2001:
Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter (and fact should be considered a dirty word). Osama has been declared dead, which means he can move from being a handy symbol justifying two unnecessary occupations, to a symbolic martyr, ensuring his al-qaeda franchises will provide further justification for perpetual war.
But let’s end this, another post about Osama Bin Laden, on a positive note: I’m hopeful the idea of killing this man, and the purported unified jubilation we should all be feeling, will finally collapse the shoddy edifice of the insane War on Terror. Like three buildings collapsing from the impact and resulting fire of two commercial airliners. Facts.
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4&20 blackbirds 
May 3, 2011 at 9:27 pm
You know why they quickly dumped him in the sea.
That way, whenever you go to the beach you can piss on his grave.
May 3, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Guess that’s why your mouth is always open too!
May 3, 2011 at 9:56 pm
I am going to have to add this one to your conspiracy list Lizard:
1. Bin Laden died in 2001 and is buried in Tora Bora (it isn’t moon-landing fringe)
2. Aliens in Area 51 (aliens, sure, why not)
3. JFK Kennedy Assassination (Yes)
4. Diebold computers rigged the 2004 Elections (Yes)
5. 9/11 World Trade Center Cover-UP and US Government involvement (Yes)
6. John P. Wheeler III and the Neo-Con Murder Conspiracy (Yes)
May 3, 2011 at 9:57 pm
And some of you folks think the Tea Party have some strange ideas.
May 3, 2011 at 10:22 pm
The US Congress House Congressional Committee on Assassinations says JFK was probably killed by a conspiracy.
Read their report. you might learn something. (I know, I know, probably not, but it could happen. You could learn something.)
You can find it here. :http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/hsca/contents_hsca_report.htm
May 4, 2011 at 6:47 am
JEEbus, dude! Do you even freakin’ KNOW who allen dulles was?? I think not. But he was put in CHARGE of the JFK assassination! Sorry, dude, but you don’t have a clue! Better read a bit more before spouting. Ever hear of the Northwoods Project? The CIA is calling the shots now in this country, ALL the shots. Guess that you’re comfortable with that. Well then, just WHOM are they answerable to?! Good question, huh?
It’s easy to accept everything as the truth, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The gubmint COUNTS on patridiotic Murcans like yourself to be good little sheeple. Makes things so much easier! BTW, ever heear of WMDs? Course you have. You BELIEVED in’em!
May 4, 2011 at 6:18 pm
http://socyberty.com/issues/white-house-insider-obama-hesitated-panetta-issued-order-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/
one good bs story deserves another.
But the Christiane Amanpour video is great! Good for her. Note how condescending and dismissive the guys are. They just blew her off.
May 4, 2011 at 6:35 pm
BTW, I don’t believe a single one of these conspiracy theories, the one I linked, ones anyone else linked, or that the CIA controls everything from the Bohemian Grove. Perhaps I’m the anti Tokarski.
May 5, 2011 at 10:22 am
No, I just don’t think you’re well-read or have a highly developed sense of history. What do YOU think the CIA does? And what is their budget? If you can’t answer those questions, you’re asstawkin’.
May 5, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Benson, if you’re a serious student of history, the ONE book that you must read is JFK and the Unspeakable. Every last thing that Ike warned us about has come true even as we speak. Good LORD, man! Do our current “wars” make ANY sense? Of course they don’t, unless you understand what’s going on.
The Kennedy assassination was our first coup. Oh sure, they tried a one on FDR, but failed. They came damn close at that time though. It could’a gone either way. But with Kennedy, they succeded and haven’t looked back since.
Many of the same family members from the original plotters are still in play. A criminal element answerable to no one took over the country just as Ike predicted they would shortly after WWII. They are not about to relinquish power now without a fight. Why do you think Kennedy wanted to break the CIA into a thousand pieces? He knew that something evil and unAmerican was afoot from the way that the CIA was using intimidation to force him into foreign policies he did not want. Hence, they killed him. It’s all there for those who aren’t afraid to read and investigate.
HEY, I realize it’s damn scary to speak the truth in this country. Hell, every person who tried to speak the truth about the assassination was murdered. EVERY last one of them.
But yet the truth must still be spoken.
May 3, 2011 at 10:03 pm
i’m undecided on a lot of stuff. it’s called being open minded.
oh, and i’m going to have to add you to the list of fragile-minded ridiculers who build up little mental walls to protect themselves from alternatives to official narratives.
and you still haven’t answered my question about Bush insulting troops by sending them to a war based on lies. that’s no conspiracy, Pogo.
May 3, 2011 at 10:05 pm
answered it. Go check.
May 3, 2011 at 10:09 pm
no you didn’t. go check.
May 3, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Yes I did. It just isn’t the answer you want to hear.
May 3, 2011 at 10:31 pm
ok pogo. thnx.
May 3, 2011 at 10:15 pm
Waiting for somebody to invoke HAARP.
May 3, 2011 at 10:23 pm
why, because anytime the word “conspiracy” is used the entire pantheon of conspiracies should be trotted out to muddy the waters?
pretty lame comment, buzz. anything worthwhile to say?
May 3, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Let me see……what was the line from that old Woody Allen movie?
“No, I don’t think you’re paranoid. I think you’re the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you.”
May 3, 2011 at 10:35 pm
same question: anything worthwhile to say?
May 3, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Not especially. Off to visit Bin and Ted Williams in the cryogenic chamber. Cheers.
May 3, 2011 at 10:37 pm
It is getting a little tense in here. Let’s lighten the mood a bit:
“Paranoid”
Finished with my woman ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind
people think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I’ll lose my mind if I don’t find something to pacify
Can you help me occupy my brain?
Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can’t find
I can’t see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it’s too late
May 3, 2011 at 10:45 pm
agreed, Pogo. and here is my contribution.
May 3, 2011 at 10:50 pm
It has a good beat and it’s easy to dance to.
May 3, 2011 at 10:52 pm
it’s ridiculous. like the picture in the post. like facts.
May 4, 2011 at 7:31 am
I have to agree with lizard on one thing – there’s little sense discussing the ‘facts’ of the case immediately. There’s too much that could possibly change.
On the other hand, I also have to point out that conspiracy theories tend to surround events that our biases reject as unlikely. For example, we find it unlikely that Kennedy could be killed by one man, we find it unlikely that a man with a name like Barak Hussein Obama could be born in the US, we find it unlikely that a Democrat could be in office when we capture bin Laden. Thus, conspiracies about these issues are easy to find, because it is in fact the conspiracy theory itself that protects our minds from having to integrate information it doesn’t like. Thus, rigid conspiratorial thinking (which I wouldn’t really accuse lizard of) has the effect protecting our biases and keeping our minds firmly shuttered.
At least, this is easily observed among conservatives – evolution is unproven, the Confederacy was just about state’s rights, global warming is a hoax, Obama’s birth certificate is fake, sex ed leads to teen pregnancy. At the far end, the holocaust is a Jewish myth.
I don’t know how much this is true on the left, because I probably also believe things that a Republican could point out to me aren’t true. But Mother Jones had a great article on the phenomena. I can’t find it online but if you have a print version it’s worth a read.
May 4, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Oswald got Kennedy? HEY, that’s OK if that’s what you believe. But then, you criticize the fundis for disbelieving evolution, while you disbelieve physics! One dude could NOT have killed him. It’s an impossibility. Check it out some time. Do some research. That is NOT a “conspiracy” theory. It’s a conspiracy fact. You’re just wrong. And really, it’s vital that people understand that it was a coup. Still goin’ on, dude. Still goin’ on.
May 5, 2011 at 9:30 am
I don’t care one way or another about the Kennedy assassination, really. Whoever killed him is long gone now, unless it really was ol’ LHO. And I think you over romanticize the man who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion and began our involvement in Vietnam. The ‘coup’ seems to have had little effect on policy.
May 5, 2011 at 9:50 am
Ok, this article is about Facty Facts, and you’re getting loose and fancy free with them.
“Began our involvement in Vietnam”
You mean to tell me that Eisenhower and Nixon weren’t involving the U.S. in Vietnam?
Major revisionism by the Facters that Fact Them not cool.
And let’s not forget that we were supporting the French and paying war costs in Vietnam way back to 1950 or so.
Kennedy basically kept the Eisenhower policy in Vietnam in place. It was LBJ that led the escalation.
As to this spat about spitters… the culture war never ends, does it? Hippies will get bashed up until the day they die.
May 5, 2011 at 11:00 am
Fair enough, JC. Nonetheless, Kennedy didn’t represent a foreign policy (or domestic policy, to my knowledge) radically different than his successors or predecessors, hence Larry’s talk of a coup sounds strange, regardless of how many bullets were fired from how many guns.
As to the spitting – it apparently happened. It’s a shameful act and I don’t think discussing it honestly constitutes hippie-bashing any more than discussing Jim Crow is South-bashing.
May 5, 2011 at 11:57 am
I’m not largely into conspiracy theories, but I understand their relevance to these discussions. I read the Warren Report as a kid just after it came out. Blew my mind.
But the spitting, on the other hand is just one way many are trying to continue to wage the culture wars.
If people want to debate spitting on vets, why don’t we just open the whole can of worms and start talking about how the National Guard opened fire on protestors and killed 4 U.S. citizens at Ohio State.
Everybody ready for a big rollicking 60’s/70’s redux??? There’s some old hippies in this lefty crowd who have more than just some time-worn anecdotes to bandy about.
May 5, 2011 at 12:39 pm
i know Vietnam Vets who were against the war. They demonstrated against the war. Are you accusing them of spitting on their returning brothers and sisters?
Shame on you.
Kennedy had decided to withdraw from Vietnam in Oct of 1963 according to a number of historians and to some of his inside circle.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
May 6, 2011 at 2:12 am
Old news. Kennedy knew nothing of what Vietnam would become. As a tool, he would likely done as LBJ did, though we cannot know. To say that one executive act indicated a larger change in policy is a reach at best. There is nothing in his Cold Warrior resume’ that indicates a change of policy with the change from JFK to LBJ than with the change from Ike to JFK. Presidents do not make foreign policy. That is fantasy. Foreign policy is the expression of desires of the Military Industrial Complex that Ike so weakly complained about, and that only as he left office. (He was too weak to challenge it while president, and so meekly gave them a little kick in the pants on the way out.)
May 4, 2011 at 11:00 am
mighty charitable of ya, wolf. thank you.
everyone should read today’s front page post @ counterpunch by Israel Shamir, claiming the US has known the whereabouts of Osama since 2005, and the role Julian Assange may have played in necessitating the Geronimo-ing of OBL. very interesting.
May 4, 2011 at 11:59 am
Who cares about the details ?
Bin Laden is gone, and I doubt that any of us here on this blog miss him.
May 4, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Liz, thanks for the link. Lots of good info there at counter punch.
Eric:
I care about details.
You don’t care about details.
I miss Osama. I wanted to hear his side of the story and I wanted to see him tried.
I thought we owed at least that to his alleged victims and their families.
Here’s a video of
Christiane Amanpour in 2008 reporting that Osama is living comfortably in a villa in Pakistan. This is an interesting detail
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385×580482
May 4, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Rob! Kailey! is back at it, trying to claim he didn’t “smear” anyone for being skeptical. no, he “chides” Glenn Greenwald for allegedly telling people what they “must” feel. Here is Rob’s delightful depiction of Mr. Greenwald.
that’s nice, Rob. glad to see you’ve got progressives in your sights once again. keep at it, tiger.
May 4, 2011 at 5:23 pm
And that chides people for being ‘skeptical’ exactly how? Greenwald was being a nanny scold, exactly as I said he was. He wasn’t being “skeptical”. He was telling people that they shouldn’t behave as they did. That’s not skepticism. It’s being a nanny. Kinda like you.
Yes, regressives are in my sights, just as they always have been. That includes you, cupcake.
May 4, 2011 at 6:08 pm
your eloquent summation of Greenwald’s opinion is that he’s “full of it.” and you think those of us who aren’t jubilant and joyful at this terrorist’s assassination are nannies trying to impose our will on others? and we’re regressives?
then you said this about me at the blog you’re slowly destroying:
what facts am i suppose to have made up?
May 4, 2011 at 6:27 pm
It was plainly stated, cupcake, not that you would have a clue. You accused me of slimeing people who are skeptical of the official account of Sunday’s actions when no time has passed and you don’t know shit beyond anyone else … and I did no such thing, you liar.
You can continue to accuse me of slowly killing a website, but I’d rather that then support a rat’s nest of lies as we see right here.
May 4, 2011 at 10:55 pm
so you’re not smearing skeptics, but nanny scolds. got it. it was very unfair of me to use the wrong word. i guess i got LitW mixed up with your Wulfgar! site. it’s difficult to keep up with all the people you have little tiffs with.
since 4&20 is, according to you, a “rat’s nest of lies,” i’m hoping that means you’ll keep your tantrums confined to other virtual locales.
May 4, 2011 at 9:08 pm
One of my favorite movies was Wag the Dog. It dealt with this matter succinctly. Unless it happens on TV, it has not happened. Now that it has happened on TV Lizard, it does no good to yammer at these clowns. They have all the proof they need. They saw it on TV.
That little box has enormous power. It defines reality. There is reali, in which Osama was a talking living human, likely killed in 2001, and TV realiy, in which proud Americans sniffed him out and finally nabbed in in a heroic mission. Pardon me for being trite and silly, but all that comes to mind is ROTFLMAO. I thought I’d never stoop so low.
Yes, he’s dead. I saw it on TV. It has to be true.
May 5, 2011 at 4:11 am
here Rob, let me build on the concession I used the wrong word in the post. skeptic doesn’t fit, you’re right. but i don’t think the TITLE of your post SHAMELESS SCOLDS fits either. in FACT (a dirty word) I think using the term SHAMELESS SCOLDS sets a definite tone of, if not smear, then at least that trademark Kailey smudge you seem so fond of including.
here Rob, let’s look at how you operate. this is a response from you to JC:
first, let me say i’m beginning to admire your casual dismissal of people who are much MUCH sharper than you.
and it’s impressive how you say things about complicated situations like they are facts, when they are actually pandora boxes i’m not sure you are capable of understanding. like saying this:
maybe you think that’s a fact. i think it’s fucking ridiculous. but that’s just my opinion. i could argue that our “efforts” in Libya DOES INDEED include fostering “imperial will”, and back that up. you could counter argue, and back it up with different sources (in between snarling and referring to me as tasty food items to be gobbled).
but remember Rob, facts evolve, and the Oblam administration has shown us all kinds of evolutions, and now won’t even show us the death porn.
ANYWAY (wow, capital letters are fun) if skeptic isn’t the right word, and SHAMELESS SCOLDS certainly doesn’t work (unless you’re picking a fight, which i know you love doing), then let’s try something else.
how about killjoy?
i think that term is more accurate, and it allows me to highlight another part of your comment where you do EXACTLY what you “chide” Greenwald for doing. try to nanny JC.
no regard? to that i say, well, fuck you Rob. this brash, arrogant sentiment that you and your moral majority have no regard for us “killjoys” and how we are responding to this news is actually pretty offensive, and highly hypocritical considering your accusations Greenwald is doing the same thing with his disdain for Americans.
you are the litmus test, Rob. but i think the “we” you wield is a bit presumptuous.
i told you earlier how my dad’s disgust at the celebrations surprised me, but i shouldn’t have been surprised. i’ve talked to a lot of people who shrug, who are cynical, who speculate. are “we” all suppose to “pick up the argument when the joy subsides”. really?
so your initial attempt to taint as “weird” JC’s response was a good indication you would take on those of us who have opinions from this professional left you’ve become obsessed with. and you did. and we respond. and so it goes. life goes on. there will be other shiny dangly things which will catch our attention.
and so it goes.
–Kurt Vonnegut
May 5, 2011 at 7:08 am
Every US operation has a real motive and a cover story. Iraq had WMD’s as cover, and when it was blown, advancing democracy became the reason, and no one blinked an eye. The ease with which people buy into the cover stories is a thread all by itself, not so much stupidity as induced stupidity. They do not think for themselves, and look up the food chain for their opinions. Your K-man is an authoritarian, and as such is also submissive to authorit, and so adopts the positions of the Demoratic leadership as his own. The rest are performing like circus dogs, so well trained that the thought that this might all be a stage play for their benefit even occurs to them.
Libya too is about oil, in part, but also about control of the region. It is just another of a string of misbehaving Arab countries that are so impudent as to think they can have their own way when the empire wants something else for them. The idea that the US was concerned about civilian deaths, given wha it has done in Iraq to the civilian population, is ludicrou, ebut notice how they don’t even bat an eye at ludicrous. The Democratic leadelship says that is tshe reason, so that is the reason, goddammit.
These are zombies. They do not think their own thoughts, and look askew at anyone who does. If you want to be a Democrat, don’t complain about it. It’s a mindse that will not change.
May 5, 2011 at 7:10 am
Very hard to type on this device. Excuse typos.