The Debate: To Kill or Capture - Dallas-Mavs.com Forums

Evilmav2 · 03-07-2003, 01:41 AM

If this scum didn't leave the border regions of Afganistan a few days ago, he is doomed...

The snake-hunters are hunting, and the rugged terrain, and few available passes will "cork the bottle" for Bin Laden. If he hasn't already left, there is no escape by land or air. Just as his friend Saddam Hussein is running out of time, so do the sand's of the hourglass run for this callous murderer of innocents...

If he is still in this area, he has nothing to look forward to but an American snipers' 60 caliber round rupturing and exploding his head, or a confinement until death, of unending isolation in a Denver Supermax cell next to Manuel Noriega...

U.S., Pakistan Intensify the Search for Bin Laden
The Debate: To Kill or Capture

"If he's alive and he's moving a lot, we'll get him," Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, commander of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan, said. (B.k. Bangash -- AP)

By Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 7, 2003; Page A01

U.S. and Pakistani forces have launched a substantial new operation to flush Osama bin Laden from hiding in northwest Pakistan after gleaning fresh leads from Saturday's capture of al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed, according to security officials in Washington and two allied capitals. The intensified hunt, after months of quiet, has revived discussions in the Bush administration on whether to capture or kill the al Qaeda leader if given the choice.

Participants in the pursuit tell the White House they have tantalizing prospects of reaching the goal -- "wanted: dead or alive" -- that President Bush set for bin Laden in the first days after Sept. 11, 2001. It is possible, they said, that Bush may be called upon to choose between those alternatives.

U.S. officials disclosed late yesterday that special operations forces poured into Pakistan's northwest border province Wednesday. One of them said the commanders "think they've got a good lead" and "rushed up there" because of evidence accumulated during and shortly after Mohammed's capture in the Islamabad suburb of Rawalpindi. Though the officials differed on some particulars, they agreed that documentary materials seized in the raid, when collated with previous intelligence, gave fresh impetus to the bin Laden hunt despite Mohammed's best efforts to obscure the trail.

Intelligence analysts have long believed bin Laden is concealed among Pashtun tribal allies along the seam between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The chief of an allied intelligence agency said in an interview that bin Laden and his al Qaeda co-founder, Ayman Zawahiri, "have a lot of money still, and they are spending money" in the border areas, adding: "We have tracked this sometimes. Sometimes bin Laden and Zawahiri are together, sometimes not."

Many officials believe it unlikely that either man can be taken alive. Unlike Mohammed and other al Qaeda lieutenants who were surprised with little protection in private homes, bin Laden travels with well-armed and competent security teams. An authoritative source said the operations orders for a bin Laden takedown call for going in "guns blazing, no restraint -- you're going to blow the security away and blow the protection away."

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, among others, oppose any attempt to capture bin Laden alive, according to participants in meetings where they have said so. Among their arguments is that bin Laden is unlikely to know, much less reveal, significant operational details. They predict that his eventual trial and execution, in a military or civilian tribunal, would discomfit Arab and Islamic allies and transform some al Qaeda sympathizers into active recruits.

"They'd rather have a flash event where he's killed rather than a drawn-out event where he's tried," said one person who agrees with the two men and has firsthand knowledge of their views. Two others said the ideal result would be what one of them called a "fade away," a euphemism for killing bin Laden without announcing either his death or those responsible for it. Any disposition of bin Laden risks martyring him in the eyes of supporters, but a second official said that "for our safety, the best thing overall would be if he disappeared."

Dissenters maintain that any such secrecy is implausible and that bin Laden could be more useful alive than dead. "Catching him doesn't end the war on terrorism," an official said. And the United States ought not to foreclose the possibility that under "lengthy interrogation" bin Laden might have "much greater value as a source of intelligence."

In that case, the official said, Bush would have to decide whether and where to prosecute bin Laden. There are available charges in federal court arising from Sept. 11, 2001, and bin Laden has been indicted on murder and other charges in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. But the Bush administration has made clear for months that it does not intend to bring al Qaeda's leaders to criminal court.

"He'd be the quintessential candidate for a military tribunal," said one advocate of that result. "What is al Qaeda going to do, try to kill us? I do not buy the argument that having him in custody and then trying and executing him is going to lead to more terror than we already have."

The Memorandum of Notification that Bush signed just after Sept. 11, 2001, a top-secret document required when granting authority for covert action, gave the CIA permission to kill bin Laden "but did not preclude his capture," said one person who reviewed it and others who corroborated that account. If Bush has since expressed a preference, or has given explicit orders one way or the other, his directions are not known to participants in the hunt who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bush has carefully avoided any display of personal interest in bin Laden since the al Qaeda leader's escape from Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001. Reviews in and out of the uniformed military described the escape as the most significant failure of the war on terrorism. But a top-ranking adviser said the president's overriding goal is to "cut the head off the snake," and Bush asks for constant updates on the "high value target" lists of terrorists on which bin Laden is first of about 36 men.

Hundreds of U.S. analysts and operatives at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center have devoted themselves to bin Laden and Zawahiri since Sept. 11, 2001. According to U.S., European and Pakistani intelligence officials, the hunters were far from declaring defeat but had repeatedly been frustrated by information that came too little and too late to exploit.

After 18 months of effort, the search for al Qaeda's top leaders has yielded uneven results. Six have been captured and two killed. It remains controversial among counterterrorism officials whether al Qaeda is replacing its leaders as fast as they are lost, though all of those interviewed exulted in Mohammed's capture.

The house where he was found in Rawalpindi has yielded an "intelligence windfall," an official said. Nearly all of its contents, apparently even innocuous objects, were flown to the United States for forensic analysis by experts from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI.

"It's still not apparent how much of what we picked up belonged to him, because it wasn't his house," an official said. But even tiny clues, such as phone numbers and false names, have become meaningful when placed into an al Qaeda database that is among the most voluminous gathered by U.S. intelligence.

The security officials denied recent published reports about Mohammed. The al Qaeda operative's two children, ages 7 and 9, were taken into custody along with all the adults present in a September raid that captured Ramzi Binalshibh, a Mohammed cohort who claims he coordinated the September 2001 attacks. But contrary to one widely disseminated claim, they have not been used as leverage against Mohammed or his family, officials said. "We just gave them to somebody who would take care of them," a U.S. official said.

The officials also denied reports that they have evidence that Mohammed spoke directly to bin Laden in recent days, either by telephone or in person. But they have learned more about his methods of indirect communication, they said.

Though full of praise for Pakistani cooperation, some U.S. officials expressed regret that Pakistan announced Mohammed's capture immediately. "It was somewhat confounding, frankly," a senior security official said. It is good to alarm bin Laden into moving -- to "flush the birds and see what flies," he said, using a duck-hunting analogy. But it would have been better to sift the new evidence in secret first, he said, in order to know where to point the guns.

Before Mohammed's capture, the bin Laden hunt appeared to have stalled. In a recent interview at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, who commands U.S. forces in the country, said he could not say with confidence whether bin Laden was in the border region.

"If he's alive and he's moving a lot, we'll get him," he said. "But my view is, if indeed he is alive, he is not moving a sufficient amount to create a signature."

Staff writers Dana Priest, Walter Pincus and Mike Allen in Washington and correspondent Marc Kaufman at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Evilmav2 · 03-07-2003, 02:09 AM

A possible arbiter of Bin Laden's fate?

Evilmav2 · 03-07-2003, 02:14 AM

Or will he evade that fate, and maybe become aquainted with Noriega's home?

Denver home of Manuel Noriega

Evilmav2 · 03-07-2003, 02:25 AM

Whatever the answer may be, I don't think Mr. Bin Laden will face quite the despairing sorrow that is the terrible lot of any child of one of the victims of September 11.

For a child, growing up knowing that your mother or father were crushed within one of the collapsing towers, or jumped out of a window rather than being burned alive, the pain will never end. The same can be said for the families of any victims of the Pentagon attack, and the Pennsylvania victims.

In my opinion, when things are said and done, if we catch Bin Laden his punishment will never come close to approximating the levels of pain that he has caused...

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-07-2003, 03:02 AM

im pretty sure the US would try to bring him to justice first,do it proper.
even if brought to justice,it doesnt mean he aluded death.
it very well may be that he would be sentenced to the chair,but i believe that if he would be trialed,he would be kept in prison,not executed,
if they would'nt succed in that,than they'll try to assasinate him.

LRB · 03-07-2003, 08:50 AM

Bin Laden will die if captured. There is no way in hell that we would not execute his sorry ass if we capture him. Timothy McVey would be a good precedent to use, and Bin Laden's crimes are much worse.

Personally I would like to see us capture him and then execute him by throwing his sorry ass off the newly rebuilt World Trade Towers.

MavsFanFinley · 03-07-2003, 08:57 AM

<< Whatever the answer may be, I don't think Mr. Bin Laden will face quite the despairing sorrow that is the terrible lot of any child of one of the victims of September 11.

For a child, growing up knowing that your mother or father were crushed within one of the collapsing towers, or jumped out of a window rather than being burned alive, the pain will never end. The same can be said for the families of any victims of the Pentagon attack, and the Pennsylvania victims.

In my opinion, when things are said and done, if we catch Bin Laden his punishment will never come close to approximating the levels of pain that he has caused... >>

Well said EvilMav2. Whether he's killed on sight or brought to death in another manner, he will never know the terror or pain that he has brought to so many.

Everyone has a right to their opinion, but I will never understand someone wanting to give (more) time to those that are behind this kind of evil. It's time for the US to protect itself and take out evil of this magnitude before they try attacking us again.

I'm not some war hungry citizen who wants to attack anyone who dare threaten the US either. I have the utmost respect for those men and women that go and do their duty to protect the very thing we Americans take for granted everyday. Freedom. Freedom to live without fear.

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-08-2003, 11:07 AM

<< Well said EvilMav2. Whether he's killed on sight or brought to death in another manner, he will never know the terror or pain that he has brought to so many. >>

i think thats the problem,he does know,thats exactly what they wanted.
everytime when we have a bombing over here that actualy works,the arabs area actualy happy that the families are collapsing.
inhumain.

Rhylan · 03-08-2003, 01:59 PM

I personally think death is the easy way out for Bin Laden, or any of these fools -- send them to Alaska, make them do hard labor 80 hrs a week for the rest of their lives.

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-08-2003, 05:28 PM

Im sorry but i really dont get all of you.
you think it will solve anything by making them do this things?
like someone already said,they could'nt feel the pain they caused,and start acting barbaric and inhumain is suppose to be their job.
how will it make us different?because we have a good excuse?we have a good reason?if Captured Bin Laden should and would be trialed,and will finish his entire life in jail or sit on the chair,notes like send him to alaska or something(sorry Rhylen,just making an example) arent helping anyone.

Murphy3 · 03-08-2003, 05:59 PM

hmm..what should they do to him..
make him read NP's posts

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

sturm und drang · 03-08-2003, 06:24 PM

My fear is that if we kill him-- either when we capture him or if we convict and summarily execute him-- he will become a martyr, the ultimate martyr, a martyr of unimaginable proportions. And I'm scared, of course, of the depth of the religious and anti-American fervor this will (re)kindle.

I have no idea how to avoid this. My suggestion would be to Hoffa-ize him-- it's hard to make a martyr of someone who simply disappears.

Murphy3 · 03-08-2003, 06:37 PM

well, we don't have to kill him. dismembering him would probably do the trick..
that way you could roll him out every once in awhile...he'll still be alive and possibly not the martyr

i think we've found our answer, dismemberment

MavKikiNYC · 03-08-2003, 07:04 PM

<< My fear is that if we kill him-- either when we capture him or if we convict and summarily execute him-- he will become a martyr, the ultimate martyr, a martyr of unimaginable proportions. And I'm scared, of course, of the depth of the religious and anti-American fervor this will (re)kindle.

I have no idea how to avoid this. My suggestion would be to Hoffa-ize him-- it's hard to make a martyr of someone who simply disappears. >>

I think that one way or another, when he's captured, whether he ends up being imprisoned or executed as the sub-human criminal that he is, he will be used as an excuse to commit violent acts against civilized Western societies, and probably in particular, the United States. This is all but inevitable.

However, if the West, or more appropriately the United States, does nothing, crimino-terrorist acts of murder and violence are assured, though they may be deferred indefinitely until the terrorist-murderers can re-orgaznize to commit their acts of violence more effectively. They will also be willing to wait until Western societies become more complacent with their false sense of appeasement-bought 'peace', which will make their murders easier to carry out.

The best way to minimize violence long-term is to proceed on the course of pre-emptive self-defense that the Bush administration has taken--pursue terrorists wherever they try to hide and eliminate them as threats; depose terrorist-friendly regimes such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's in Iraq, with military action if necessary.

I saw some high-minded sentiment the other day on a library wall that read "Humanitarianism is the refusal to sacrifice a single human being for a cause." To the extent that this is correct, Bush's refusal to sacrifice the lives of innocent victims to future acts of terrrorism in return for some false sense of security (or 'peace') in the present is a high humanitarian act indeed.

Think about that, faux-peace-mongers.

LRB · 03-08-2003, 07:58 PM

<< My fear is that if we kill him-- either when we capture him or if we convict and summarily execute him-- he will become a martyr, the ultimate martyr, a martyr of unimaginable proportions. And I'm scared, of course, of the depth of the religious and anti-American fervor this will (re)kindle.

I have no idea how to avoid this. My suggestion would be to Hoffa-ize him-- it's hard to make a martyr of someone who simply disappears. >>

Well if you can get yourself to feel a little cynnical and paranoid, maybe you can convince yourself that this is what already has happened.

But in truth I don't think our enemies need anything to whip up the masses of muslim terrorist fanatics against us. These people are just begging for some one to hate, and the US is an easy target. I just hope we kill as many of these terrorist as quickly as possible. In other words, the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

Evilmav2 · 03-08-2003, 10:19 PM

My fear is that if we kill him-- either when we capture him or if we convict and summarily execute him-- he will become a martyr, the ultimate martyr, a martyr of unimaginable proportions. And I'm scared, of course, of the depth of the religious and anti-American fervor this will (re)kindle.

I have no idea how to avoid this. My suggestion would be to Hoffa-ize him-- it's hard to make a martyr of someone who simply disappears.

That's where the appeal lay in putting him in the Denver Supermaximum federal prison for the rest of his life...

Put him in a cell next to Manuel Noriega. A life featuring no human contact, no talking, no television, no reading materials, 1 hour of time allwowed outside of his 5' by 10' cell to walk around in a 10' by 10' yard, no view of anything but a natural light slit, etc... might just be a fitter end for Osama than any glorious martyrdom at the hands of the crusaders... (Human rights activists actually claims that the American supermax system represents torture- no other nation on earth keep the worst of the worst offenders in such a isolated environment of sensory deprivation)

Isolation/Supermax Cell

LRB · 03-08-2003, 11:19 PM

<< My fear is that if we kill him-- either when we capture him or if we convict and summarily execute him-- he will become a martyr, the ultimate martyr, a martyr of unimaginable proportions. And I'm scared, of course, of the depth of the religious and anti-American fervor this will (re)kindle.

I have no idea how to avoid this. My suggestion would be to Hoffa-ize him-- it's hard to make a martyr of someone who simply disappears.

That's where the appeal lay in putting him in the Denver Supermaximum federal prison for the rest of his life...

Put him in a cell next to Manuel Noriega. A life featuring no human contact, no talking, no television, no reading materials, 1 hour of time allwowed outside of his 5' by 10' cell to walk around in a 10' by 10' yard, no view of anything but a natural light slit, etc... might just be a fitter end for Osama than any glorious martyrdom at the hands of the crusaders... (Human rights activists actually claims that the American supermax system represents torture- no other nation on earth keep the worst of the worst offenders in such a isolated environment of sensory deprivation)

Isolation/Supermax Cell >>

Isn't the Supermax like a luxary version of his current cave except he doesn't get to have contact with his buddies?

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-09-2003, 06:56 AM

im pretty sure they have a television and a radio and other stuff like that.
i doubt its a niendretal(spl?) kind of cave.

i think something like the supermax cell would be a great resolution for the question of what to do with osama.
he would be all alone with his thoughts until he ends his life.
a man could easily lose his mind in there.

Evilmav2 · 03-09-2003, 01:07 PM

Even the worst of the worst offenders in maximum security prisons are terrified of the prospect of going to a supermax. There is nothing but you and the walls, a stainless steel WC, and stainless steel or concrete bench. No guard will ever talk to you, and you will never leave your cell without a hood and shackle suit. Your room and the 10' by 10' exercise yard are the only rooms you will see for the rest of your life. No books, no people, no writing, no news, and no noise except for the whirrings and grindings of your own mind...

A stay in a supermax is a sentence of madness and despair for anyone unlucky enough to deserve it. A sentence uniquely fitting for murderous scum like Bin Laden...

aexchange · 03-09-2003, 01:43 PM

<< Even the worst of the worst offenders in maximum security prisons are terrified of the prospect of going to a supermax. There is nothing but you and the walls, a stainless steel WC, and stainless steel or concrete bench. No guard will ever talk to you, and you will never leave your cell without a hood and shackle suit. Your room and the 10' by 10' exercise yard are the only rooms you will see for the rest of your life. No books, no people, no writing, no news, and no noise except for the whirrings and grindings of your own mind...

A stay in a supermax is a sentence of madness and despair for anyone unlucky enough to deserve it. A sentence uniquely fitting for murderous scum like Bin Laden... >>

i would not be in favor of killing him just because i think its such an easy way out for him.

i would be in favor of putting him in one of those supermax cells and feeding him rat droppings for the rest of his life. i also wouldn't give him a toilet, but just a hole in the ground. i wouldn't allow him to shower or bathe, and i would stick him in solitary away from human contact only given rat droppings thru a hole in the cell.

executing him is quick and virtually painless. i would be up for dismembering him slowly and leaving him in the cell. perhaps i've said too much.

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-09-2003, 05:05 PM

im pretty sure he should and would suffer for the crimes he did,but this kind of talk is just disturbing,and would pretty much do nothing but make people uncomfortable.

LRB · 03-09-2003, 05:17 PM

<< im pretty sure he should and would suffer for the crimes he did,but this kind of talk is just disturbing,and would pretty much do nothing but make people uncomfortable. >>

NP while it may be disturbing, I'm sure it is theraputic for some as well. For most if not all of us this is just talk that blows off steam. Not that I will ever lose a second a sleep worrying of Osama Bin Laden's welfare.

nowitzki_prophecy · 03-09-2003, 06:16 PM

theres alot more than one place and one way to outlet your emotions,but if it encludes talking like dismemebering a man,they should'nt have a place on this forum.
i thought talks like that werent allowed?and im talking about stuff much more gentle,like saying fuck.
all of a sudden,you can say stuff alot worse just because you have a good excuse to say them?