The faint aroma of performing SEALs

An amusing game one can play at home is the amateur forensic reconstruction of public events based on the information (reluctantly) provided to us by the powers that be. I had a pretty good time playing this game during the O.J. Simpson murder trial; for example, in response to the claim of the defense that O.J. was framed, and that the bloody glove found in the alley (which didn't fit so you must acquit) was planted there by the L.A.P.D., I wondered how, given the exigencies of the timing (the police who had just left the murder scene were the ones who found the glove, including Mark Fuhrman) the police could have managed to place not just Nicole Simpson's, but O.J. Simpson's blood inside the glove. O.J. was in Chicago at the time the glove was found. So where did they get the blood? There were attempted answers to this conundrum, but none was particularly convincing.

Thus taking us to the case du jour, the hit on Osama bin Laden. To begin with, and to restate the obvious, it is part of the Obama Doctrine that suspected terrorists, including American citizens, can be gunned down on sight, anywhere in the world, no questions asked. This is the ultimate "indefinite detention" idea at work, because once you're dead, you're pretty much detained forever. America in its post-modern phase has moved way beyond hidebound, antiquated ideas of due process. If we think you're guilty, you're guilty and we can kill you. Okay? I often think that Mr. Obama's Constitutional Law classes at the University of Chicago must have been a little unorthodox, but it doesn't really matter because except for the usual gang of malcontents in Congress (Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders), no one ever questions Obama's use of the Divine Right of Kings. You may believe that the American Revolution was about overthrowing just such tyranny. Silly you!

Still, it appears to make certain higher-ups a little nervous, this business of shooting unarmed Evil Masterminds in cold blood. Don't know why it should; it's what we do now. Nevertheless, as a result of these misgivings, and probably from watching lots of old Westerns where the Good Guy always insisted that the Bad Guy "go for his gun," a story has taken root concerning Operation Geronimo which holds that Osama bin Laden was "reaching for his AK-47" at the moment he was shot. We'll never really know. It seems I was mistaken about the idea that the Situation Room could follow the events in real time through helmet-mounted cameras (although I'm not sure about that; that's what the news shows originally said shortly after the story broke). But a couple of SEALs are the only ones who really know what happened, and maybe the wounded bin Laden wife, who is now being interrogated by our pals the Pakis.

But here's why I'm virtually certain that bin Laden was not lunging for his AK-47 at the moment he was shot. It's a matter of simple deduction, although I haven't seen anyone talk about it.

Bin Laden was on the lam, a fugitive from justice. He knew as well as anyone that once he was discovered, he would be immediately shot. Whatever else is said about him, no one ever thought he was stupid or uninformed. The main evidence against him, if you read the 9-11 Commission Report (not that anyone ever has, least of all any reporter transcribing narratives from the White House), are statements made by the Gurgling Confessor, Khallid Sheikh Mohammed, who sang (or gargled) like Tweety Bird on meth while he was being routinely tortured in Guantanamo a few years back. To put Osama bin Laden on trial, therefore, even in the concentration camp in Cuba, would have entailed all sorts of difficulties with this evidence, even given the benighted state of American justice at this point. To wit, troublemaking lawyers would have attacked the admissibility of statements against bin Laden made by KSM while he had a wet towel down his throat. Even though everyone already knows that bin Laden was guilty (because we just do, that's why we could shoot him), this could have been pretty embarrassing. What if the U.S. had lost the case against bin Laden? Hey, anything's possible. O.J. walked. Then Obama would have been in the position of ordering bin Laden detained for life anyway, despite the acquittal.

It's obvious when you think about it, and I'm sure bin Laden had figured it out. Thus, when bin Laden heard two helicopters land inside his compound, including one that crash-landed, in the middle of the night; heard a furious gun battle downstairs in which at least three of his associates were killed with automatic weapons fire; where at least twenty minutes had elapsed since the crash of one helicopter and the landing of the other, during which the gun battle described occurred; does it seem at all logical to you, if Osama bin Laden was going to defend himself with an automatic weapon, that he would have waited until two Navy SEALs had entered his sleeping chamber before "going for his gun?"

Maybe he's a really, really heavy sleeper, I suppose. Kidney disease can take it out of you. But what about the woman in the room. Another narcoleptic? It all seems very doubtful. The most logical explanation, the one that is left, as Sherlock Holmes would say, no matter how unlikely it may appear (because the other possibilities have been eliminated) is simple: bin Laden decided to die that night without resistance.

Further Corrections & Amendments to Osama Episode

4 May 2011 (Washington) - Jay Carney, the White House's Press Secretary, appeared before the media today to offer some further clarifying remarks regarding Operation Geronimo:

Mr. Carney: Good afternoon. This Administration's commitment to transparency and to getting it right leads us to offer some further details about the Special Forces operation in Afghanistan a few days ago where bin Laden was killed. We do not want any false narratives circulating in the public domain concerning this important development. The situation is simply too crucial to allow incorrect information to remain uncorrected, and we regret that the first accounts of the operation, based upon the best information we had from actually watching the mission live, in the Situation Room at the White House, fed to us from helmet-mounted cams as events unfolded in real time, were in some respects inaccurate, and that this narrative, while it did lead to the optimally expected jubilation from crowds in the street high-fiving, chest bumping and setting off fireworks, cannot be allowed to stand when we come in possession of superseding data.

In that regard, a few amendments. We have previously noted that bin Laden, contrary to the first report, was not actually armed with an automatic weapon, nor does he appear to have been "going for his gun" as some later accounts described the event. However, the rumor that bin Laden, having swelled to about 300 pounds from complete inactivity over the last six years while eating a nonstop diet of lamb and hummus, was found on the toilet passed out, is obviously the product of a fertile imagination and a conflation of media images. Osama was, however, standing at the moment he was taken out, and contemporary accounts confirm that he was standing "in an aggressive manner" which ruled out any possibility of a live capture, transport home and a trial to determine what role, if any, he actually played in any of the events of September 11, 2001, events which form the basis of the last ten years of non-stop warfare, the bankruptcy of the country, the militarization of all foreign policy, the complete suspension of the Bill of Rights, and other adjustments to national life.

Bin Laden is, however, dead, and he now sleeps with the fishes.

As for the account of bin Laden's use of a woman, possibly one of his wives, as a human shield: this was a regrettable gloss on the initial story, and may have been based on confusion by one of the observers with a scene from "Casino Royale" with Daniel Craig, a really cool movie, which was viewed by the Situation Room observers via Netflix while awaiting the start of Operation Geronimo, the second feature that night. The story for now is that she charged the Special Forces team as they burst into bin Laden's room and was shot in the leg, but this account, like all other facts, is still under review and will be updated as necessary.

We are also looking into the possibility that the Pakistani government and military, our valued partners in the war on terror, may have been aware of bin Laden's presence for six years in an enormous walled compound a few feet from one of Pakistan's main military academies. A team is being assembled to get to the bottom of this mystery. The team will include many of the investigators from the White House team who conducted research into the person or persons responsible for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to the press.

That's it for today. We'll continue to keep you updated at all times so that your information is as accurate as possible.