Conspiracy Theorist to Search for Osama's Body

Most conspiracy theorists just write stuff on the internet, or talk to their friends about their crazy ideas. But then there's this guy.

Treasure-hunter Bill Warren of California has reportedly launched a search operation in the North Arabian Sea to discover the body of Osama bin Laden, as he does 'not believe in the statement given by the US government' that his body was buried at sea.

As the article points out,

Warren insisted he will go ahead with the search despite the fact that the use of hi-tech equipment and several boats would make it an extremely expensive affair.

This idiot is actually planning to waste significant time and money looking for a single body that was buried at sea, all based on a ridiculous conspiracy theory. When he fails to find the body,will he even consider the long odds against locating a single weighted corpse at some unspecified place in the sea? I doubt it. It's far more likely that his failure will just reinforce his conspiracy theory beliefs.

The Legality of Targeted Killings

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Illya Somin writes about his response to the current questions regarding the legality of killing Osama bin Laden. Somin notes that most people don't have a problem with such actions when directed at uniformed military officers in wartime.

To my knowledge, hardly any serious commentators claim that the targeted killing of enemy military commanders such as Yamamoto and Heydrich is either illegal or immoral. ... everyone understands that individual military officers are legitimate targets. A capable high-ranking officer is a military asset

Since Somin is using World War Two examples he might also have noted that the British targeted (but failed to kill) General Erwin Rommel, and that allied fighter bombers routinely attacked staff cars in order to kill enemy officers. He then draws the obvious conclusion,

What is true of uniformed officers surely also applies to leaders of terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. The latter, too, represent enemy military assets that we can legitimately target in wartime. If anything, targeting terrorist leaders is more defensible than targeting individual uniformed officers. Unlike uniformed soldiers, terrorist leaders openly target civilians and don’t even pretend to obey the laws of war.

Somin treats the questions about the legality of killing bin Laden as if they deserve a serious response. In my opinion, those who question whether or not the U.S. could legally kill someone like bin Laden are utter fools whose whining deserves nothing more than derisive laughter.

Maureen Dowd on the Death of bin Laden

With all the whining about the death of bin Laden in various quarters, from complaints about celebrations to the usual blind, legalistic nonsense questioning the legality of the operation, Maureen Dowd's New York Times' column yesterday was a breath of fresh air. It starts with the outstanding title: "Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil." Although Dowd is a liberal partisan and can't resist some opening shots at the GOP and George Bush, she goes on to make excellent points.

In another inane debate last week, many voices suggested that decapitating the head of a deadly terrorist network was some sort of injustice. ... I leave it to subtler minds to parse the distinction between what is just and what is justified.

With regard to the illogical clowns who put forth the false analogy linking celebrations of 9/11 and celebrations of bin Laden's death, Dowd writes,

Those who celebrated on Sept. 11 were applauding the slaughter of American innocents. When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night to the White House, ground zero and elsewhere, they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more.

You might think this would be obvious. But unfortunately it must be pointed out. She goes on,

The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same.

Exactly. The person who is killed, the reasons why, and the circumstances all matter greatly. This is something I've pointed out numerous times with regard to torture. I wonder if Dowd would apply her same logic to the torture debate? But since I'm praising this particular column I won't go there any further. Dowd concludes,

Morally and operationally, this was counterterrorism at its finest. ... We have nothing to apologize for.

We had something to celebrate, and we did.

Sam Harris Echoes My Argument On Bin Laden's Burial

I don't always agree with Sam Harris, but we are on the same page regarding the ridiculous pandering to Islam surrounding the burial of Osama bin Laden. Here's Harris.

catering to the doubts of conspiracy theorists wouldn’t have been as craven as the pains we took to bury bin Laden in compliance with shariah law. Apologists for Islam insist that bin Laden was a terrible Muslim who represented no genuine strand of the faith. One wonders, therefore, who would have been offended if we had just kicked his corpse into the sea without a word. Indeed, one might wonder why our government wasn’t afraid to grant this ghoulish man full Muslim honors. Shouldn’t this have offended the true adherents of so peaceful and tolerant a religion?

In any case, it is time we ignored the fathomless depths of Muslim “sensitivity” on such matters. Anyone provoked by our denying bin Laden his last rites would have thereby declared himself an enemy of civilization.

Harris even takes it further than I did, in saying that if bin Laden isn't a "true" Muslim, Muslims should be offended that he was granted a Muslim burial. Good point.

Torture, Intelligence & Osama bin Laden

In the aftermath of bin Laden's death, there have been all sorts of articles by terrorist rights supporters who continue to pretend that we couldn't possibly have gotten any important intelligence from waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques -- which they generically label torture in an expansive definition that renders the term virtually meaningless. The latest nonsense can be found in an editorial today by the New York Times called, "The Torture Apologists."

The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden’s death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Their are plenty of people, including myself, who do not agree that their behavior was immoral. Whether or not it was legal is highly debatable. What is cynical and disturbing is the continued effort by the New York Times and others to demonize those who worked to protect the country and extract intelligence from captured enemies.

There is no final answer to whether any of the prisoners tortured in President George W. Bush’s illegal camps gave up information that eventually proved useful in finding Bin Laden. A detailed account in The Times on Wednesday by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage concluded that torture “played a small role at most”

I love the constant, meaningless assertions of illegality. But more importantly, the opinions of a couple of people are hardly definitive. It is also difficult to quantify the value of individual pieces of intelligence, since they are not taken alone but in conjunction with everything else discovered or known. One small bit of information taken alone might not seem that important, but could be a critical link in building the final picture. A common logical error found among most anti-torture extremists, is a failure to understand that torture, or any form of coercive interrogation technique need not stand alone. Information is information no matter how it is extracted. It can be good, bad or indifferent. It can be confirmed, falsified, expanded upon, or linked with information generated by different methods other than the way it was initially obtained.

if it were true that some tidbit was blurted out by a prisoner while being tormented by C.I.A. interrogators, that does not remotely justify Mr. Bush’s decision to violate the law and any acceptable moral standard.

Again, whether or not Bush violated the law is highly debatable. And in my opinion his actions were fully justified, whether any useful information was obtained or not. The idea that they violated "any acceptable moral standard" is simply laughable. People who believe torture can never be justified under any circumstances are a minority, yet these moral absolutists repeatedly put forth their own extreme views as if they were self-evident facts. It's pretty funny that this minority feels entitled to regularly speak in self-righteous terms as if they were the only true arbiters of morality.

There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive.

Again, we have an assertion backed by nothing but minority opinion. Even if it were a majority opinion, it would still be mere opinion. Most people believe that torture is immoral in a majority of cases, but justifiable under certain circumstances. Just because you believe it is immoral in all cases, does not make it so. Saying it is illegal is irrelevant. Something can be illegal yet still useful or justifiable as an exception to the law, and torture could be legal too if the law allowed for it. Under the expansive definition of torture used by many anti-torture extremists, some of the things done legally in U.S. prisons constitute torture. For example, supporters of traitor Bradley Manning argue that his treatment -- despite being legal -- amounts to torture. And finally, torture can be counterproductive, but it can also produce accurate information. Whether it is counterproductive overall depends on the particular case and is a subject for debate, not something that can be asserted as unchallenged fact.

The battered intelligence community should now be basking in the glory of a successful operation. It should not be dragged back into the muck and murk by political figures whose sole agenda seems to be to rationalize actions

It's been battered by terrorist rights supporters, and those, like the New York Times, who have engaged in a sustained attempt to demonize the people who worked to gain the intelligence needed to protect this country and hunt down its enemies. The success of the operation is in spite of organizations such as the New York Times. The Times attitude is typical on the left. Only people with the correct ideas should be permitted to speak. Those without should shut-up. How dare those evil torturers try to defend themselves and point out that their efforts bore some fruit? Don't they know that that all the right people think their actions were immoral and illegal?

The Non-release of Bin Laden Photos

In my opinion the U.S. might as well release the photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse. I have yet to hear a good reason for not doing so. The administration has already revealed all sorts of information about the raid -- before getting its facts straight -- that it should have just kept quiet about. The less details known about such operations the better. We need those units out there killing more enemies, and a high level of secrecy helps. But at the same time I consider the photos a minor issue, not worthy of the frenzy of commentating it has stirred up. People that refuse to believe bin Laden is dead will not be convinced by photos, because they aren't the type of people who are susceptible to facts and evidence. They'll just assume the pictures are fakes.

I have no interest in seeing pictures of Osama dead. But for those who do, since the U.S. is bad at keeping secrets, they'll probably eventually be leaked anyway.