Death of Osama Bin Laden: Facts, Narrative, Law. It is said in the domestic practice of law that the facts are sometimes more important than the law.
Advocates often win and lose cases on their facts, despite the perception that the law’s formalism and abstraction are to blame for its failures with regards to delivering justice. In the realm of international law again facts are surprisingly significant, and yet often hard to come by. Courts and tribunals rely on states for evidence, and increasingly too on the media and civil society for the facts upon which to make decisions. Despite the modern proliferation of law-making, institution-building, and dispute resolution, international norms and legal frameworks still require facts.
Notoriously, international law itself is dynamic, often unenforceable, increasingly ‘soft’ in character, subject to intense contestation and disagreement, and characterised by its critics as utopian and otherworldly. There’s Just One Problem with Those Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories. They have no factual basis, despite what you may have read in The New York Times Magazine, argues the reporter who pieced together the story from dozens of on-the-record interviews.
Without a shred of evidence, without contradicting a word that I wrote, Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times Magazine this week suggests that the “irresistible story” that I told about the killing of Osama bin Laden in my 2012 book, The Finish (excerpted in Vanity Fair), might well have been a fabrication—“another example of American mythmaking.” He presents an alternative version of the story written by Seymour Hersh as, effectively, a rival account, one that raises serious doubts about mine, which is all but dubbed “the official version.” It’s not meant kindly. Mahler’s think piece about the iffiness of reporting and the hazards of trying to shape history into a narrative is a great gift to conspiratorial thinkers everywhere.
In fact, that’s exactly what it does. For me it doesn’t. What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death? Mark Bowden was watching a ballgame — the Phillies versus the Mets — on the night of May 1, 2011, when the network cut away to President Obama in the East Room of the White House.
“Tonight,” the president said, ‘‘I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.’’ Five minutes or so after the president wrapped up his brief remarks, as thousands of Americans gathered in front of the White House and at ground zero chanting ‘‘U-S-A! U-S-A!’’ Bowden’s cellphone rang. US releases trove of Osama bin Laden letters. The Hunt For Bin Laden - The Onion - America's Finest News Source. The media’s reaction to Seymour Hersh’s bin Laden scoop has been disgraceful.
Seymour Hersh has done the public a great service by breathing life into questions surrounding the official narrative of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Yet instead of trying to build off the details of his story, or to disprove his assertions with additional reporting, journalists have largely attempted to tear down the messenger. Barrels of ink have been spilled ripping apart Hersh’s character, while barely any follow-up reporting has been done to corroborate or refute his claims—even though there’s no doubt that the Obama administration has repeatedly misinformed and misled the public about the incident. Even less attention has been paid to the little follow-up reporting that we did get, which revealed that the CIA likely lied about its role in finding bin Laden, which it used to justify torture to the public. Everything we know about the death of Osama Bin Laden is wrong. Blogger says ‘there’s no way’ Seymour Hersh didn’t see her 2011 bin Laden story. On August 7, 2011, national security blogger R.J.
Hillhouse wrote a post that challenged the official White House version of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. She claimed that Pakistan had sheltered Bin Laden for years with funds from Saudi Arabia, that the U.S was tipped off to Bin Laden’s whereabouts by a “walk in” Pakistani intelligence agent looking to cash in on a $25 million reward, and that the US planned to attribute the death of Bin Laden to a drone strike in a place many miles from where he would actually be killed. Hillhouse wrote that the cover story was abandoned after a helicopter crashed during the raid.
[Updated with a response from Seymour Hersh, below.] Seymour Hersh interview: On his Bin Laden story, the New Yorker, journalism, and his own bad mood. Photo illustration by Slate.
Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images In a blockbuster 10,000-word story for the London Review of Books this week, longtime New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh called into question the official account of the American raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and argued that what is arguably seen as the apex of Barack Obama’s presidency is actually built on a lie. Hersh’s piece claims that Bin Laden was being held prisoner by the Pakistani military and intelligence service (the ISI), who were using him as a means to control Taliban and al-Qaida elements, and hoping to use him as leverage in their relationship with the United States. According to Hersh, who relied largely on an anonymous intelligence source, the Obama administration found out that Pakistan had Bin Laden, and eventually convinced Pakistani military leaders to allow a raid on the compound where Bin Laden was being held. I spoke to Hersh by phone this week.
Chotiner: OK. Chotiner: OK fine. Bin Laden Wore Cowboy Hat To Avoid Detection. Webapps.aljazeera.net/aje/custom/binladenfiles/Pakistan-Bin-Laden-Dossier.pdf. Pakistan's Bin Laden Dossier. On the night of May 1, 2011, US special forces launched a raid deep into Pakistani territory to capture or kill al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
On President Barack Obama’s orders, US soldiers flew via helicopter to the Pakistani army garrison town of Abbottabad, where their intelligence indicated he was hiding out. In the process of raiding the compound, Bin Laden and four others were killed. Several people were wounded. Pakistan’s military and political leaders were furious at the unilateral action by the United States, and set up a Commission to examine both “how the US was able to execute a hostile military mission which lasted around three hours deep inside Pakistan”, and how Pakistan’s “intelligence establishment apparently had no idea that an international fugitive of the renown or notoriety of [Osama bin Laden] was residing in [Abbottabad]”. Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (/oʊˈsɑːmə bɪn moʊˈhɑːmɨd bɪn əˈwɑːd bɪn ˈlɑːdən/; Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن, Usāmah bin Muḥammad bin ‘Awaḍ bin Lādin; 10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder of al-Qaeda, the Sunni militant Islamist organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.[2][3][4] He was a Saudi Arabian, a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.[5] He was born in the bin Laden family to billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia.
He studied there in college until 1979, when he joined the mujahideen forces in Pakistan against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Name There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English;[16] however, bin Laden's name is most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". Early life and education Personal life. Lies of Zero Dark Thirty (w/ Michael Hastings)