His win was far from a lock, and I feel like it would have been so easy to bomb a building and then have someone claim there was residue of whatever. By late 2004 the war was not popular, for a lot of libs "finding" WMDs would have probably justified the most evil thing the US had done in decades, I'm sure.

I was so sure they would serve up an October surprise. When they didn't it really shook me, like I didn't understand politics at all. Maybe I still don't.

Thoughts?

  • vertexarray [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I remember a take about this on a previous thread that was something like "faking it is a lot harder than saying 'oops bad intel' or just never mentioning it again. If you fake it you have to produce fake evidence."

    • mao_zedonk [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Do you though? They didn't have to provide any evidence of killing Bin Laden.

        • mao_zedonk [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Honestly I believe they killed him, but had to dump his body because they were embarrassed that a psycho operator canoed his head.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Yeah, I assume they were ordered to kill not capture because putting him on trial would be a huge embarrassment for the state. If he actually talked it would just implicate like half the Saudi royal family. Easier to kill him and dump the body.

            • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              yeah my whole thing isn't that they faked killing him, but that they faked searching for him. I feel like Pakistani Intelligence housed him in that villa with US cooperation, and then when a new administration came in (Obama) plans were made to dispose of him.

    • FugaziArchivist [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      coincidentally, I asked hexbear comrades about this recently. Here's that thread with their responses: https://hexbear.net/post/182310